Rest Day
I rested again today, had an unfavourable shift. I felt especially tight when I got home so did 15min of stretching including a 5min squat hold. I wonder if the more stretching I do the more I need to do lol.
Tomorrow I plan on checking out my local council gym. I’m starting to realise how much I actually do care about aesthetics. I think I’ve been denying it for quite a while with all my functional kettlebell work, I need to think of a way to combine them.
Two S&S sessions a week plus an upper push day and an upper pull day could be good?
Bench Press
80kg: 5x5 This is pretty bad compared to what I used to do, but I can’t expect more and I’m looking forward to improving it!
Dumbbell Row
40kg: 3x10 I was really happy with these, obviously the kettlebell version is much harder as I can only manage 3x5 with that.
Dumbbell Incline
20kg: 15-12-10
Bodyweight: 96.4kg
I joined my local council gym and tried it out for the first time today. It’s quite basic but I like it. I have decided that I will get back into training my upper body in a traditional way - I miss it way more than I realised. I think a good split would be 2 upper body gym days and 2 lower body kettlebell days. In terms of my upper body days I need a performance goal to stay motivated - I think 100kg 5x5 bench press would be really good (pretty much what I was at for several years). I’m taking inspiration from ActivitiesGuy - I like the philosphy of doing the training you enjoy, rather than making sure it fits my OCD. Thanks a tonne for all of your input in my log AG!
For the gym days I’d love to train with Rattlehead when it suits him, and at the council gym when our timetables don’t align.
Bench Press/Dumbbell Row Superset
75kg: 5-5-5-5-11/40kg: 8-8-8-8-8 I felt sore and thought 75kg for 5x5 would be sensible but managed 11 reps on my final set (12 with a spot).
Then we did a bunch of exercises: dumbbell bench, incline smith machine, pull-ups, chest fly machine, dumbbell lateral raises and machine lateral raises. I can’t remember any of the weights or rep schemes, but it was all pretty high volume. The whole thing took an hour and fifteen minutes.
Turkish Get-Ups
40kg: 1x1 Decided to do some of these at home, as I’m not going to be able to train for the next few days. It was a terrible idea, I ditched it onto my abdomen the first attempt and almost onto my head the second. Ended up getting an okay rep on each side though.
I didn’t train on Friday or Saturday because I was away - I actually got engaged which I’m very excited about.
Of the two Simple and Sinister exercises I’m definitely more convinced by the one-arm swing than the Turkish get-up. I think if I could only ever do one exercise it would be the one-arm swing, and I’m so glad I put time into improving it instead of program hopping like I usually do. I’m not completely sure about how effective the Turkish get-up is, I can’t decide if it is a good movement or more of a weird party trick.
First, I’m glad that I’ve been an inspiration if you can call it that.
I do like your semi structured plan. It sounds quite similar to what I do, lol.
Second, congrats on getting engaged
Third, nice workouts in your last few posts, assuming you can get one or two of those upper body sessions in at the gym and a kettlebell workout or two at home every week, you ought to be pleased with the results if your nutrition is good!
Congratulations on your recent engagement!! Best advice I can give you during the wedding planning process is just to nod your head YES to your soon to be wife when it comes to decorations and all of the ticky tack stuff. A wedding is one day, a marriage is a lifetime!
Thank you both very much. Haha that sounds like very wise advice jblues :). Yes AG, very similar indeed!
Whole Body Day
Turkish Get-Ups
40kg: 5x1 The first set of these felt horrible but then I got in my groove.
Pistol Squats (On box)
BW: 3x1 What can I say, I love these but they always make me nervous.
Dumbbell Row
40kg: 3x10
Bench Press
85kg: 5x5 I was tempted to go heavier but this was definitely the right weight for today!
Barbell Row
45kg: 3x10 It’s been at least 3 years since I did these regularly! I focused on controlling them well.
Pull-Ups
BW: 4-4-3 Horrible, but expected - I did a lot of rowing before and hardly rested.
I wanted to get a bit of everything in today as my frequency has been low and I’m going to take the next couple of days off to see friends. The gym part of the session was really brief - I think it was under 30min. My lifts suffered but I was time pressured and just wanted to get some volume in.
Rest Day
My right hip feels really rough today. I hate to say it, but it looks like pistols are the culprit. I did a tonne of mobility and bodyweight box squats, but it still doesn’t feel great.
In terms of direct leg training I’m at a bit of a loss. Pistol squats seem to disagree with me, I don’t have appropriate kettlebells for front squats and goblet squats are far too limited by my upper body. I guess belt squats could be an option, but they felt awkward the last time I tried them - they are definitely not ideal. Maybe reverse lunges with the 40kg in one hand and 28kg in the other? I’m not sure, I’d love to hear some suggestions.
[quote]furo wrote: Rest Day
My right hip feels really rough today. I hate to say it, but it looks like pistols are the culprit. I did a tonne of mobility and bodyweight box squats, but it still doesn’t feel great.
