[quote]MightyMouse17 wrote:
Good job on the 275 squat. How much more do you think you could’ve done?[/quote]
Thank you, I would say around 300-315. 275 felt like it was the point at which I would start needing to get “psyched up” to keep increasing the weight.
So 275 was no psych and didn’t grind, but anything above would.
Training Update:
I’m back on 5/3/1. Training maxes are set to where I’ll start getting close to my real maxes in 5-6 cycles or so.
Squat-250
Bench-200
Clean-200
Press-110
Template looks like this:
Squat 5/3/1
Hams
Abs
Bench 5/3/1 (chins bt sets)
Rows
Shoulders
Cleans 5/3/1
Squat 55,65,75% x5
Abs
Press 5/3/1 (chins bt sets)
Rows
Bis/Tris
The squats after cleans will be based on projected max from the most recent squat set.
I’ll lift twice a week, like I have been doing, but I’m also going to be doing some conditioning after I lift. This is because we are no longer doing formal conditioning work during practice (though there is still a conditioning effect from playing).
I started last week by jog/walking 1.25 miles in 20 minutes. I’ll increase this by 0.01 miles each time I run, which is so slow I know I’ll have no problem keeping up (something I learned from 5/3/1).
During the upcoming offseason, I think I’m going to stick with lifting twice a week. This way I can go for PRs both days, and have plenty of time to recover and to work on flexibility/mobility. I’ll condition 3 times/week. This is the “old man winter” template from 5/3/1 for powerlifting. I’m not old, but my body needs to recover from rugby (I only get about 16 weeks off per year) and I know I can make gains like this, because I do during the season.
So it will look like this:
Monday- Lower body lifting and conditioning
Wednesday- Upper body lifting and conditioning
Friday- Conditioning
I’ll do the condtioning described above on Monday and Friday, and I’ll run sprints on Wednesday.
Practice from last night:
Warm up/stretching
Conditioning-sprints
Conditioning-sprints/burpess
Conditioning-tackling drill
Conditioning-ruck/tackle/bear crawl/run
Lineouts
Scrimmage, started as walk through, progressed to about half live
So much for not conditioning at practice. We spent a freaking hour being ran into the ground, so I guess that’s out the window now. The second half of practice was pretty good though. We went over a lot of strategy as far as how to create space as forwards when we run the ball. Just a little side step and an offload can break the line.
I won’t be conditioning today as I planned, since we ran so much last night.
In other news, this weekend is the last state tournament ever. We are only taking one team up there, so I’ll know after thursday’s practice if that includes me or not. When we split into back and forwards, I was starting B side. So as of now, I am probably not on the travel roster, but they might take more replacements since it is 3 matches in 2 days, so I might get on that way, or if someone gets hurt.
Lifting:
Bench (3 dead hang chins bt each set, including warm ups)
135x5
155x5
170x10
DB rows 3x10 with 60lbs
25lb plate raise 3x10
[quote]Chris87 wrote:
Training Update:
I’m back on 5/3/1. Training maxes are set to where I’ll start getting close to my real maxes in 5-6 cycles or so.
Squat-250
Bench-200
Clean-200
Press-110
Template looks like this:
Squat 5/3/1
Hams
Abs
Bench 5/3/1 (chins bt sets)
Rows
Shoulders
Cleans 5/3/1
Squat 55,65,75% x5
Abs
Press 5/3/1 (chins bt sets)
Rows
Bis/Tris
The squats after cleans will be based on projected max from the most recent squat set.
[/quote]
What’s up.
The extra squatting looks good, but why no deadlifting - did I miss a post where you discussed this?
[quote]panzerfaust wrote:
[quote]Chris87 wrote:
Training Update:
I’m back on 5/3/1. Training maxes are set to where I’ll start getting close to my real maxes in 5-6 cycles or so.
Squat-250
Bench-200
Clean-200
Press-110
Template looks like this:
Squat 5/3/1
Hams
Abs
Bench 5/3/1 (chins bt sets)
Rows
Shoulders
Cleans 5/3/1
Squat 55,65,75% x5
Abs
Press 5/3/1 (chins bt sets)
Rows
Bis/Tris
The squats after cleans will be based on projected max from the most recent squat set.
[/quote]
What’s up.
The extra squatting looks good, but why no deadlifting - did I miss a post where you discussed this?[/quote]
There are a couple reasons for this:
1-I’ve always been good at deadlifting, but I’ve also always questioned if it was really helping my athletic development. Most college and pro football players don’t deadlift, as well as other sports. I’ve also read up on a few strength coaches that say it isn’t neccessary for athletes in non strength sports
2- My squat has always sucked, and I want to improve it. At this point my deadlift is more than a hundred pounds higher than my squat, and I’d rather spend the time imroving my squat
3- Deadlifting takes a lot more out of me than squatting
4- A lot of strength coaches, even for powerlifting, say that you can still improve your deadlift by improving your squat, without even deadlifting. They usually advocate speed deadlifts to keep the form. I figure since I’m cleaning that will help keep the hinge movement solid.
