Zero’d 530 the last 2 times I tried so I was very pleased to get this so easily.
Had to head out to Costco before they closed so I called it a night here, and then this morning I hit 15 ABCs with the 50 lb kettlebells. My elbows have been feeling a little raw lately and my back was sore, but they didn’t cause any pain.
I figured out what’s been causing pain in my left forearm: leaning for long periods of time on my standing desk at work. Glad to have identified that.
@simo74 Hahaha the funny thing is I brought the standing desk in to alleviate back problems I get from sitting too long. And while it’s helped with that, it ended up causing other issues. It’s an easy fix not to lean too much on it, but the takeaway point is that staying still in any position for extended periods of time isn’t great for you.
At long last, got to spar yesterday. Up until my turn, everyone was paired with one other person, but I got called to the ring with 2 other opponents to rotate in and out with. Coach announced us as the “main event”, which I got a kick out of.
I started out going 2 rounds against someone I’ve sparred with before. He’s big and starts hot, but tends to slow down as time progresses. Right away I was landing jabs, but had some distancing trouble getting my right to land solidly. About 40 seconds in his groin guard came undone and I had to wait for his coach to reapply it. When we resumed, my right hand started landing a lot more, and I began to dig in a lot of body shots, more than I’ve ever landed in sparring. I felt him grunt when I landed a straight right to his stomach.
One left hook that he landed hit the back of my head and almost spun me around from throwing me off-balance but I managed to stop myself and using the momentum immediately recoiled with a rebounding straight right.
After round 2 was over, the coach announced I’m going to do 4 rounds instead of the usual 3 and he had the other boxer tag-in to face me. That felt really cool to get special treatment.
The second opponent for rounds 3 and 4 was a jacked dude who hit hard to the body but lightly and slow to the head. I immediately noticed that he wasn’t going as hard as the first opponent so I eased up on the power of my head shots, but still threw hard to the body. I don’t recall him landing a single punch to my face, but he landed some powerful body shots. Unfortunately, equipment malfunction plagued him too and twice we had to stop so he could have his coach reclasp his headgear.
Pros and cons of my performance:
Landed more body shots than ever.
Defense was the best it’s ever been. Blocked numerous head and body shots. Didn’t fall into the old rookie trap of trying to parry everything to the point that I end up reaching OUT to try and catch punches, leaving my defense a mess and tiring me out.
Managed to balance aggression with staying relaxed.
Feet are too jumpy sometimes, throwing me off balance.
Left hook still falls short of its target a lot of the time.
Should initiate in-fighting more for practice when I go up against the tall dude who wasn’t here this time.
Boxing Wednesday was a great workout. Majority of the class was drilling various partner combos with one person attacking and the other defending the whole round rather than trading off every combo. Ended with some light dumbbell work that torched the shoulders.
Thursday was a bench workout that I feel was impacted by the shoulder-intense dumbbell exercises from the day before, but my training maxes are light enough to more than account for that.
Bench press
230 x 5
260 x 5
290 x 3
Low incline bench
205 x 4 x 8
Super-set with dumbbell rows: 115s x 3 x 8, 1x10
Overhead tricep extensions
35s x 2 x 11, 9
Super-set with keg curls: 150 x 2 x 12
Sandbag carry: 200 lbs x 1 minute
Inner elbows are feeling tender but no real pain yet, if that makes sense. I’ll approach barbell squats cautiously this week and switch to the curved Yukon bar if warm-ups don’t feel good.
About an hour after this workout concluded, I noticed the right side of my back was hurting and it ended up getting worse in my sleep going into the next day, although it’s not that bad and I’ll still be able to make it to boxing today after work. I believe I wasn’t bracing properly when carrying the sandbag. I was a bit tired at that point and it’s been a minute since I’ve done sandbag carries. Lesson (re)learned, just glad I’m still mobile.
Squats (low bar)
360 x 5
405 x 3
450 x 1
(High bar) Drop-down to 405x2, 365x3, 315x8, 225x8, 135x8
Reverse-hyper leg curls
6 plates x 3 x 12
Continuing to climb back up. It’s been interesting getting the hang of back squats again after spending most of this year front squatting. The weight has been feeling heavy, but as I squat out of the hole I realize the strength is definitely there to stand back up and it’s not so heavy after all. I’m squatting slower than I used to, like Dave Tate’s human crane analogy when talking about “strong” lifters vs “explosive” lifters.
