If the scale moves tomorrow then I’ll chalk it up to being in a deficit.
I’m more frustrated with how the lighter sets feel. I’m trying to move the bar fast but even 135 feels slow. Top sets definitely fall into the category of some days are good, some are meh, and some are bad. But warm-up sets shouldn’t consistently feel bad…
Despite the negative thoughts about training, I salvaged the day in terms of being productive. The wife and I just finished the first coat of Deckover on the deck. It’s about 16’ x 17’ in size and took a little under two hours. Deckover is like a thick paint for decks. It coats everything instead of penetrating it. Stain was a bit more expensive and claimed to half a 5 year life. We’ll see how long this lasts. It looks great already. The waiting time for it dry turned out to be a blessing anyway - we were in the shade! It felt like 20 deg F a few days ago but it’s up to 80 now. Shade was nice.
The scale did not drop today but I blame myself. It’s spring break and work like painting a deck requires a few beers.
And if I wasn’t busy enough, I’m now officially coaching flag football at the Y. I have three of my players from school signed up and told them I didn’t plan to coach but wouldn’t leave them hanging… And now I’m coaching. I really don’t want to. Practices Friday nights and games Sundays. Games overlap with softball games and practices for my daughter. My wife is also coaching track at school so she’s busy.
3.22.26 Bodybuild the Upper/Athlete the Lower C3 W2 D1
I played basketball yesterday and it went much better. I played with my older crowd and it definitely suits me. Not sure how many games we played but I think I got about 53 minutes of ‘game time’ according to my watch.
Bench Day
Warm-Up
Foam rolling and stretching stuff from my PT sessions.
18" Box Jumps
BW x 6 x 3 sets Decline Crunch
BW x 13 x 3 sets
Bench
135 x 5
185 x 5
210 x 5
235 x 5 FSL
185 x 8 x 4 sets
Hammer Strength Plate Loaded Row
270 x 10 (3 plates per side)
320 x 10, 10
Lateral Cable Raise
30 x 10, 10, 7+12 partials
Cable Curl
110? x 15, 12 OH Rope Ext
118? x 18, 16
Recumbent Bike
10 minutes
Cooked another brisket overnight and overcooked it a bit but it still turned out decent. I forgot it was smaller than the last one so my timing needed to change a bit. Oh, well. It just dried out one of the edges a bit. Everything else is good.
And now it’s time to do some homework while I sit at softball practice.
And so the chaos begins. It would have been nice if my college class was open last week. I know it was spring break for college, too, but I definitely had some time to work on things and now I’m pressed.
Wanted to do my deadlift workout today, but it waits til tomorrow. Ironically, my first assignment for my course is about good and bad leaders (the class title is Educational Leadership), and I had some thoughts about my boss today. Want to piss everyone off who works for you? Schedule a mandatory staff meeting the day we return from a week long break. That may not sound like much, but it’s beginning to be a pain in the rear. By contract, we can have one meeting per month outside of the normal school day and the Principal can schedule two extra meetings per year. Guess how many we have? All of them. Another contract topic is how much work time we get during report week. That week is usually seven or more days that we return before students. It’s a time where we should be organizing rooms and preparing our lessons. We get a minimum of three work days by contract. Guess how many my boss gives us? Three. Exactly three and not a minute more. The school I worked at for my first year of teaching had one staff meeting all year and most of our report week was time to work on our own. These are what I consider “may” issues as in the boss may do these things as opposed to “must” issues where it’s a requirement. Just because you can do something as a boss doesn’t mean you should. But I digress.
I still have a long ways to go on my homework, but hopefully I find some mental energy later this week. I couldn’t focus yesterday so I was worthless (I can’t read research studies unless I’m alert and locked in). Training this week will probably have to be completed at my school instead of the Y. There isn’t much time available for me with all the things we have going on. That kind of stinks because I’d like to use the sled and there are a couple machines I wanted to add to my squat day, but not this week.
Here’s to a long, busy week that doesn’t stop until next Monday…when it starts over. Time for bed (it’s 9pm).
High Handle TBDL
225 x 5
275 x 3 (supposed to be 270)
315 x 3 (supposed to be 310)
345 x 10 (supposed to b 350) As you can see, I was lazy loading the bar and opted for the big plates instead of messing with 5s and 2.5s. However, I ran out of room on the bar on the last set. I’ll have to use some of the metal plates next time I do this on that particular bar.
Hang Power Clean
195 x 3
205 x 3
215 x 3
Front Squat
95 x 10, 10
Sissy Squat
80 x 10 Heels elevated DB squat.*
Back Extension
50 x 10 + BW x 10 x 2 sets Crunch
10 lbs x 15
25 lbs x 10
C3 W2 D3 - OHP
Snuck in a little work during school so I could run errands this afternoon.
