Woke at 212. 4 lbs which I’ll call a win considering my 1500+ calorie dinner. But, as I said last night, I was still under maintenance. This is why I want to get down to 209 or so. I want to be 210 most days of the week and see 211 or 212 after a bad day instead of 215-217.
No, but that sounds way easier. Part of the battle for me is to make sure my knee doesn’t cave in. The only time it does is when I lose my balance. I think I’d remove that aspect if I propped my foot on something.
I might do that on leg extensions, but that’s it. The problem with those types of sets (going to failure) is that you have to do it all over again with the other side.
Deadlift (SGSS)
135 x 5
235 x 5 x 5 I’m only going to do these once a week and I’ll just be skipping the 3x5 days of the progression.
STRAIGHT ARM PULL/PRESS DOWN (mTor)
30 x 10
35 x 10
42.5 x 9 + 10 sec iso hold
LAT PULL DOWN (hold contraction for 1 sec, myo reps)
140 x 8 x 2 sets
160 x 12-3-3-3-3-3-3-2
T-BAR WENDLER ROWS (mTor)
105 x 10 + 20 sec stretch x 3 sets Holy hell! 5 sec negatives work well on the one.
DB HAMMER CURL (350 SET)
30 x 20, 9, 7 I used this weight last week and hit 50 reps but I was more strict today. Eliminating rest/pause reps was the difference.
STRAIGHT ARM MACHINE CRUNCH
110 x 20
130 x 15
150 x 10
ELLIPTICAL 20 min interval, 2:1, L7/i7:L14/i14, 2.02 miles, 267 calories
I don’t think it’s possible to have a bad day with that kind of trap pump (or burn). I mean, it just feels awesome afterwards. If you haven’t done a slow set of Wendler Rows with a stretch at the end then you’re missing out. Go do them right now!_
INCLINE PRESS (REST/PAUSE)
45 x 10
135 x 8
145 x 6
165 x 8-3-3 Supposed to get 8 on the two pause sets so I have room for improvement.
SMITH BTN OHP (mTor)
65 x 8
75 x 6
85 x 7 + 10 sec iso hold
MACHINE HACK SQUAT (single leg) Unfortunately I couldn’t do this today. Actually, I can’t really do anything pain free today. I haven’t done my PT exercises and I’m beginning to think they do something to activate or warm up the right muscles and allow me to train pain free.
CABLE LAT RAISES (MYO REPS)
30 x 10
30 x 10
30 x 12-3-3-3-3-3-2
OH ROPE EXTENSION (350 SET)
100 x 23, 11, 10
EXERCISE BIKE 2:1 Interval, 15 minutes, L10/20, 183 cals, 4.12 miles
Finished with a bit of foam rolling on my left leg with the hopes that it’ll straighten up. No luck yet. I get stabbing pain in my knee if I press my foot against the floorboard of my patrol car.
Another kick in the pants today is that I got up at 0400 to train before work because I thought I’d be doubled up with my buddy for our shift. We’re usually stacked on Thursdays and have more officers than beats. That allows us to ride together. I’m not going to go to the gym on my lunch break when I have a partner so I got up early. Well, we’re short staffed for some reason so I may not have needed to get up so dang early. Oh, well. At least I got my workout done for the day.
I would suggest 1-armed DB power cleans and push press for a unilateral movement. When I do that fairly heavy it puts me off-center and the dip/push part is mostly with the opposite side leg, so it’s also good asymmetrical core work, and you repeat with the other side so you stay even over all. You won’t be going nearly as heavy as you would with power cleans, but it’s still a great movement. I was doing some of those last year I think, when I was considering doing a competition that had circus dumbbells, and it was surprising how challenging it was.
For the time being I’ll stick with deadlifts (maybe/hopefully), pull throughs, leg curls, and cable RDL’s. Deadlifts might get scrapped just because of the new split and my goals. I want to deadlift but I’m moving at a snails pace. I might reach 300 lbs for triples by the time I have shoulder surgery. It might not really be worth it to continue with that exercise. It’s not that I don’t like it (I love it), but I might get more out of swapping it out for one of my rehab exercises. I’m not exactly getting sore glutes or hamstrings from deads right now.
Now that I’ve drifted over to Best Damn and a push/pull split, I’m having to pick exercises that give me the most bang for my training buck. The number of exercises I do in a week has decreased. I need to keep my workouts to 45 minutes or less and that’s tough because I want to add a bunch of stuff.
For example, a typical back session would include pull ups, a row, reverse fly’s, Wendler Rows, and curls. Reverse fly’s is sometimes two exercises - regular and then the rear delt emphasis. That’s at least five back exercises in a session. Add deadlifts or power cleans and now I’m at seven total with the biceps. Well, with Best Damn I’m supposed to pick four exercises. I’ve already extended it to five exercises per session.
I need to trust the program and just make sure to push myself. I wanted to do reverse fly’s Monday and yesterday but I didn’t pick them for the workouts. Well, wouldn’t you know it, my rear delts are smoked from Wendler Rows. That exercise just keeps proving to be better and better. Rear delts and traps in one movement?!? That’s a keeper and it’s tough to not do it every day.
Well, so far today has been a good day at work. We finally caught a thief!!! Low life was trying to break in to machines at the car wash to steal the change. The owner has a camera hidden and was able to see him and call us.
