Overhead press
140 x 3
160 x 3
180 x 5
Last set super-set with 10 chin-ups
137.5 x 10, 10, 10, 10, 9
Super-set with weighted chin-ups
30 x 5 x 10
Giant sets
Dips: 2 x 10
Keg curls: 150 x 20, 15
Lateral raises: 15 x 15, 10
Steady progress with every session. Calorie intake is up, but carbs are low in the morning at work and late at night. I’m due for a weigh-in one of these mornings. Feels like I’m around 200 lbs.
Yesterday: 3.20 mile jog in 37.50. This morning was another 5 minute jump-rope round followed by 60 crunches.
20 ABCs with 50 lb kettlebells in 6:38
5 minutes of burpee chins
5 minute round on the heavy bag
Did 10 ABCs without a rest pause, followed by 5, 3, then 2. Wasn’t pushing the reps or pace because of my back, which held up but has been in more pain on the lower right-side than usual lately. Burpee chins felt very tonic for my back and I woke-up the next day feeling good, while yesterday there was morning pain.
Remembered this time to actually do 3 squats instead of just 2.
Boxing was a good technical session yesterday. Rotated through partners 3 times so got a good mix of people to work with. Simple combos were practiced while taking turns throwing, but my first partner was the big fella I spar so practicing my sense of distance with him was helpful.
Something I’m experiencing more in boxing than I did in Muay Thai was entering the mindless state where my body moves on its own without thinking. My accuracy with kicks was never great so I’d overthink things in Muay Thai, but in boxing I can just flow. Really experienced that with these partner combos, need to channel that in sparring. I still practice kicks and knees on the heavy bag at home, by the way; don’t want to lose my technique on them.
I think if I deadlifted heavy today, my back will pay for it tomorrow. I will do some manner of lower-body training, but probably not heavy deads. Belt squats and leg curls are what I’m thinking.
Got set-up to deadlift on Saturday, but I worked up to 495 and called it a day after 2 reps. Every rep felt like a slow grind and I had a headache from poor sleep. I’m pleased that I didn’t have any failed rep attempts, which used to plague me.
My brother was visiting from Seattle so I took him out to dinner with my girlfriend at our favorite local Italian spot. When I ordered the lobster fettuccine I was NOT expecting an entire lobster dwarfing the pasta portion, so that was an awesome surprise.
On Sunday I received a text from the sparring coach inviting me to spar one of his fighters on Thursday, so that just about made my day after going to sign-up for classes and seeing the announcement that there will again be no sparring on Tuesday.
Sunday after the press workout: 3 rounds, 3 minutes each of shadowboxing, using VR boxing sim Thrill of the Fight
4 hill sprints followed by a 15 minute jog afterwards.
Noticed my left shoulder was feeling a little achy.
Monday morning: 5 minute round of jump-rope
Evening: 8 minute jump-rope round
3.4 mile jog in 36:22
Tuesday morning: another 5 minute round of skipping rope before work. This is pretty much a daily ritual except on squat days.
Been enjoying mixing in the VR headset for training sometimes. It’s like enhanced shadowboxing.
21 ABCs with 50 lb kettlebells in 6:03
5 minute heavy bag round
5 minutes of burpee chins
5 minute heavy bag round
Improved my time and added a rep on the ABCs. First go was 11 reps unbroken. Left shoulder feels better and I experienced no pain while pressing or hitting the bag.
Burpee chins have been excellent for gently decompressing my back. It was feeling great throughout the day, but sleep made it feel stiff again. Pain in my right side has diminished, at least. I’ve opted not to back squat until after sparring on Thursday - can’t risk my back getting worse, and it’s been feeling better overall from the break.
I’ve got this, not done it for a while but my goodness me I’ve never sweated so much in my life, and no ones firing back at me for real, shows how insane boxing conditioning is, been enjoying watching songs classic fights on YouTube recently, absolutely love it.
Will there be an opportunity to get a competitive fight in for you at some point?
@T3hPwnisher Thanks for bringing that up. I was doing 60+ seconds daily a few months back, but fell out of the habit due to elbow and forearm pain. Now that it’s been getting better I’ve been thinking about starting it up as regular work again. I’ve been doing random hangs here and there about once a week to test how my forearm feels.
@alex_uk That game’s a workout for sure. As far as a fight goes, I’m trying to get more sparring in first. I’ve practiced a lot of defense in class and by myself, but I’m still making amateurish reactionary mistakes when someone is aggressive in sparring. Right now I’m signing up for every single sparring class and accepting every coach invitation, but that still puts me at sparring roughly 3 rounds a month. Sign-ups for the master’s boxing team will be available soon and I’m planning on jumping on that for a roadmap to more ring practice and a fight.
