Once again, no time for a full session. Long story, not my choice. Will be back at it by next week I think.
Squat
5x165
5x190
8x215 - Got 8x220 in 17,2. Not devastated seeing as how low my food intake is now that I’ve got this gut problem. No joke, food that used to look good looks like shit now and I can barely stomach half of what I used to wolf down like nothing.
Really bad form on this set though. I tried to rush it and didn’t take the time to get a tight belly full of air. When I’m grinding it in the middle I have a tendency to let my back round so I can get the rep up faster - bad idea.
Pull-ups
8 - BW - Most pull-ups I ever did, ever. Amazing.
Bench press
5x105
5x120
7x140 - Went down a bit from 13x140(17,2).*
R DB row
1x12:F - 100
L DB row
1x14:F - 100
Well, that was a week that really turned sour.
*I’ve had stomach flu set in since Wednesday, and ever since it has been impossible for me to eat as much as I usually do. Everything gets shat out with diarrhea or creates really painful gas, and I just seem to get bloated and full all too easily. So my food has gone from 3000 calories/day to ~1500, and it doesn’t help that carbs create the most digestive havoc for me so those got cut down on the most.
Then, I have to do my sessions quick because my parents want me resting at home all day if I’m sick, and all it takes to get me in trouble is one unanswered phone call to the house to get me undone.
Which results in me performing poorly and not being able to do the full sessions as I want to. But I got my first symptoms with this sickness last Saturday, so I will be fine by Monday at the worst. I’ll have to do some kind of carb refill or something so I can get back to where I was more quickly.
Easy moves
~15min
Front handsprings, swipes, kip-ups, handstands. All easy.
Forearm headspin
~20min
best 3/2. Felt unstable and awkward at first but it’s definitely coming back.
Rollback stalls
~15min
Got two indefinite ones. Getting more consistent; almost all are at least stalls. Set up that foundation quickly with the shoulders.
Windmills
~20min
Roll directly onto back, skipping the shoulder. Sweep the right leg up. Got a few good, clean sets of 4-5 with my legs straight and good speed.
Handstand work
~10min
Jumps, push-ups against wall. Got weaker, but still worth practicing.
So despite that I got so much weaker and smaller, I’m still more or less where I was at before with breakdancing. Except now, I haven’t done mills or headspins in a while so my shoulder isn’t bruised and my head isn’t burnt up. Today was a legitimately good session, it’s just that I got tired out quickly.
Deadlift
3x225
3x255
8x290 - Got 9x295 on 17,3. Fuck, that stomach flu really made me weaker. I’ve been back to eating normal quantity as of Sunday and today.
Overhead press
3x100
3x110
6x125 - Got 6x130 in 17,3. So I’m still recovering. I thought about increasing food intake until I get a PR, but I don’t want to rush it and get fat. I’ll be good by next week if I just eat as usual.
DB OHP
1x6 - 55s - at least that’s back up.
1x5:F - 55s
2x6 - 50s
1x5:F - 50s
1x6 - 45s
Dips
1x5:F - +40
1x4:F - +35
3x6 - +25
Pull-ups
5,2,3 - BW
FA headspins
~40min
Pull back shoulders and spin higher on the head. Mostly get ~1 turn. I feel stuck with these.
Breakdancing today, nothing really special to report.
Warmup
~15min
Forearm headspins
~100min
Seem to be destined to always get a full rotation, maybe a bit more or less, and then falling. I tried putting more weight on the head and tensing up the upper body but I’m not for sure on whether that helps.
Windmills
~50min
Got some decent ones from footwork
Another shitty training day. Thanksgiving so I ate a lot though, hope the extra food will bring me back up to normal. All my measurements like chest, hips, arms, legs were back up to where they were at or a little above as of this morning, so I hope that means something.
Eating a lot last night helped regain size (I measured my chest at a full 40", hips at about 36 1/2" this morning) but it obviously didn’t help much with strength.
Warmup
~20min
Was extra sore in my legs and back, took extra time.
Forearm headspin
~100min
Experiment with more power when starting up the spin. Tightening the upper body seems to help make it more of a spin and less of a fall, although number of rotations (1, to be exact) seems to stay the same.
Windmills
~45min
Got some good sets. Legs wide is most important. Also tried (and failed) some no-handed ones.
Handstand work
~15min
Learned how to jump and land in a freeze. Simple, just let the head get close to the ground.
Right bicep: 12 3/4 (+1/8)
Left bicep: 13 1/8 (+1/4)
Right thigh: 23 7/8 (+7/8)
Left thigh: 23 (+7/8)
Well that’s fucking great. I got sick, so I got weaker. I tried to eat to recover from it, but all I got was bigger, not stronger. So I got bigger and weaker in the same fucking week.
Got off my sore tired lazy ass and did some breakdancing today. Forced myself to keep it short and focused.
