Warm-Up
150 jump rope
PT stretches
Cossack Squats x a whopping 5 each leg
Maybe something else… I don’t remember.
Hang Power Clean + 18" Box Jumps
165 x 2 + 4 jumps
165 x 2 + 4 jumps
185 x 2 + 4 jumps
185 x 2 + 4 jumps
185 x 2 + 4 jumps
Trap Bar Deadlift (High Handles)
245 x 5
285 x 5
320 x 5
245 x 5 x 3 sets (FSL) So I’ve always kind of avoided this, but my quads seem to be lacking and this is more quad dominant and better for jump performance in every way compared to conventional deadlifts. I low bar squat which is basically a hinge, so why not high handle trap deadlift? Also, it turns out I suck at this and regular deads would have been much easier with these weights. Combine all those reasons and I’m going to run this for a bit. And to add another reason, I’ve seen some of you mention how your lumbar back issues improved by switching to these, so why not?
RFESS Skipped. FSL deads are optional but I decided to do those and make these optional instead. I’m hoping to play basketball again Saturday so figured a little less leg fatigue might be good.
DB Crunch
50 x 10 x 2 sets with DB Side Bend
50 x 10 ea x 2 sets
Conditioning: 4 Rounds, 1 minute rest
Lateral Bound x 4 ea (speed skater jumps)
5-10-5 yard shuttle (2 running, two doing the side shuffle)
Lateral MB Toss x 5 ea Each round took about a minute so it took about 7 minutes. Plenty of room for growth here but once again, I feel good walking away.
It should also be noted that I specifically told ChatGPT that “I’m out of shape” so the machine figured that into things when spitting out ideas.
The high handle trap bar lift is the ultimate “dumb dumb” lift, ala Jim Wendler. Just perfect for blasting away and getting stronger. And give you are like 6’4, the starting height for the pull is STILL a good ROM.
Basketball Still terrible but I played all but one game again. I can’t even stretch it to say I was running by the end. My team had two other tall guys willing to post up so I didn’t run down the court. Lots of walking with the occasional burst to get somewhere.
I’m currently eating beef liver I cooked in the air fryer. Not awful but definitely better with a bit of BBQ sauce.
20" Box Jumps
BW x 5 x 4 sets with Bench
135 x 5
165 x 5
190 x 5
215 x 5 with Face Pull
50 x 12 x 3 sets
Bench FSL
165 x 5 x 5 with 20" Box Step-Downs
BW x 5 x 4 sets
Machine Row
220 x 10 x 3 sets with DB OHP
50 x 10 x 3 sets
OH Cable Ext
120 x 10
110 x 12 with Cable Curl
110 x 15, 10
Sled Pull
Tank M4 + 45 x 4 pulls just to keep the knees healthy
As you can see, everything was a superset because why not? Sundays at the gym are glorious because it’s a pretty thin crowd. It’s not often I can do bench AND use one of the cable stations. If I go during the evening rush then I can’t even get on a cable, let alone use it in a superset. Walked out of the gym feeling pretty great today.
Also woke up looking as lean as I can these days and weighing 233. I’ve been doing good with my dinners for the past four or five nights and keeping them high fat/protein and low carb. The exception is Friday where I ate fries and toffee flavored popcorn (Christmas gift), but I told myself that I was carb loading for basketball Saturday morning. Even if it didn’t work, they balanced out.
Warm-Up
Stuff. Deep squat hold, 10 Cossack squats, 10 lunges, a few jumps.
Squat
135 x 5
210 x 5
240 x 5
270 x 5
RFESS
50s x 8 ea FFESS
50s x 8 ea
BW x 15 ea
I’m smoked. My legs are sore and everything felt tough today. My heart rate was also up which is another sign of fatigue for me.
SGHP from Blocks
115 x 5
135 x 5
155 x 5
135 x 5
115 x 5 Wanted to move something fast.
Conditioning - 3 Rounds
Jump rope x 30 sec
18" Box Jumps x 4
Agility ladder down/back
Overhead MB Throw (like a wall ball but only a little leg drive instead of a full squat) Time: 8:00 (edited b/c I forgot I started my watch after the first 30 sec bout of jump rope)
Could’ve done another round but again, tired, and it’s a busy night for the family. My average heart rate for the pathetic conditioning was 149 bpm according to my Garmin watch. I got my son to his basketball game on time (5:45 start time, be here at 5:20) and my wife is taking our daughter to her music concert (7pm start time but has to be there at 6:15). I may need to take Mondays off in the future if the schedule allows. It’s no fun hitting squat day when you’re already worn out.
Rest day from lifting for the most part. I did some stuff with bands during class. My son wants to practice shooting after school so we’re going to the Y when the time comes. I’m not lifting so I’m trying the coffee fast today but I had some failures. 1) I woke up hungry (bad start). 2) I think I’m depleted because I’m exhausted despite sleeping hard last night. I just had a protein shake and that helped a bit. I think I’m going to get after some pasta when I get home from the Y to refuel before I head to my second job as security for high school basketball.