Speaking of which, sparring yesterday was undeniably a fun one, but a bit frustrating in that I once again started out too nice. I’ve sparred this guy before and he tends to go VERY light, to the point that I had to recalibrate my power because I’d just got done doing hard rounds with someone else. This time, it started out that way but he soon switched to harder shots that caught me by surprise. A few times my defense fell apart when he flurried as I fell back into that dumb habit of trying to parry multiple punches, but because his guard was always low, I caught him with a lot of jabs, crosses, and hooks as he was rushing in. We both ate a lot of shots to deliver our own.
My corner coach was the uncle of my previous Muay Thai coach so that was awesome. He advised between rounds to get low and dig to the body because his elbows tend to flare out. I ended up catching him with some hard body shots at the start of round 3. After taking a few of these he surged forward aggressively, some of which I blocked and others that I ate, but he slowed down a lot after this. I heard his corner coach yell out that the round is almost over and to make things count, but he didn’t really come alive after that early round flurry while I ended by peppering him with 1-2s.
My cardio was awesome. Didn’t get tired and wanted to go more rounds. I also procured this shot of me throwing a jab.
Close-grip bench press: 225 x 10, 10, 10, 10, 9
Super-set with dumbbell rows: 115s x 5 x 10
Incline chest flyes: 35s x 12, 50s x 10, 35s x 10
Super-set with alternating dumbbell curls: 50s x 20, 50s x 16, 35s x 20
I could have sworn I already did this workout and hit 290x3, but turns out that was last month. Felt like I had a 5th rep of 295 in me, but Jim Wendler advises not going all-out on the top sets when doing Boring But Big.
Halloween last night was as good as a low-key night could be. I had a dentist at 9:00 a.m. this morning so my girlfriend and I stayed in and watched Halloween episodes of King of the Hill, Simpsons, and The Office. King of the Hill won. We even managed to squeeze in a little roleplaying game time before bed with Champions of Norrath for PS2.
Squats
365 x 5
415 x 3
465 x 1
Drop-down to 405x5, 315x8, 225x10, 135x10
Reverse hyper leg curls
6 plates x 20, 20
I’d been putting this squat day off to let my back recover and it’s been feeling excellent the past several days. Unfortunately this still took its toll. The 465 squat itself felt incredibly light and everything else felt fine until the last set of leg curls, funnily enough, and even then it was faint pain. No problem, I figured; I’m done now anyways. But as the night wore on, my back slowly began to feel worse and worse. Same problem spot that’s been getting my attention lately: lower right side.
While recently reviewing my training log, I noticed that my back tends to like the softer side of my reversable mattress more when it’s in pain. Sure enough, I flipped it to the soft side and when I woke-up to use the restroom, my back didn’t hurt at first. Same deal in the morning. Eventually, back pain set in again, but that’s a promising confirmation considering that waking-up is typically very painful after a back injury.
I have a scheduled deload coming up, and I will almost certainly replace the heavy deadlift day this week with something lighter. I also have belt squats in my arsenal for when it’s time to lift heavy.
Jump roped for 5 minutes yesterday morning and did a good amount of walking rest of the day. 10 minute walk after lunch at work and then a 45 minute evening walk after work. Back is feeling a little better and boxing is still on for this afternoon. Will wear my Cerberus soft belt for support just in case we do a drill with a lot of ducking.
Got a lot to catch up on. Started my deload over the weekend.
Friday:
Overhead press
95 x 5
115 x 5
135 x 5
115 x 4 x 10
Super-set with chin-ups: 4 x 10
Keg curls: 150 x 20
Saturday night: 3 mile jog followed by a 20 minute walk.
Sunday, after a 5 min morning jump-rope round and breakfast:
Dumbbell Romanian deadlifts:
125s x 3 x 10
Super-set with wide-grip chin-ups: 3 x 8
Walking kettlebell lunges
50s x 3 x 16
Monday morning before work, another 5 minute jump-rope round. Evening was home boxing training:
8 minute jump-rope round
3 rounds, 5 minutes each on the heavy bag
20 minute jog
Tuesday evening was a combined squat and bench deload:
Squat
225 x 5
245 x 5
295 x 5
Bench press
135 x 5
165 x 5
200 x 5
Crazy bells bench press
145 x 4 x 10
Super-set with lying dumbbell rows: 80s x 4 x 10
Really got a lot out of boxing yesterday. After the standard 3 jump-rope rounds of 3 minutes, I used the mirror during shadowboxing to practice keeping a more exaggerated shell after watching an online tutorial and noticing during sparring that I tended to stay too upright when in-fighting. I’m still getting the hang of boxing real close instead of only relying on reach and assuming I’ll have that advantage over everyone I face.
Fittingly, I partnered up after with the big dude who made me want to get better at close-range combat in the first place. Practiced countering the jab with 1-2s and other simple combos that started with a left hook. After we took turns jabbing and countering, we each did a round of non-stop 1-2s rotated with non-stop upper-cuts in 30 seconds intervals.
