wednesday:
atg high bar squats - up to a few short rest doubles at 265. then a widowmaker with 225.
ohp - singles up to 125, big fail at 135, then a few sets with 100.
tried db rows but it still isnt in the cards with my upper back issue.
given how much sleep ive missed, that im getting over a cold, and that im not eating enough this was pretty good.
Thursday
super bear 1 set of 5, then i cut out the overhead squat which makes it just a regular bear i think. did 1 more set of 5 with that. All I have to say is… JESUS CHRIST.
then a fairly easy close-grip bench triple with a VERY unstable setup with 150.
then a very easy BTN push press with 150.
Just screwing around but I did get some work in.
Friday:
very little. a few very light squats, some snatches. If my technique wasn’t as terrible as I’m sure it is, I could probably power snatch 120. It gets high enough easily, I’m just bad at dipping under.
Saturday:
Ramped up to a new bench press PR (though definitely not a 1RM) - 195. Dumbbells hanging off the bar, a crazy unstable bench, I was forced to use a rather narrow grip, terrible warmup, and I had a lot more in me too. Just ran out of time. PL style with an arch and all. (which I’m still learning) I may restart bench pressing. It’s not such a clusterfuck when I use PL form.
Later on - Bunch of band pullaparts, dislocates, band press (BTN), tornadoes, etc
also a few high-ish rep sets of close grip weighted pushups up to ~80 lb.
Sunday:
Gym was closed so,
Rock OHP - a lot of singles, then quite a few doubles, then triples until I could only do doubles which I did until I was done. Short rests. I am absolutely stronger pressing rocks than bars. I get way more leanback with rocks. So maybe that’s just a technique issue with my barbell OHP. I don’t know.
Then, in effect, I spent about 45 minutes pulling and pushing a heavy sled.
Monday:
A few hang power snatches with just the bar.
Snatch grip DL (straps) - ramp to 285 for a few singles with rests a bit longer than usual. running out of time so I stopped there. I felt like I was losing my arch a tad on these but I filmed it and I seem to be fine. These were awesome and hard as hell.
Quite a few power snatches (iron plates, so i cant drop these) I got a pretty good rep at 105, not too bad a press out.
~15 minutes of boxing. Just working on technique. I think I’m pushing my left straight. I get great leg drive with it, it’s just that I either slap the bag and don’t punch through or I compensate by pushing it. I wish I had a real boxing gym and all that. Gotta do what you gotta do.
PWO was a granola bar and some grape juice. best I could do.
My hands were about an inch outside the rings though it looks much closer in the video.
I’d be happy to hear any advice!
Tuesday:
Db snatches aren’t doing so hot. I narrowly missed 93 a bunch of times. Then I did 8 pendlay row triples at 185. (With maybe a little more momentum than I should have.) Then I did a few PJR pullover triples with 93. These were hard. Also two sets of medium rep alternating pinwheel curls with the 55’s. For some reason I was pretty tired after this.
I made the mistake of taking my headphones out for a second and some douchebag instantly started telling me how you have to use absolutely perfect form on everything or it magically stops working completely. This was how he added 100 pounds to his 180 lb bench in only a few months. And then a little later on he told me that he benched 300. See a little problem there?
Here’s my pendlay rows. I think I may have been using a bit much body english to call them pendlay rows. I’ll be back to dumbbells in a few days.
Tuesday session 2: I did this at 10:30 pm. I have to study late tonight so I got some neural charging going down hahaha!
Circuit of med ball overhead throw, high jump, med ball slam, long jump. Finally one good thing about that gym, there’s a basketball court right next to it. So that worked nicely. I pulled out a sizable tuft of hair on one of the slams and didn’t even notice it until I saw the hair all over the floor hahah!
Power snatch - ramp to 125 (yeah!!)
Clean - ramp to 175 with a power clean and then 180 with a full clean.
Reverse cable crossovers - high rep sets at 30, 40, 40, and 50. Lots of squeezing and feeling the muscle. Held the last rep at 50 for ~20 seconds which was… painful.