So for those reasons, I’m going to give it a try. If it doesn’t work I can always go back to deadlifting regularly.
Recap of the State Championship tournament:
We went up to the tournament with 32 guys for 2 sides, so there was a LOT of rugby played. I personally played 125 minutes. B side games didn’t count towards the tournament.
Game 1:
A side game, we came out flat and were only leading 5-0 halfway through the first half. After that we turned it on and we ended up winning 57-0.
Game 2:
B side game. The opponents are a chiropractic school, so they were all 30+. Since they are too old for college games, they played our B side. We got down by a couple tries, and then came back to being in the lead by 8. Unfortunetly, one of their guys picked off a pass when we were about ten meters out from scoring and took it to the house. We had the ball 20 meters out from the try zone on the last play but the ref made a bad call and ended the game. I played the full game.
Game 3:
B side game and against the Game 1’s B side. We played hard and took this one 24-0, I also played this full game.
Game 4/Championship:
We played well against a good team and won 19-0. This made us back to back state champs. I played the last 15 mins, and I almost scored, but got pushed out 1 meter away.
Not much else to say, but I’m beat up and I’ll sleep like a baby tonight.
A side: 3-2
B side: 2-2
C side: 1-1
Overall: 6-5
[quote]Chris87 wrote:
[quote]panzerfaust wrote:
[quote]Chris87 wrote:
Training Update:
I’m back on 5/3/1. Training maxes are set to where I’ll start getting close to my real maxes in 5-6 cycles or so.
Squat-250
Bench-200
Clean-200
Press-110
Template looks like this:
Squat 5/3/1
Hams
Abs
Bench 5/3/1 (chins bt sets)
Rows
Shoulders
Cleans 5/3/1
Squat 55,65,75% x5
Abs
Press 5/3/1 (chins bt sets)
Rows
Bis/Tris
The squats after cleans will be based on projected max from the most recent squat set.
[/quote]
What’s up.
The extra squatting looks good, but why no deadlifting - did I miss a post where you discussed this?[/quote]
There are a couple reasons for this:
1-I’ve always been good at deadlifting, but I’ve also always questioned if it was really helping my athletic development. Most college and pro football players don’t deadlift, as well as other sports. I’ve also read up on a few strength coaches that say it isn’t neccessary for athletes in non strength sports
2- My squat has always sucked, and I want to improve it. At this point my deadlift is more than a hundred pounds higher than my squat, and I’d rather spend the time imroving my squat
3- Deadlifting takes a lot more out of me than squatting
4- A lot of strength coaches, even for powerlifting, say that you can still improve your deadlift by improving your squat, without even deadlifting. They usually advocate speed deadlifts to keep the form. I figure since I’m cleaning that will help keep the hinge movement solid.
So for those reasons, I’m going to give it a try. If it doesn’t work I can always go back to deadlifting regularly.[/quote]
Solid reasoning. My deadlift is also 100+ lbs ahead of my squat, but that is more to do with my squat being shit (170kg) than my deadlift being outstanding (227.5kg).
My biggest ever deadlift gains came after 6 weeks without deadlifting, so yes I agree if you train the muscles the lift will improve. The only part you are missing then is the “confidence” side of the pull. But no doubt a couple of months of heavy singles work would have you back ready to deadlift heavy again anyway.
And yeah, I have read similar opinions from strength coaches, along with many of them advocating cleans instead of deadlifts - some going even further by not recommending the full oly lifts.
My old coach had me only doing high pulls and moderate weight hang cleans as I would regularly bust my shoulders from performing full olympic movements.
I dunno, I just fucking love deadlifting.
Anyway keep up the good work dude!
[quote]panzerfaust wrote:
[quote]Chris87 wrote:
[quote]panzerfaust wrote:
[quote]Chris87 wrote:
Training Update:
I’m back on 5/3/1. Training maxes are set to where I’ll start getting close to my real maxes in 5-6 cycles or so.
Squat-250
Bench-200
Clean-200
Press-110
Template looks like this:
Squat 5/3/1
Hams
Abs
Bench 5/3/1 (chins bt sets)
Rows
Shoulders
Cleans 5/3/1
Squat 55,65,75% x5
Abs
Press 5/3/1 (chins bt sets)
Rows
Bis/Tris
The squats after cleans will be based on projected max from the most recent squat set.
