[quote]Ultramegasweet wrote:
always a week or two before a meet you get severly sick. WTF already!! learn to back off already man, you should’ve broken 2000 a while ago. Get better fast[/quote]
I havent been sick since before the last Arnold. I don’t know what is up. My last few weeks of training were pretty nuts and I think that almost killed me. I’ll be good to go by the time I compete.
Whens your next meet?[/quote]
I know its been awhile since you’ve been sick but it just seems for the past couple years before every major meet you get sick. You should just start popping anti-biotics 3 weeks out before meets lol! I saw your competition should be a little bit weaker this year due to some injuries…go kill some shit this year. I couldn’t get off work to head up and see you and one of our guys is lifting in the Lexen Pro/Am.
I wanted to get some more training in and get ready for a big multi-ply meet and I think it’s coming to my gym on May 19. It might just be single ply, but that one is the next I’m doing. If it’s multi…im going bananas[/quote]
Nice. I need to find a meet this year to break in all my multi stuff. That one sounds good to me.[/quote]
yea, i think this one will be awesome. I also saw 2 strongman low level comps around that time, one in Rockville and the other in York I might do for fun.
Did about 20 sets of speed pulls for singles with 225 and 100lbs of band tension. In between each set, I did a set of three concentric only jumps of different variations.
Took a 15 minute ice bath last night and feel like a million bucks today. More later.
[quote]StormTheBeach wrote:
I did a set of three concentric only jumps of different variations.
[/quote]
You’ve mentioned these a few times now. What are they?
a) jumps from seated on a box
b) jumps with minimal knee bend
c) jumps into a swimming pool
Good luck at the Arnold - hopefully the ref won’t cheat you this time![/quote]
a) start sitting on a low box (i stick to 12, 15, or 17inches) then with no countermovement, jump to a higher box. My 2 favorite variaions are:
jumping to a 30inch while holding a max weight (in Db’s)
finding a max box height to jump to
b) the concnetric only jumps build a ton of starting power for the deadlift. mimimizing a the countermovement eliminates the stretch reflex. You have to rely on RFD and pure strength to go anywhere. Broad Jumps and verticle jumps can be done without an eccentric just by starting the movement from the deepest squat position you can possibly get into, waiting 6-10 seconds then jumping out of the squat. You can do the same with kneeling jumps by resting your hips on your heels. Bothe might seems to be developing the same qualities but one is much more specific to deadlifts (verts and broads from a squat) because you are going from a position where the prime movers are held static then they are overcome by a dynamic movement… just like setting up and initiating a deadlift.
Jumps with countermovements seem to have a bigger carryover to squats.
c) jumps into a swimming pool, I usually do a can opener. I have been working on my double backflip recently though.
Thanks for the good luck. I think I am too strong to be denied this year.
Did about 20 sets of speed pulls for singles with 225 and 100lbs of band tension. In between each set, I did a set of three concentric only jumps of different variations.
Took a 15 minute ice bath last night and feel like a million bucks today. More later.[/quote]
I’ll start by saying that maybe I’m just ignorant (haven’t been around lifting too long), but it seems your workouts, your recovery methods, all that, is just SUPER unique. No other training log that I read consistently has a training style similar to yours.
Do a lot of other PL’er you know train like this, or are kind of an outlier in that regard? I just never see people include jumps and sprints and so many workouts per week. How did you find out these tactics worked for you as opposed to what others would called more ‘traditional’ methods?
Your ideas about ab work have totally changed the way I think about training my core. I am really excited to see how it’s going to affect my training and whatnot (fingers crossed for a way stronger squat!)
Do you ever do weighted decline sit ups? I noticed you to straight legged or spread eagle ones?
If I do decline sit ups, where is the best place to hold the weight? I’ve been putting it behind my head, but I never really feel like it’s working my abs that well.
Lastly, damn you for your 100 rep facepull…
That is the hardest 2 minutes of my week, ha-ha.