OHP
95 x 5
110 x 5
125 x 5
135 x 5 I was looking at Week 1’s weights and thought it felt a bit light. Double checked after the 125x5 and realized my mistake. So I guess if you count 95x5 s a warm-up I probably ended up going heavier than I should’ve.
Pull-Ups
BW x 7 x 4 sets
(lunch break… the following was done during the next class period.)
OHP FSL
105 x 8 x 4 sets Pull-Ups
BW x 7 x 4 sets
Aaaaaand that’s all. Jack Sh*t assistance rules the day. I was supposed to do 25-50 reps of pushing and pulling, but I didn’t. I lifted with 4th and 5th hour classes, but 6th and 7th hour classes are bigger and I needed to pay closer attention. I did 2x25 band face pulls yesterday so that has to help a little, right?
Nothing. First, I chose to skip my squat workout because my legs are still smoked from Tuesday. I feel like my quads are a problem on squats so those front squats and DB squats were carefully selected to target those pesky things. Aaaaand it worked. Squats today or tomorrow don’t work with being able to move well during basketball Saturday.
Reason number two to skip my workout is that my son left his baseball bat at practice last night. I drove to the fields immediately after school hoping to find it - no luck.
While driving to the field, my wife called to tell me she had a flat tire.. She was stranded about a mile and a half away from the track meet she trying to attend. She coaches but our cheapskate school district won’t pay for a sub so she doesn’t get to leave early. I picked her up and took her to the meet but she missed her jumpers’ events which is the only thing she coaches. I dropped her off and headed back to school to pick up our toddler from daycare and then picked up our oldest from her track practice. A bright note was hearing that my son’s coach has his bat during this phase of the day.
Brought everyone home and checked the fridge and freezer - not much. My oldest snagged the final leftover burger for her dinner. I scrambled - literally and figuratively - and cooked up a pound of breakfast sausage and scrambled a dozen eggs. Dinner was breakfast burritos and they were delicious.
Finished two burritos and headed back to my wife’s car where I was luckily able to get the spare off and replace the flat tire. Left it there for her (she said someone could drop her off after the meet).
Stopped off at the store on the way home to buy some popsicles and a bit of ice cream to bribe/reward the kids for a night where I leaned on them to be self sufficient. I’m also just now sitting down for the first time in over three hours so I’m making them do more chores than usual. The sight of ice cream made them more than willing.
Brought everyone home and checked the fridge and freezer - not much. My oldest snagged the final leftover burger for her dinner. I scrambled - literally and figuratively - and cooked up a pound of breakfast sausage and scrambled a dozen eggs. Dinner was breakfast burritos and they were delicious.
Finished two burritos and headed back to my wife’s car where I was luckily able to get the spare off and replace the flat tire. Left it there for her (she said someone could drop her off after the meet).
Stopped off at the store on the way home to buy some popsicles and a bit of ice cream to bribe/reward the kids for a night where I leaned on them to be self sufficient. I’m also just now sitting down for the first time in over three hours so I’m making them do more chores than usual. The sight of ice cream made them more than willing.
This really nailed it. Way to “get to yes” on a day that was hell bent on making you say “no”
The funny thing is that I had a lot going on but the timing of it worked out to where I was able to hit the pickup times for the kids and it wasn’t stressful. I felt like I was on a mission and just hitting checkpoints along the way. Everything had to get done in a specific order so it was easy to just do the next thing, and then the next.
Scrapping training turned out to help. Everything would have been different/harder if I received that call while I was at the gym.
On the training front, I’m strongly considering ending this anchor cycle and moving on to Strength & Conditioning or 1000% Awesome. The only real change is the PR sets on squat and deadlift… And I’m not enjoying those.
I’m struggling to recover from lifting and basketball so I either need to get in better shape or manage my volume better. Regardless of which template I go with, I’m thinking I’ll have one sled workout per week plus one basketball day and those will be my two hard conditioning days. I’ll add easy conditioning twice a week if I can make it work. There will definitely be one easy conditioning session per week.
Early basketball was okay. Burned some calories and wore my knees out. I’m not sure if I need to play more frequently or consider playing less in terms of knee health. They don’t hurt like jumpers knee; they just kind of ache and crunch a lot for a few days after I play. I didn’t play around the rim near as much today so maybe my recovery will be better this week.
Enjoying some coffee before we head off to the first of three softball games for the day.
I’m going to call this cycle 3 overall since I didn’t finish my anchor.