In terms of direct leg training I’m at a bit of a loss. Pistol squats seem to disagree with me, I don’t have appropriate kettlebells for front squats and goblet squats are far too limited by my upper body. I guess belt squats could be an option, but they felt awkward the last time I tried them - they are definitely not ideal. Maybe reverse lunges with the 40kg in one hand and 28kg in the other? I’m not sure, I’d love to hear some suggestions.[/quote]
I know your trying to limit your need for gym equipment but I have had some decent success with single leg work such as barbell reverse lunges, dB walking lunges, bulgarian split squats, one leg leg-press and single leg deadlifts.
If you want to stay out of the gym maybe you could consider sprinting or some hill sprints if that is your thing, which probably won’t result in massive legs, but it will give you strong legs plus the conditioning work at the same time. Do you have access to a prowler?
I’ve still been following for a while, even though I haven’t posted anything recently.
Like everyone else is saying, congrats on the engagement. My engagement time was wonderful, and the only thing better is actually being married. I wish you two the best.
As far as a squat alternative goes, I’d suggest playing around with kettlebell front squats. I know you’ve got a 40 and 28kg bell, and working those together would be good and interesting. I’ve done some mis-matched double kettlebell front squatting, and the mis-matching adds to the challenge. Just make sure you hit each side evenly, so choose 4 x 10 or 6 x 10 over 5 x 10. Or whatever. You get the idea.
Much of this will depend on what your leg goal is. Absolute strength will definitely be hard to come by with that exercise/weight combo, but working up to 10 x 10 (or even sets of 20) should give you some super strong legs and perhaps some added muscle as well. Especially if you combine these with Bird’s single leg suggestions (which looks really sound).
Everything Bird mentioned was spot on. There is a lot of value in doing various lunges while holding the KB in different positions (suitcase, goblet, front rack, overhead) or even doing various walks as well will do wonders for your legs. I don’t know the name of it but I’ve seen a workout where you do a walking lunge with each leg and once you finish each leg you do a goblet squat.
Doing that for distance seems pretty brutal and it would force you to use a lighter bell. Squats are a great exercise but I don’t think they are the holy grail of movements. I’m not built for squatting (very long femurs but do it anyway) and get better leg development from lunges or even front squats than I do back squats. Tried pistols a few times but my knees do not like those, even to a box. Similar to Get Ups like you said, I feel like it is a circus trick more than anything. That’s the great thing about kettlebells is that you can get creative.
One-Arm Swings
40kg: 5x10 These felt quite crisp and powerful.
Stretching: 90-90 stretch
This session was good, if I could only ever do one warm-up, one main lift and one stretch it would be these 3. Finished just after 11pm, having done a late shift - probably going to mess up my sleep but oh well.
Thanks for the good wishes theBird and booksbikesbeer!
In terms of leg work I’d rather not do exercises that force you to go light due to other limiting factors, as I feel that the Turkish get-up achieves that. I was thinking of an exercise that really hits the legs hard from a strength perspective, as that’s where my routine potentially falls short. Having said all of this I have changed my mind - I think that S&S has been working really well and I’d be foolish to stray from it for no real reason. I should continue doing it for my lower body and the gym work for upper body. Thanks for all the input though!
[quote]LoRez wrote:
Congratulations on the engagement. Do you have a date set yet?[/quote]
Thank you very much! Most likely Summer 2016, so a while off.
Turkish Get-Up Day
Goblet Squats
20kg: 3x5
Turkish Get-Ups
40kg: 5x1
Stretching: 15min
This was the most tired I think I’ve ever been in a training session, I was genuinely falling asleep between sets. It’s been a long week and it’s not over yet.
My knees were especially clunky today and I had one brief spasm within my left knee. Worst they’ve been in a while. I wonder if this is a consequence of the pistol squat attempts, as they were doing really well beforehand.
Rest Day
Stretching and sauna. 7 days of work (inc 2 double shifts because a colleague was off ill) has completely wiped me out.
Max you inspired me to look into my weight over the course of this log to see what the trend has been like. I just went through my log and came up with monthly average weights. I didn’t have data for Dec 13 or June 14 so I just averaged the month before and after for them.
There seems to be a pretty significant correlation between bodyweight and life events lol - the run-up to finals in January and Australia in April seem to have pretty clear negative impacts!
Also: the lightest I’ve been in this log was 93.6kg (after my work hell week lol) and the heaviest was 98.2kg in the run-up to finals.
I forgot to mention that my weight today was 95.6kg, which I’m happy with.
Reading back through my log was really interesting. It really hit home how many times I come up with goals, and then go back on them! Ever since starting Simple and Sinister however I have become a lot more consistent.
Speaking of goals, here are my new ones:
Strength: Consistently do all swings and get-ups with the 40kg in one session (instead of having to break it into two). Aesthetics: Consistently weigh below 95kg fasted. Fitness: Do some form of cardio at least once a week.
Modest and realistic: no excuses! In addition to these goals I will also do my upper body work, though that will be less focused.