I’ve got the whole catching the bar in a crazy wide stance thing going on. Though the last clean was good so I actually have the strength, just some wacky movement patterns. I’ll have to take care of that.
Awesome session!!! (that may just be the amped up neural system talking hehe)
Wednesday:
Push press - ramp to a few singles at 155. I wasn’t feeling it too well. Probably cause my triceps weren’t particularly recovered since yesterday. I dipped a little bit on some of these. I’m rather unused to something about push presses. I don’t like them.
Seated top half OHP from pins (bar half an inch off the top of my head, about 2 inches above my sticking point) - ramp to a few fucking hard singles at 155 with singles at 145 in between each. AWESOME FANCY WAVE LOADING PROTOCOL. haha. Then 10 second rest cluster reps at 135. When those got really hard I switched the rest to 20 seconds and got quite a few more out. I used a fairly wide grip for all this.
Farmers walks - ramp to 103’s for ~5 sets.
Shrugs -(first few sets were double overhand and strapless) ramp to 225 x ~8, 275 x ~4 x 3, 185 x a bunch with a squeeze at the top.
Face pulls - ramp to 170 for mid range reps for ~5 sets. On the last set I did a very un-intense drop set with a 10 second hold on the last rep
Doubled efs mini band neck holds for about 4 sets of 10-15 seconds in each direction. Keeping the sets down for a bit until my neck gets used to this a bit. I did push the last sets hard though.
Pec stretch with band over shoulder, keeping the humerus in its socket. This was awesome.
Band dislocates, some band press too.
Yes, I just discovered that they have bands here… Only minis though.
So this was weird. I slept about 4 hours last night cause I was studying, I didn’t have any PWO, and I missed lunch (I’ll make up for that of course). And yet I trained for over two hours here. Maybe the neural charge from yesterday? I don’t know but I’ll take it.
good vids mate, pendelay rows did look like a little too much BE
Yeah, my ego wouldn’t let me drop the weight…
I’ve come pretty close to some of the goals and hit some of them, though I’m pretty far off the OHP, pullups, and deadlift. But I’m done with being locked into those goals. Here’s some slightly more intelligent ones:
… Dec 1 … current … Feb 1
ATG Squat 1RM ~290 … x … 315
Deadlift 1RM ~305 … x … 335
One arm row 3RM ~143 … x … 170
Weighted chinup 3RM ~45 … few doubles at 55 … 75
Power clean 1RM 175 … x … 210 (switch these to hang)
Power snatch 1RM 125 … x … 145 (switch these to hang)
One hand farmers walk (I only have one handle) 103 for ~20 sec … x … 150 for 10 sec
Box jump ~36" … ~36" (easy) … 48"
bench 1rm ~205 … 195 (very unstable set-up and very easy) … 240
ohp 1rm ~130 … x … 145
weight 148 (very little food, lots of water, right after training) … x … 163 (Fuck it, why not try)
Rear delt size (haha) - I don’t know how to quantify this. But they should be measurably better. When my low bar position feels more stable I guess.
Thursday:
My triceps and traps are sorer than I’m used to.
Had one of those days where my balls retracted and I couldn’t strain. I’ve had a total of about 5 hours sleep in the last two days, nowhere near enough to eat yesterday and only one meal today. That might have something to do with it… I did my best aided as always by amon amarth, five finger death punch, and ensiferum.
ATG high bar squat ramp to 275 for 2 I think? then fail at 285. Couldn’t get ONE. Then back to 275 for one of the longest reps ever. I just couldn’t drive it through. Weak. So I did 225 for 2 to feel good about myself and got the hell out of there.
Chinups ramp to ~5 good doubles at 55. Then a few more where the second rep didn’t quite get all the way up. Drop to 45 for a few more clean doubles, then some singles. Then a bunch of pullups and chinups with varying grips. I was pretty weak on these too so I decided to just get a sick lat pump, bro. So I did some pulldown bullshit.
You can’t win em all, but I did cause I set a PR anyway. 
I;m gonna go eat my face off and then go to bed.