[/quote]
What’s up.
The extra squatting looks good, but why no deadlifting - did I miss a post where you discussed this?[/quote]
There are a couple reasons for this:
1-I’ve always been good at deadlifting, but I’ve also always questioned if it was really helping my athletic development. Most college and pro football players don’t deadlift, as well as other sports. I’ve also read up on a few strength coaches that say it isn’t neccessary for athletes in non strength sports
2- My squat has always sucked, and I want to improve it. At this point my deadlift is more than a hundred pounds higher than my squat, and I’d rather spend the time imroving my squat
3- Deadlifting takes a lot more out of me than squatting
4- A lot of strength coaches, even for powerlifting, say that you can still improve your deadlift by improving your squat, without even deadlifting. They usually advocate speed deadlifts to keep the form. I figure since I’m cleaning that will help keep the hinge movement solid.
So for those reasons, I’m going to give it a try. If it doesn’t work I can always go back to deadlifting regularly.[/quote]
Solid reasoning. My deadlift is also 100+ lbs ahead of my squat, but that is more to do with my squat being shit (170kg) than my deadlift being outstanding (227.5kg).
My biggest ever deadlift gains came after 6 weeks without deadlifting, so yes I agree if you train the muscles the lift will improve. The only part you are missing then is the “confidence” side of the pull. But no doubt a couple of months of heavy singles work would have you back ready to deadlift heavy again anyway.
And yeah, I have read similar opinions from strength coaches, along with many of them advocating cleans instead of deadlifts - some going even further by not recommending the full oly lifts.
My old coach had me only doing high pulls and moderate weight hang cleans as I would regularly bust my shoulders from performing full olympic movements.
I dunno, I just fucking love deadlifting.
Anyway keep up the good work dude!
[/quote]
Thanks for the thoughts.
I agree that I should be able to get the form back pretty quickly. To me, it seems deadlifts are by far the least technical of any big lift, and my form has been solid since I started deadlifting.
I know that I keep saying Cleans, but I really mean power cleans, I don’t do the full oly lifts.
And thanks for the support
Training from monday:
Cleans
135x5
155x5
170x5
Squat
165,185,210x5
3 sets of planks
Ran 1.27 miles in 18:14
Practice from Tuesday:
Warm up/stretch
rucking drill
ball handling drill
tackling drill
broke up into backs and forwards, we worked on scrums and lineouts
touch scrimmage
Training from today:
Press (3 chins bt each set)
75x5
85x5
95x10
DB rows
50x10
55x10
70x15
3 sets of curls and pushdowns
No running today because my feet and ankles are destroyed right now
Thursday’s practice:
My ankles were still giving me problems, so I couldn’t do much other than the warm up and a ball handling drill. Other than that, the team did the typical drills and scrimmaging.
Our opponent for this weekend cancelled because of the hurricane, so we had a conditioning practice instead.
Extra practice from saturday:
The initial plan was for the team to perform 3 conditioning tests, with about ten mins rest between them. I thought this was absolutely absurd when I heard the coaches say it. How the hell are you supposed to give a conditioning test all you have, and then do it again in ten minutes, and then again a third time?
Anyway, the first test was the “beep test”. Basically there’s a beep, and you sprint 20 yards, there’s another beep that you have to be finished by, a short rest, then another beep to start the next sprint.
I did this back in middle school and it wasn’t that bad. The coaches did a shitty job explaining the scoring of the test and how it progresses. They told us the time you had to complete the sprint would get faster and faster each time, and that the minimum standard was 13.
I took this as: each sprint will be faster than the last, the short rest period will be constant, the minimum is 13 sprints.
Turns out that you do 5 or 6 sprints for each “level”, and the times are constant for each level. Each time the level increases, the sprints get faster and the rest gets shorter. After about the 3rd or 4th round, you have basically no rest.
The coaches then also misinformed us that 13 levels was the standard, which is complete bull. The best score for our team was level 11.
All this confusion really screwed me over, because I started the test sprinting so I could have a longer rest, when in retrospect I should have just jogged and slowly increased my speed. This really screwed me up, I failed halfway through level 7, which wasn’t very good.
The results for our team are really skewed though, we were told if you didn’t reach the line by the beep, that was a failed sprint. You got one gimmie, but once you failed the second time you were done. After I was out I was watching the rest of the team and they were all failing multiple sprints and just kept going for 2 or 3 more levels. I watched our team captain fail 9 sprints in a row before he stopped. That just really screws over the guys who were honest with themselves about not making the sprints.