The first officer on scene contacted him alone. I arrived a moment later and the bad guy was trying to get away. I grabbed his leg to do a takedown and he pretty much gave up. He fell down; he bled a little; all was well.
I was able to do some digging and find out that the drill he was using was stolen in a burglary over the weekend. My co-worker is headed back to the jail to talk to him about that now (took a bit to piece things together).
I really enjoy that part of the job - follow up that leads to charges. The first officer on scene is the Community Policing officer for my beat. He chose to take that call because he was close and we’ve had problems with theft at that location. That’s the job I have been trying to get for two years. Hopefully I can make it happen by the end of this year.
So, today has been a good day. A little bit of use of force and hopefully some burglary charges from my follow up.
Thanks for making the world a little better man. Noble work. I always go out of my way to say hello, and smile with a nod. You guys are just not respected like you should be.
I’m at a green light waiting to turn left in my patrol Tahoe. As I get an opening, I’m prevented from going because a fat troll is crossing the street even though the signal says DON’T WALK.
I have my window down and say “Why are you crossing the road? It says don’t walk.”
She responds with “It says go fuck yourself!”
The only thing that prevented me from stopping to deal with her was the fact that it would’ve been out of personal spite. I don’t take police action based on my emotions so I just kept going. She wasn’t worth my time. I had better things to do - like go to the bathroom and get a refill of water.
Yeah, and if she keeps that attitude towards cops, I’m sure it will lead her to the wrong side of legal situations eventually. She’ll get hers. I really don’t think you can teach respect to a person like that.
Ohh boy If she had met me on a bad day, she’d been in trouble
Yeah the world is strange.
I really really hope you’ll get that community Policing job later this year, I’d opt for that over the gym job you’ve talked about.
That might end up being the case. I’m not 100% committed to changing careers. I’m going to keep trying to move here and maybe I’ll stumble into something I actually enjoy.
One of the smily-est people people I’ve ever met was a 6’6" Italian cop who was built like a lean O-lineman. I was really glad not to be a criminal around him.
PULL UPS (REST/PAUSE)
BW x 6, 6, 8-2-1 Still holding for a 1 count at the top. Performance fell off the table today LOL
CABLE ROW (mTor)
120 x 8
130 x 8
140 x 10 + 20 sec stretch I kind of felt like this was lacking in terms of wearing me out in the right way. It was tough to go a 5 sec eccentric. This just might not be a good exercise or mTor reps.
SL CABLE RDL (REHAB)
60 x 10 ea x 4 sets It’s harder to balance on my “good” leg when I do these.
BENT OVER REV FLY (SUPPOSED TO BE 21S)
20 x 10F/5T/10B
20 x 7F/10B
20 x 6F/15B So for some reason these are harder than the standing version I do on the adjustable cable columns. The work gym has awesome cables but no set up to have two together at my preferred height. I can stand between the two sides (below the pull up bars) and use the high cable pulleys or the low ones. I was unable to do the top half reps after the full reps so I scrapped them and basically did full reps to failure followed by partials to failure. Good enough - rear delts were fatigued properly. Actually, they’re still fatigued from Wendler Rows on Wednesday.
SA REV CABLE CURL 21s
30 x 10F/10T/10B Both elbows were grinding and I had pain so I switched to regular curls.
40 x 10F/10T/10B + 26 sec iso hold on incline bench with 40’s
I think rows/pulldowns are tough because there are so many muscle groups working synergistically it’s hard to really use that technique properly. Something like myo-reps, rest/pause, dropsets seems to be the better option.
My sample size is like, 1 or 2 experiences so it’s not much haha. But it always felt like I was hitting the wrong muscles trying to move the weight slowly on those lifts.
How’s the body doing? I’ve been skimming logs a lot recently and miss details as a result.
Yeah, this is just trial and error on my part. I think I’ll save the mTor reps for straight arm pull downs or J rope pulls (if you haven’t tried those then I highly recommend them - they get your middle traps like nothing else). Recently I started holding the contraction on pull ups and cable rows. It activates muscles that I haven’t felt on rows in the past. I think moving smoothly through the reps allows the little muscles to slack off. But if you pause, then the rhomboids and middle traps have to fire to keep the weight from moving. Lower your working weights and try it.
After a few sets of paused reps, I started doing a full ROM including thoracic movement. I’m not sure if you saw the Shirley Rows in @losthog’s log but I’ve combined that with the full row and basically have been able to get my entire back to work as one unit - and it feels great!
I don’t know why I wanted to change that with mTor reps. I think I’ll switch to rest/pause or myo reps with that exercise next time. I’m just trying to sprinkle a nice variety of mTor, rest/pause, drop sets, myo reps, and other partial reps into my training.
I’m hanging in there. The new PT is going well. Yesterday marked three weeks with her and according to my insurance we had to do an evaluation to check my progress. I’ve improved but I still have a long ways to go. She uses a hand held muscle tester to check different movements. For example, on seated hip flexion (hip and knee at 90 degrees, pull up with my knee while she pushes down) my left hip is at like 52 lbs and she wants me at 60 lbs. My right leg was at 62 lbs.
We’re striving for balance and I have 10 lb gaps on some movements and others are down to 3 lbs.
I think the J pulls would work well with a band. The tougher part of the movement is when your arms are straight so the band would make it tougher as you got to stronger positions. Give it a shot!