Friday
Bench (mostly a technique day)
Worked up to a fail at 195. Previous weights were fast as hell and easy. My feet just slipped out from under me… I’m gonna try the other bench next time cause it’s closer to the ground. I almost got 195 anyway even with no leg drive.
Then the fuckers closed the gym early so I had to go.
I still don’t understand how to use my lats while benching. Also my left biceps area was unpleasantly sore coming into this and now my elbows feel like shit. Hmm. EDIT: I rolled out my arms and forearms and hands (and back) and everything’s good now.
Friday session 2. For once, I couldnt manage to get past security into the gym. So I went into the woods and floor pressed rocks. High-ish reps cause I was lifting unstable rocks over my face… About 5 sets of 8-12. The first sets, I left a rep in the tank. The last two sets were all out. Short rests.
Then 4 sets of rock curls 5-8 reps. Pretty much to failure each set. Hands were neutral grip for maximum brachialis super cool peak contraction. And also cause there’s no other way to grip a rock…
Also, carrying and moving all these rocks around, I got a little lower and upper back work in.
Then I chased some deer around. They were slow, but I lost my wind pretty much immediately… Maybe time for a bit more conditioning? haha
Probably didn’t even get maintenance calories today. What’s worse is I don’t even have a fucking excuse.
o lifts and deadlift tomorrow assuming the gym doesn’t fuck me over and change its schedule again.
Saturday: this was an hour after i woke up. I hate it and am definitely not conditioned to it.
Deadlift ramp up to a fucking fail at 295. WTF. I’m gonna put deadlifts on 5/3/1 cause this isnt working out so good lately.
power snatch ramp to 125 and miss 130 a bunch of times. If I was faster under the bar I could get it. I pull it plenty high enough. It’s a matter of technique/practice at the moment.
power clean - my left elbow was still fucking around and this felt nasty and weak. I hit some easy weight, 155 I think, and stopped.
A few sets of back extensions, a few assisted glute/ham raises, a few leg curls. My kneecap was wobbling around on the pad for these. Kinda weird so I stopped. Pretty shitty session as I basically haven’t gotten any stronger since last time. Blame that on eating like a pussy for the last few days.
My elbow gets unhappy with a lot of work thrown at it. But after a lost of rest it feels fine. Pretty sure it’s a recovery thing; I can eat through it. I iced it a bit after training. Think I have a technique video of 225 deadlift. I’ll upload it later.
5/3/1 based off of 90% of 305.
180 x 5, 205 x 5, 235 x 5+
215 x 3, 245 x 3, 275 x 3+
230 x 5, 260 x 3, 290 x 1+
Deadlift day’ll be Fridays.
5/3/1 + high rep squats + rows did great for my deadlift a while back
Good to hear, you think my squat gains would slow down much if I add a widowmaker or two on squat days after my heavy sets?
Monday: no training, I’ve only barely hit maintenance calories and I’ve hardly slept in the past day or two.
Tuesday:
Overhead press from pins - a few singles up to 125. Couldn’t hit 130 (which I did a month ago…) It always flies up to my forehead and then just stops.
Dumbbell OHP - 43’s x 5, 4, 3, 2, and then ~5 each with each arm individually and a bit of a bent press position.
Pretty crappy session. Training, eating, and sleeping has been pretty fucked up recently with finals and everything.
I think I’m gonna squat today.
Wednesday:
Squat: two or three longish rest doubles at 265. Then 225 for 9 - widowmaker style. Couldn’t quite get 10. I’m not quite ATG on these recently. Weak. When my recovery situation goes down my squat is always the first to go.
Chest supported rows with the lower parallel handles - ~8 triples - first few sets 2 plates, last few 80 lb. (the parallel handles are about half way down the lever arm, for future reference)
Reverse cable crossover - 50 x 3 x a bunch ending each set with a 20 second hold.
preacher curls - 60 lb ez bar for 3 x 8
face pulls - stack by high-ish reps
I’ve got sleep back to where it should be. Food is coming along too.
EDIT: forgot the rest of the squats and the rows
if you can recover from it - do it