Warmup
~10min
Windmills
~20min
Took me a while but I actually got some good sets when I had the pressure of time. I actually did better when I took my mind completely off the upper body coordination (re-stabbing, rolling) and focused strictly on the lower body cues (legs wide, straight, hips off the ground, abs tight).
Hope I’m not still weak at lifting from my flu. Damn, I get sick for two days and I lose a month’s progress. But I’m out of pills now so that means I’m cured, so I’m optimistic.
Breakdancing
Forearm headspin - ~5min
Better than nothing. Left DB bulg is what’s hogging up the extra time. I could’ve had a solid 20-30 minutes to practice, and I wasn’t too tired out either until I did that stupid unilateral remedial muscular imbalance exercise.
Overhead press
5x105
3x120
1x135 - Well shit. I got 2x135 five months ago. What the hell is happening? I’m not sick anymore, and that was the only thing that changed this cycle. Damn.
FA headspin
95min
Focus on the contact point between head and ground. This did not substantially increase the amount I spun, but it did make my spins more like spins and less like self-judo-takedowns.
Windmills
50min
Wow they went well today. Was getting great sets. Sweep with right leg, sweep back with left leg. Was getting power and speed with the best technique I’ve ever had. I should’ve gotten a video but I was going in too hard.
I also tried to get no-handed mills - basically I do 1-2 stabbed mills to get momentum and then try to “jump” across my front without my hands touching the ground. Couldn’t make it happen today though. Once I can get no-handed mills, then my milling journey really begins.
Handstand work
10min
Mostly walking backwards. My wrist hurt from doing cleans on Monday so I didn’t practice many “jumps”.
Smith BB hold
21sec, 24sec, 20sec - 255 lbs
So I can do 265 with this next cycle.
Light squat
1x10 - 185
1x6:F - 185
4x10 - 175
Resolved not to fail with 175. I might have had a bacterial colon infection for a week earlier this cycle, but some lines just don’t get crossed.
L DB bulg
1x10 - 45s
1x10 - 50s
1x5:F - 55s
2x10 - 50s
Pull-ups
5,3,2 - +10
Breakdancing
Some headspins. Nothing new to say.
Had really little time after the hoopla with the left DB squats. They haven’t been doing much noticeable in the way of getting my left leg on par with my right, so I’ll probably drop them next cycle.
Bench press
5x120
3x140
6-7x155 - Counting sucks. But I sure exceeded my expectation here I must say, given how things have been going earlier this cycle.
No breakdancing practice. I wanted to drive from the gym I lift at to the gym closer to my home to breakdance and rest a bit during the drive so I could perform better. When I got to the second gym there was a kid’s basketball tournament. So instead of getting the service that I pay for I have to work around the schedule of parents living their sports dreams vicariously through their kids, which isn’t even working for them since it was 3rd period of the game and the score was 0-2.
WELL. That’s the hard part of cycle 18, done. Basically what happened is the first half of week 1 I was fine, broke 2 core PRs. Wednesday is when some kind of gut sickness really started to set in. My appetite was dead, eating as much as normal was impossible without serious diarrhea and gas for the next two days, after which I was able to get back to normal with food consumption.
Which is strange, because that’s like, two days of subnormal eating amounts that fucked up an entire cycle of training. More to it than calories in/out I guess. All I can say is next cycle will be better.
Running out of ways to say I’m practicing breakdancing.
Warmup
15min
Front handsprings: pop hips, contract glutes hard on landing
FA headspin
90min
Whip legs around more quickly through full ROM gives consistent 9/8s instead of 1s. Got some 5/4s and a few 3/2s, still don’t know what the trick is for consistent good spins.
FA rollback
30min
Seem to get better headpins when I do them from a FA rollback stall. Got a 3/2, and a 5/4 that could’ve been more if I didn’t stop it mid-spin (idk why, lost my nerve probably)
Windmills
45mins
Legs wide, bring it around while collapsing. Land on my back properly the first time and it’s all set.
Got some great sets, need a video to either prove I improved or humble my ass.
No handstand work, I’ll do it tomorrow while I’m on the freshsome, a better idea than shoving it in the last five minutes of practice anyways.
Nice work man, your dedication and consistency is great. If i could just make two small suggestions:
Stop going to failure so often on the assistance work. Jim makes it very clear in the book that the purpose of the assistance work is to just work the muscles. You should always stop a rep or two short of failure. Quite frankly I think your CNS is very burnt out from failing 5x a session.
Add a few hundred calories to your daily diet. This will really help with the strength gains, and you are so active with the break dancing and such i gauruntee you wont get fat.
Still all over the place from getting sick and eating little, to trying to eat a lot to compensate, to going back to eating as normal.
Short breakdancing practice today, too.
Warmup
~10min
Handstand jumps
~30min
Landed several “partial” ones, where my whole hands didn’t come off the ground but I still kept myself from crashing. Still need to get better. As usual.
Windmills
~20min
Got video. Still bad. Get better.
Thanks for the tips, I’ve been thinking seriously about both of those but I am indecisive with what exactly to do.