Just got back from my 5th trip to the Arnold Sports-Stand-In-Line-For-Free-Tote-Bags-Festival. I love going to this thing but it was more crowded than ever this year. Got in a day earlier than I usually do just to avoid the disaster that is the Columbus airport when planes full of meatheads start meandering around the terminals. So:
Thursday:
Got in around 1, checked into the Hyatt Regency, immediately went to the tap house across the street, and ate myself into a coma. Seriosuly, I was asleep by like 4 in the afternoon.
Friday:
Ate about 7 meals today that consisted of different combinations of meat and various styles of mashing potatoes. Also, drank 3 gallons of water. My girlfriend and I attempted to walk around the convention center and decided that instead of hate-plowing my way though the crowd and killing everyone I saw, we were going to go watch some of the USAPL raw challenge. I got to see a lot of impressive stuff. A couple of other Maryland guys, Andrew Cohn (well I guess he’s a new york guy now) and Matt Nolan (a.k.a. Matt “How the hell does he deadlift so much?” Nolan) were wrecking shit. Matt had a good chance of finishing up in 2nd place when it got down to the deadlift but he heard a pop in one of his lats during his warm-up and decided to call it a day… which royally pissed me off because the only reason I was waiting around was to watch him deadlift. Anyway, I got to see Jennifer Thompsons raw bench… 300lbs at 132 is just insane. Also, got to see some of Mike T’s lifting. Guy is just always crazy strong. I think he finished up with 1933 which is a new IPF raw world record total. Nuts. Ended up going to bed early again after cracking about 10 million crossfit jokes.
Saturday:
Woke up around 5 in a ZMA/Valerian Root hangover. Foam Rolled and lax balled for about an hour, took a 30minute contrast shower, ate a crab omlete, and waited for weigh-ins. I got to the check-in and got to talk to Randall Harris for the first time. He seems like a really cool dude… all 400lbs of him. Jesus, he was big. There is something demoralizing about a guy who has shoulders bigger than your quads, especially when you are competing against him.
Somehow, I only weighed 274lbs. This always seems to happen to me at meets. I just naturally drop 10-15lbs. I don’t know if it is nerves or what but this caused a pretty serious problem that I will get into later.
With limited warm-up space (only 3 platforms for us deadlifter and the Brown’s Gym meet) I waited till some enormous human beings were done squatting and stole their platform. I am pretty sure this pissed a lot of people off but I like to warm-up for a long time before I lift. After some soft tissue work, lots of jumping, and a can of spray on icy hot, I did 135 for 3x10. So far so good. Then went to 225 and did about 15 sets of singles to get some speed work in before I started going heavy. When I finished up with those, everyone else started coming over to warm-up. This is when I realized a couple things:
Alyssa Hitchcock is strong as shit.
Everyone was much stronger than last year.
Carl Christanson has the biggest legs of anyone on earth.
345 went up very easy. So did 445. Decided to suit up when I ran into that problem I was talking about earlier. The suit went on like a pair of sweatpants. I went to pull 535 and couldnt even feel the suit. The weight still flew up but this using that suit was going to cost me pounds on the platform. For some reason, I packed an extra suit. This suit is 5 years older, stretched to hell, and made out of the old Inzer material. But, it was a size smaller. I got it on with some problem and immediately remember why I hated it. As soon as the legs were set, my thighs were gushing blood and it felt like my testicles hit the base of my skull. Tried 535 again and probably could have cleaned it. 650 looked and felt like an empty bar. After talking it over with Kris Barret and Andrew Cohn I decided to hit 700 before we went over to the main stage. I fell a little forward and pulled it from my toes. It was the shittiest deadlift I’ve ever done. But, it still went up like nothing. Ian Bell smoked it as well. So did Brad, Pat, and Carl… I knew then that this was going to be some ridiculous competition.
Before we all head over to the stage, I got to watch Blaine Summer get ROBBED on his 1025 single ply squat. He buried it and then the rest of the lift looked like a speed squat.
So, the rest of the competition looked like this:
Good stuff. I was pissed I didn’t get that 832. If it were 831.9 I think I could have locked it out. If I did get that, it would have been the second heaviest pull.