Bodyweight was 232 and change for the second day in a row which is another reason I think I could survive a refeed. That’s my lowest reading this year.
Bodyweight was 230.8 this morning even though I ate a large bowl of pasta, a chicken breast dipped in low fat sour cream (purchased before I saw all the new-to-me info on full fat products) for every bite, and a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats. I guess that wasn’t 2000 calories which is my goal for each day. I also feel like I looked flat in the mirror this morning. Guess I really WAS depleted yesterday.
Anyway, I get to eat lunch today (chicken breast, seasoned black beans, shredded extra sharp cheddar, and topped with low fat sour cream and guacamole). Training will be OHP day and I’m still debating the optional conditioning. I feel like the stuff I’ve done following deadlift and squat days is decent at getting my heart rate up and it has me work on some skills I usually ignore such as jumps and agility stuff. It’s not much, but better than not doing it at all. My ‘optional’ conditioning for upper body days is the sled or assault bike, but my quads are shot from FFESS. I’d like for my legs to recover a bit more before I train them again tomorrow and especially before I attempt to play basketball again Saturday.
I don’t know what this really is, but in my mind you are jumping on a legit pogo stick. This thought makes me smile. So I would appreciate it if you didn’t ruin it by telling me what it actually is.
Also, good work today.
I also wanted to come back to my log and share that it finally happened - I was eating dinner and got to the point where I didn’t want to eat anymore. I had three slices of extra sharp cheddar while I cooked 85/15 sirloin burger patties from Sam’s (the frozen hockey pucks). I eventually got to eat two patties with three eggs and what I’m guessing is about 6ish tablespoons of egg whites (two servings). My logging app, Lose It, says that meal was almost 1300 calories and I’m still a couple hundred under budget for the day. I saw some cottage cheese in the fridge a little bit ago…
(back to edit 90 minutes later…)
I ate the cottage cheese.
Warm-Up
I did a more “athletic” warm-up with 200 jump ropes (4 x 50), leg swings, hip circles, a PT stretch, and the agility ladder.
18" Box Jumps
Jump off 2 feet, land on one, then a depth jump to another box landing on the other leg x about 10
Jump over the 18" box and immediately jump over the next one upon landing. Stick the second landing.
Power Clean from Blocks
165 x 2, 2
185 x 2
205 x 2
205 x 0 (from the floor)
205 x 1 (from the hang) superset with Lateral Bounds
3 sets of 2 per leg Band Resisted Squat Jumps
2 sets x 5 jumps
High Handle Trap Bar Deadlift
135 x 5
225 x 5
265 x 5
300 x 5
340 x 5
I can’t believe I bombed a rep of cleans at 205. Guess I’m fairly worn out so I pretty much called it a day there. Skipped the optional 3x5 FSL on deadlifts, too. The band resisted jumps felt good; not sure why they feel better than non-resisted squat jumps, but I like them. Hopefully I can recover a bit before basketball Saturday morning.
Mark your calendars for 2026! On this day, I dunked the ball in a live game. Yes, it was old people like myself who hurt all over and are slow and out of shape. But it still counts. I’m 41 years old and I’ll take it.
Played three games in a row and had to leave to get to my son’s game. I tracked it as generic ‘Cardio’ on my watch and burned 693 calories in 45 minutes. Not bad to average 15 minutes per game at our skill level.
It’s been a long day. I went from my basketball to my son’s game and then home for a bit where I never sat down. Church was next. We attended one service and stayed to volunteer for the next one. Finally got home around 6 and cooked several steaks on the stove and some liver in the air fryer. Steaks all turned out good because rare to medium rare is how you cook good meat! I think we had a flank steak, hanger steak, skirt steak, and filet steak. The filet is resting as I write this so I haven’t tried it yet…
Bottom left is liver. Top left is skirt steak. Top right is flank. Bottom right is hanger (not a lot to start with). And the middle and that chunk just to the left of it is the filet.
I also picked up some more liver for $5/lb along with a couple beef short ribs at our local store today. I wanted some brisket but I couldn’t do it at $8/lb for a full 20 lb cut or $13/lb for a partial half. Sam’s has half cuts for $6.18/lb so I might try that. It’s a sacrifice in terms of shopping local and what I assume is a humane way to raise beef to save money…
What an outstanding spread there! Concur on your cook temp. I always prefer rare, but medium rare will render the fats a bit more. Good to see that liver getting in the rotation too. I’m excited for your short ribs!
Maybe it’s the power of the human brain, but I know it’s a super food now, and that could be influencing my perception.. It has a distinct flavor but I kind of like it. I’ll eat a few bites of liver and then take a bite of steak to mix it up and then back to the liver.
I’m sorry to say I couldn’t pull the trigger on the pork kidney. I looked up how to prepare it and decided it wasn’t worth it.
I just have to throw the liver in the air fryer with a little salt and pepper. I can handle that kind of prep.
I’ll stick with the two racks of pork ribs for tomorrow. I’ll get to the short ribs later in the week.. It was nice if the meat store to sell smaller packs so I can do some trial and error before committing to a full rack.