Got a 3-day streak to record here. I started my deload on Friday, nixing the planned deadlift session because my back wasn’t feeling too hot. The next day, it was feeling better so I gave myself permission to hit things out of order and do deadlifts.
Friday deload:
Bench press
135 x 5
155 x 5
185 x 5
Incline dumbbell press
80s x 4 x 10
Super-set with seated reverse hyper rows: 6 plates x 3 x 10
Keg curls
150 x 20
Saturday:
Deadlifts
445 x 5
505 x 3
565 x 1
Dumbbell split-squats
80s x 3 x 8
Felt strong. Most I’ve deadlifted in quite awhile.
Sunday:
3.02 mile run in 29:28. The first mile was 7:23, a significant improvement over the 8 minutes I’ve been averaging for a decade now. Quads started to cramp due to the split-squats I’d done yesterday but never progressed to the point of being debilitating.
My sister is visiting from out of town and brought her 2 dogs over. They started barking and growling at my cat so she’s keeping them in a separated room, but I plan on taking them out for a walk when I get home from work and trying to gradually introduce them to one another. My cat is a gangster; rather than run away, he followed them upstairs with his tail puffed out and then waited behind their door to try and get in, unintimidated by their noise.
Did a 5 minute round on the heavy bag, immediately followed by 3 hill sprints, followed by another 5 minute bag round.
I have boxing tonight at the gym and Fridays are often pretty intense with push-ups. Will see how my shoulders feel about doing a bench press workout tomorrow.
Also, video of my 565 deadlift from the weekend. My back had been feeling crummy in the days leading up to this so I told myself I’d stop as soon as things started to feel off, but everything felt great.
Shoulders and chest were a little sore from an intense boxing session yesterday evening (nothing too technical to review, just a lot of calisthenics like push-ups and dragon walks mixed with hitting the heavy bag), but still made gains compared to last cycle thanks to eating more food.
Called it a night there. I have sparring today and couldn’t risk my back pain regressing to what it was last week, nor do I want to get sore from doing drop-sets.
Felt light. Night and day difference from the last several weeks of squatting now that I’ve gotten a little bigger. Much more stable during the walkout and descent. I look forward to pushing myself on the reps next time. My abs are blurrier but waist is still trim, and though this isn’t consistent with my usual pre-breakfast morning weigh-in, the scale read 200 lbs the other day.
I had a good night of sleep up until 5am. I’ve been closing my bedroom door due to my sister and her dogs visiting to keep out the noise, so my cat ended up peeing in my bed. 100% my fault, as he had no way of going out to do his business and I was naive just because he usually sleeps through the night with me and goes pee in the morning. After putting out the soiled sheets and flipping my mattress over, I managed to get another 30 minutes of sleep before my alarm, but I woke-up with a bit of a headache. Not great circumstances on sparring day, but it won’t hold me back. And if piss and vinegar make for aggressive energy, I’ve already got the piss part taken care of.
Sorry for the trouble, though. We’ve had mishaps like that with our cat, and mostly I just feel bad for her—that can’t be comfortable for her, and in the end, it’s no one’s fault but ours!
@SvenG For sure, just have to laugh it off. He likes to dig under blankets and sleep against people’s legs so I thought he was doing that when I felt him pawing the bed, but he was instead trying to bury and cover his pee like he does with pine litter pellets. Bless the little dude for trying to be clean.
Before sparring yesterday, I did something I’ve never done before and told my partner “I’d like to keep it technical if you don’t mind.” He agreed, and when we got to talking, we both had injuries we were recovering from - back for me, knee for him. He’s the biggest guy at the gym and usually hits very hard. I got messed up the first time we went at it (had pain swallowing for a week from getting uppercut) and had much more success trading with him the time after, to the point where he got gassed and I was landing overhand rights in succession, but I really wanted to focus on practicing this time around instead of blasting each other.
We ended up going TOO light for my liking, with him barely tapping me. I haven’t sparred light in a long time and he’s my only sparring partner with a longer reach, so I fell back into my old problem of not fully extending my punches in an effort to not hit hard and almost everything fell short while he kept touching me. He did a good job of maintaining distance while I chased him when usually I’m the one outfighting with the vast majority of people.
My cornerman told me stop twisting my head to slip, and to block with a higher guard instead. I’ve been told by another coach not to hold my hands up so high when I was employing a high guard against this guy, and in truth, this time I’d been watching some Canelo fights recently and had the way he leans back in my mind. I need to employ a better balance of blocking and dodging instead of getting stuck in one or another.