Main Work Superset
Bench
135 x 5
170 x 5
195 x 5
225 x 5
195 x 5 x 5 (FSL)
Front Squat
95 x 5
135 x 5
155 x 5 (too heavy)
115 x 5 x 3 sets (FSL)
As you can see, the sets don’t match. This template calls for 3x5 SSL on lower body lifts and 5x5 SSL on upper body lifts. I’m starting over on front squats. I have apparently trained myself to be very good at using my posterior chain because 155 x 5 was an RPE of about 9. There might have been a 6th rep, but I’m not sure. My quads have forgotten their purpose. I re reset the TM to 175 so my FSL work would be with 115. It moved like FSL should move on week one so I guess I’m in the ballpark now. On the plus side, bench continues to feel great.
**Hang Power Clean ** (not part of the superset)
185 x 2
195 x 2
205 x 2
215 x 2
Assistance Giant Set
Seated DB OHP
50s x 10 x 3 sets Pull-Ups
BW x 10 x 3 sets RFESS
BW x 10ea x 3 sets Back Extension
35 x 15 x 2 sets Hanging Alternating Knee Raise
15 ea x 2 sets Did this in lieu of the third set of back extensions and added a second set for good measure.
Entire workout took about an hour on the dot including some warm-up stuff. No conditioning today due to time and location. I trained at school because it’s the best way to do supersets and giant sets.
I’m not entirely following this template. I decided to swap out the 10 minute push-up and 10 minute pull-up tests for regular push/pull assistance. I’m also not going to run 1600m on non-lifting days. As I said in my previous post, I’m aiming for two hard conditioning sessions (basketball and sled) and two light sessions (still not sure..lighter sled?). I’m also debating whether or not that assistance giant set counts as light conditioning because it definitely felt like conditioning.
I’m planning to finish the day by taking my daughter to my son’s baseball practice so we can work on her softball skills. Her coaches aren’t coaching in my opinion. I feel like I’ve failed her so much. She’s 13 and has the experience she should have had at least three years ago. We didn’t know she wanted to play and now we’re on our third summer of playing on a weak and pathetic team that’s all about smiles and team posters and matching bows and no one seems to care that we only hit the ball in play three times per game. I never wanted to coach my own kids. They need to hear criticism/critique from someone else, but it’s not happening. I guess the best I can do is train her myself outside of practices because I’m not ready to take on being in charge of an entire time.
Well, my plans fell apart but we’ll try again tomorrow and Wednesday. My daughter is running track at her school and today was the first day she was able to catch the late bus home. Unfortunately it was later than we expected and she didn’t get home in time to go with me.
I still struggle with terminology. I played sports my entire childhood and didn’t really stop until the last few years. I used to play in basketball leagues regularly. This lifestyle taught me that conditioning means heavy breathing and usually includes running. I struggle to comprehend ‘light’ conditioning. I also struggle to differentiate myself from an actual athlete and often impose demands on myself that don’t actually fit my body (fitness level) or goals.
I do this all the time without ever having been an athlete in my entire life. It’s hard for me to remember sometimes that I’m a 47 year old woman who is just trying to stay active and grow older with some level of grace. In my head I’m 22 and there is no reason that I cannot achieve the goals of a woman that age.
I think it’s hard to think of walking as conditioning. It’s just what you do to get from place to place. Or it’s time for my husband and I to catch up with each other.
Hoped to take my son to my daughter’s softball practice so we could practice his baseball skills, but he wanted to stay home. He fell at school and scraped up his hand and that seemed to be bothering him so I didn’t push it. He’s a bit more sensitive than me and a bit of a Mama’s boy so I let him stay with her. He has his regular practice again tomorrow. Maybe he’ll join me for the next softball practice.
Trap Bar Deadlift
155 x 5
265 x 5
305 x 5
340 x 5
305 x 5 x 3 sets (SSL) superset with OHP
100 x 5
115 x 5
130 x 5
115 x 5 x 5 (SSL)
Hang Power Clean
195 x 2
205 x 2
215 x 2
225 x 2 This isn’t part of the program, but I can’t resist
Sled
Tank M4 L3
Pull 25m/Push 25m x 5 ea
Time: 9:55
Cable Curl
100 x 15, 15 Press Down
120 x 25
130 x 15
Cables were occupied so I hit the sled and went back for arms once I knew I had time. Finished in time to pick up my youngest from daycare and then drive back over to the school to get my oldest at 4:45. The school is less than a mile from the gym but the daycare has a hard cutoff of 5pm so I had to drive extra to make sure I was on time there.
Drove home, ate a snack, then took the two oldest to baseball practice. My son practiced and I took my daughter to another field to work on the fundamentals. We get so much more done together than she gets from her team practices…