Debating on going to the gym. I slept in and could stand to do a little schoolwork (my college class where I’m the student). My wife is currently out and about going to the store to get some food for the week and some things for the kiddos’ Valentine’s Day parties at school. Typing that made me think about my schedule this week and perhaps I will go train today…
Tuesday and Wednesday are parent/teacher conferences after school so I’m trapped from 3:30-7:00pm. We’re even missing my son’s basketball game Wednesday night. And then Thursday they make us sit there ALL DAY for the same thing. Over the 14 hours I’m supposed to be available, I’ll talk to the parents of maybe four or five students. What a waste of time. In the fall I got to speak with the parents of a student who had done zero work. I provided the missed work and guess what - he didn’t do it or any work after that. Another parent had a child who is in my weight training class and the only issue is that the kid was wearing jeans every day instead of dressing in athletic clothes as required by all PE classes. And then I had the mom of the ideal student stop by when I was gone for flag football practice. I left her a letter since she had signed up before I blocked off my schedule. Didn’t need to see her other than to say “Thanks for raising an awesome kid”. These things are such a waste of time.
So I guess I better train today and tomorrow since Tuesday and Wednesday are out. I can sprinkle in lifting with my classes, but I don’t like to do my usual warm-up or jumps. I just stick to the basic lifts in the program so I can still pay attention to the class.
On the nutrition front, I plan to fast most of the day and then go HAM on some pork ribs, meatballs, and possibly some BBQ Baked Beans and Mac n Cheese from one of the BBQ joints nearby (the beans and mac, not the meat). Brisket will have to wait. I don’t really need it with everything else we’ll have and it’s $21.99 per pound if I want to buy it from the restaurant. I’ll get one from Sam’s in the next week or so and smoke it myself.
I concluded dry January last night and had a few IPAs at home. I also tried out a full fat greek yogurt plus protein powder snack and it was pretty good. I could still taste the yogurt, but not too shabby. But my sweet tooth was activated so I chased that with a couple bowls of frozen fruit that I warmed up a bit in the microwave. Anyway, two things worth noting this morning - the beers were okay and I kind of felt like crap throughout the night (sleep wasn’t great). It’s been mentioned around here lately that people don’t realize how good you’re supposed to feel until you achieve it. Well, I think that’s where I’ve been with the absence of alcohol. I felt pretty good and the contrast of how I feel after a few beers is much more noticeable. I’m kind of happy about it; hopefully it’ll help me avoid the booze. The second thing worth noting is that I weighed 230 this morning which was surprisingly low considering what I consumed in the evening. I’ll take it!
I don’t know why but I decided to make bench day the first day of the workout week. To make that happen, I did the work sets for week 2 and then week 3 today.
Warm-Up
Stretches for hip flexors, adductors, and glutes
Cardio
Assault Bike 10 minutes
60 sec easy, 30 sec medium effort x 6 plus an extra 60 sec easy to hit 10 minutes
Prioritizing Back Health
Back Ext: BW x 10, 50 x 12 x 3 sets
Side Crunch: BW x 10, 20 x 10 x 3 sets
Lying Leg Raise + Flutter Kicks: 10+10 x 3 sets
Bench Week 2
175 x 5
200 x 5
225 x 5 Week 3
190 x 5
215 x 5
240 x 5
Looked at my watch and saw it was time to leave to pick up my daughter from softball practice so rushed some rows.
Seated Cable Row 30 rest between each bout
240 x 9, 3
200 x 8, 5
Warm-Up
1 mile on the assault bike, leg swings, hip circles, goblet squats, Cossack squats, and a hip flexor stretch.
20 Box Jumps
2 x 10 jump off 2 feet, land on 1
Squat
135 x 5
185 x 5
225 x 5
255 x 5
285 x 5
Trap Bar Deadlift (high handle)
285 x 5 x 3 sets Decided to do the optional FSL on the alternate day, so I might do squats after deads later in the week.
Seated Leg Curl
130 x 20
145 x 18
FFESS
BW x 15 ea x 2 sets
Felt like I did more. Writing it out seems to diminish it. I thought about conditioning but the sled was being used, my legs were plenty tired, and I’m kind of tired of having fatigued legs. Maybe they’ll recover over the next two days.
I’m finishing my Masters in Education. I didn’t initially go to college to be a teacher. I wanted to be a college strength coach so I have a B.A. in Exercise Science. That’s also where I met my wife while she was getting the same degree. We thought we were going to be college coaches (her on the track and me in the weight room), but soon after graduation we realized the average person doing those things didn’t make much money and didn’t have families (or were divorced because of the job). She went back to get a second Bachelor’s in Physical Education to teach way before me.
I finally found an online Transition to Teaching program that allowed me to teach and go to school at the same time. I finished it in two years and it has/had four classes remaining to finish the Master’s Degree. I’m currently taking a class on Curriculum and Evaluation in PK-12. I’ll take my final class during the second session of the semester and it’s called Educational Leadership. I really didn’t want to finish because I’m not really learning anything I can apply to my classes. But it will move me over another column on our pay scale and should pay for itself in a couple years.