It was frustrating to leave the ring feeling like I did poorly but without the satisfaction of being tired like during hard sparring, so I was left wanting more rounds. Stuck around and worked the heavy bag afterwards in the hopes that the coach might call me up again, but no dice. They allow just enough sign-ups to fill the hour.
Good learning experience, all things considered. Came home and then did 4 hill sprints followed by a cooldown jog.
Overhead press
135 x 5
155 x 5
170 x 6
135 x 10
145 x 2 x 10
Last 4 sets super-set with chin-ups
Bw x 10
35 x 3 x 10
Keg curls
150 x 22
Thursday:
20 ABCs with 50 lb kettlebells in 5:36
5 minutes of burpee chin-ups
My schedule has been nutty this week. A friend had his car break down so he asked if I could drive him to a night class after work on Wednesday. When I got home an hour and a half later than normal due to traffic I scarfed down two Costco pizza slices and then hit the press workout 20 minutes later but felt like crap. Nausea came from the obvious source, but I also had a headache and felt sluggish and weak. Still, since my weight is on an upward trend I performed well with a top-set roughly equivalent to 165x7 last month but there was not enough time or gas for BBB, so I upped the weight to 145 and lowered the assistance press work to 3 sets.
Thursday was an errand evening with some time-sensitive things to take care of and I was all too happy to embrace an ABC workout with such limited time. Ever since I once heard Dan John describe ABCs on his podcast as being 2 squats I’ve been mixing up in my head what the original prescription was, so I did 2 squats up until rep 12 (which was the first rest-pause). Did a quick YouTube check at that point and reps 13-20 were 3 squats as intended. Usually, the press portion is not the tough part of ABCs but after boxing on Tuesday (mostly the heavy bag rounds after sparring) followed by a press workout on Wednesday, my shoulders felt more tired than usual and I actually had to grind out one rep with my left arm near the end.
Have also been bringing back rope-skipping in the morning before work, as it increases my appetite for my pre-work eggs. Did a 3 minute round yesterday and a 5 minute round this morning, with crunches following both.
Got a birthday dinner for my sister 2 hours away to attend this evening after work. Saturday should be the start of a less hectic schedule.
The next morning before work:
5 minute jump-rope round
55 crunches
First attempt at 515 didn’t even break the bar off the ground. Went outside to meditate for a few minutes, came back, and crushed it after remembering to start with leg drive before the hinge.
Weekend was a couple of days of good food. Went to my sister’s birthday dinner on Friday and had a surf and turf dinner at a Japanese restaurant. On Saturday I ended up having an unplanned date night where we saw the new Tron and then spontaneously hit up an old-school Italian restaurant next door for beef ravioli and pizza.
@SvenG Thanks brother! Sometimes we just need a quick mental reset.
Went on a 1.5 mile jog Tuesday evening on top of my daily 5 min jump-rope round in the morning. Yesterday evening:
Bench press
215 x 5
247.5 x 5
280 x 6
Low incline bench press
205 x 10, 10, 8, 7, 7
Super-set with lying bilateral dumbbell rows
115s x 5 x 8
Giant sets:
Dumbbell incline skullcrushers: 50s x 6, 35s x 9
Dumbbell incline chest flyes: 50s x 8, 35s x 9
Dumbbell curls: 50s x 10, 10
Notable gains on bench. Creeping toward 5 sets of 10 on the incline. Forgot how much harder dumbbell rows are when performed bilaterally.
I will always love training this way, just concentrating on one region for an hour and hammering it to the point where it’s hard to hold my arms up with light dumbbells by the end, roleplaying a bodybuilder while I picture Arnold or Dorian in my mind. Lonnie Lowery once shared the same sentiment on an Iron Radio podcast, how having a body-part theme each session is what really captivates his interest.
Friday night boxing was a tough calisthenics workout mixed with bagwork. Partnered up at the end to throw combos and the only person available for me was a very short girl so I got some practice weaving and crouching low to the ground.
Squats
340 x 3
390 x 3
440 x 3
Strip-sets of 405x4, 315x10, 225x10, 135x10
Reverse hyper single leg curls
4 plates x 20, 20
Good workout, feeling stronger. Had more reps of 440 in me but my back hasn’t been feeling hot and heavy back squats even being doable was a question in my mind, but I’m feeling no worse for wear afterwards.