We changed partners after this entire medley and my second partner was skilled to the point that we were both a blur when it came to the non-stop 1-2s/upper-cut rounds and our coach came by to compliment us. At one point my red gloves were flashing over his black ones and it looked downright psychedelic, like a kaleidoscope of leather. After awhile of being in a rhythm like this you have to make sure you don’t let yourself start thinking, thereby losing the flow.
Back has been feeling excellent, but I don’t want to squander that. This weekend I’m scheduled for a heavy deadlift session and I’ll be very careful about that to experiment what I can handle. After deadlifts, instead of split-squats I’ll either do belt squats or I might just walk away and do the accessory exercises later in the day/the next day. Goal is to not wake-up in pain the next day.
Overhead press
135 x 5
155 x 5
175 x 6
140 x 10, 10, 10, 9, 8
Super-set with chin-ups
Bodyweight x 10
15 x 10
30 x 10, 10, 10
Giant sets: 3 sets each of skullcrushers, chest flyes, and dumbbell curls for 5-10 reps starting with 50 lb dumbbells and dropping to 35s when I could no longer hold my arms up.
Deadlifts
405 x 5
455 x 5
515 x 0, 0
Super-set with wide chin-ups: 2 x 10
30 second dead hang
First time in awhile that I’ve had to walk away after missing a deadlift rep, but I felt like I had no power today when trying to handle 515. However, this is also the first time in awhile that I’ve moved a decent amount of weight with my lower body and suffered no back pain afterwards, so my spirit was very high while cleaning up. I remember having crushed my last heavy squat workout but back pain had set in before I started gingerly putting the plates away and it was a lame feeling seeing the loaded bar I had just lifted 30 minutes earlier and knowing I couldn’t do that anymore. It was a much more energetic, positive clean-up session here.
I’m thinking it’d be a good idea to bring back power cleans before deadlifts again. They really primed me to break the bar off the ground and I had one of my most consistent deadlift runs while including them.
Bad and good news about boxing. I tried to sign-up for Tuesday sparring over the weekend, but the class was already full. Our gym is moving across the street to a bigger building in January, though, so hopefully class capacity will be bigger and sparring will be expanded.
Was short on time, so did this with minimal warm-up and no knee sleeves. Legs had gas for more but I stopped when my back got tired to avoid pain, which is a top priority with lower body sessions now.
Sleep has been good the last 2 days, yet I’ve been feeling more tired than normal during the day. Nothing to be alarmed about but something to monitor. Caffeine intake hasn’t changed and I’ve been taking vitamin D as usual.
Didn’t partner up like usual yesterday at boxing. Instead, after skipping rope and shadowboxing, we did footwork drills using rope ladders, 2 rounds on the heavy bag, and then an easy circuit of various exercises like goblet squats, push-ups, medicine ball throws, and a few others. Ended with ab work and stretches.
The ab exercises regressed my back a little, as I woke-up with the left side feeling pain, although nothing debilitating. It’s anything that has me holding my legs low to the ground that treats me the worst, like flutter kicks and lying Russian twists.
Close-grip bench press
230 x 3 x 8
Super-set with lying dumbbell rows: 115s x 3 x 8
Spider plate curls: 45 x 15, 12
Super-set with dumbbell flyes: 50s x 10, 10
Decent session. Not much of an increase from last month, but I’ve also been undereating and have maintained a bodyweight of around 200 lbs. I can eat more in the mornings to remedy this. At work, I haven’t been eating any carbs until 1pm except for a handful of almonds to go with my egg + bone broth mugs, which is just unprecedented for me during a mass gain phase.
I’ve done spider curls while lying chest-down on a bench with dumbbells before, but using a weight plate really put some incredible tenson on the biceps with such a light load. Similar feeling to preacher curls. Started out easy but by rep 10 my biceps were on fire.
Haven’t been taking protein powder much lately. Had a couple nights this week where I made a casein shake before bed but otherwise I’ve just been eating whole foods. Took advantage of a Black Friday deal to treat myself to Metabolic Drive, so I’m looking forward to protein puddings before bed again and chocolate shakes at work. Might get some Superfood on sale as well since my multivitamins are running low.
Also, this afternoon during my lunch break I walked to the chin-up bars on the trail near my work and did a 1 minute dead hang. I like this set-up because the bar is high so I can hang with my legs fully extended, which feels great on my back (no pain today, by the way). Also did my usual 5 minute jump-rope in the morning after waking-up.
Squats (low bar)
325 x 5
375 x 5
420 x 5
315 x 17 (high bar)
Walked away after this, and there was an extended rest period between 420 and the set of 315 to allow my back to decompress and not slam it with too much weight in a short period of time. It worked: I walked away with no pain. Was beginning to forget what that’s like.
Pleased with how light 420 felt.
Did a massive Costco haul last night. They have ground bison back in stock so I bought several to store in my freezer.