The second test was running a type of shuttle for as many reps as possible in 30 seconds, followed by 30 seconds rest. We did this for a total of 6 reps. My score was 28 and a half, and our coaches said 30-35 is what we should be shooting for. I felt like I could’ve done that if I wasn’t already exhausted. I also felt this test was much better for rugby, as the last test just had us running constantly, which does NOT happen in a game.
Lifting from Monday:
Squat
175x3
205x3
225x8 PR!
Deadlifts
135x5
165x5
195x5
2 sets of hamstrings and abs
A note about PRs, from here on out, whenever I beat the calculated max for a lift, I will call it a PR. Since last week I got 210x10 (calculated max was 280) and this week I got 225x8 (calculated max 285) I call that a PR. I’m too lazy to keep track of every record for a number of reps.
I’ve been tinkering around with my template, I was going to do something like this:
5/3/1 Squat
Deload Deadlifts
assistance work
then next week:
Deload Squat
5/3/1 Deadlifts
assistance work
Well, I tried it out and it is probably a bad idea. I’m still sore as shit in my hamstrings and lower back 2 days later, so deads are going to be out, as was the original plan.
The new set up will be:
Jumps (3x3 or 3x5)
Squat 5/3/1
Hamstrings 3-4 sets
Abs 3 sets
Then for upper days it will be:
Bench or Press 5/3/1
Chins or rows 3-4 sets
1 or 2 smaller assistance lifts (stuff like curls, lateral raises,etc.) for 3 sets each
I’ll be doing 5/3/1 for squat both days, so I will only add 5 pounds to the training max each time I complete a cycle, since the squat cycles will be twice as fast.
Practice from last night:
Didn’t practice again last night, due to the ankle problems. I am trying my best to get as healthy as possible by game time friday night. As long as I stay off my feet as much as possible, they shouldn’t bother me too much come game time.
The team did a lot of the typical stuff. Tackling drills (good idea), setting up our offense off of the rucks, and some light scrimmaging. Backs played 7s the whole time.
Lifting today:
Incline Bench (the incline is about 30 degrees)
125x3
145x3
160x10
Chins (assisted)
BW-50lbs x8,6
BW-80lbs x9,8
3 sets of lateral raises and pushdowns
I’m giving incline bench a try instead of flat. So far it feels a bit more “natural”, and this was a good starting point.
Practice from thursday:
We took it pretty easy since we had a game the next night. Did the typical warm up and ball drills, then some work on lineouts, then we did some forwards scrimmaging (no tackling) and then a full scrimmage (again no tackling).
I practiced a bit just to see how my ankles were feeling, so I would know if playing was in the cards or not. I did the warm up, ball drills, and lineout work and stopped after that. The ankles felt okay so I knew I would at least have a chance to play
Games from friday:
This was alumni weekend, so the B side played the old boy’s side. This game is more for fun, and since there’s always a ton of alumni that want to play, we have four 20 min periods and rolling subs.
I played the first 40 minutes and stopped after that. My ankles held up better than I thought they would, so that’s good news. As far as the actual game, it was sloppy as could be for the first 20 mins. The second 20 were better but still not very good. We weren’t getting the ball out to the backs very well, but at the end of the first 40 mins we were up 10-0. I didn’t see the whole rest of the game (grabbed some food so I wouldn’t miss the A side game), but I know the old boys scored at least once. I also don’t know the final score, but we did win.
The A side played a very good men’s team, they won the state title a few weeks ago and are always in the running to go to nationals. We were playing pretty well, but so were they. You could tell from watching them play that they have practiced their game play so much it is just ingrained into them. We need to be like that.
The scoring was back and forth and we were down by 3 towards the end of the game. We got a penalty kick about 15 meters out directly in front of the goal posts, the coaches were yelling to kick for points and tie it up (this would have been a chip shot), but our captain decided to go for the win. We lost the ball, they kicked it out, and the game was over.
At the time, I thought our captain made a horrible decision, but when I think about it, I dont think there’s any overtime rules, so a kick would just end the game in a tie. If that’s the case then I understand the decision, but it just always sucks to lose.
These were the last games of the fall, so no more games until january. We will still be practicing until christmas break however, because our level of play will have to step up dramatically when we get to conference play.
A side: 3-3
B side: 3-2
C side: 1-1
Overall: 7-6
Lifting and running today:
Squat
185x5
205x5
225x9 PR
Dips
4x8-12 , these were assisted
DB rows
4x8-12
Ran 1.29 miles in just under 16 mins
I’ve tried a dozen times to post my past week of training but it will not post for whatever reason.
225x9 was a PR, and I felt like I still had 2 reps in me. I’ve got to work on dips, that was just bad. I also tried to do some ab work at the end but my hip flexor is screwed up right now.