Overhead press
3x65
3x75
11x85 - The most weight I’ve ever done with the most reps I’ve ever done. It’s the ultimate PR. lol
Wide grip OHP
1x10 - 60
2x7:F - 60 - Maybe I didn’t rest enough between sets. Oh well. I was getting horded by the school’s baseball team so I had to work fast and get out.
Standing DB skullcrusher
2x10 - 35
1x9:F - 40 - So close! Yet so far away.
DB OHP
4x10 - 20s
1x10 - 25s
Bounce pull-ups
3x5 - Was an idiot and could’ve used the lat pull-down and didn’t even do these to failure.
Farmer’s walk, down and back with 75s. This was a flop too. I’ve decided that I’ll devote the first half of this year to getting able to do a pull-up and the second half (once my deadlift gets stronger) to being able to do farmer’s walk with 100s.
Breakdancing practice:
Handstands - didn’t work well because my shoulders, triceps and forearms were dead.
Kip-ups - looking at the wall behind me, maximizing hip thrust, and keeping my hands close to my head help me land on my feet instead of my knees.
Left-hand air swipes - need to move more BW onto the hands so the legs stay in the air longer and look cool. I found this out at the very end of the practice session.
One-legged air swipes - more explosiveness to get the same kick as a two-legged air swipe… but with one leg.
I was really excited to put the ‘milestone’ weight of 185 lbs on the bar and throw it around today. I was even more excited after how many reps I deadlifted it for.
Deadlift
3x145
3x165
11x185 - Beat pretty much every single record ever that I ever did ever. That’s the first time I did over 2000 pounds of work in one set. I am very very happy.
Power clean
2x10 - 80
1x10 - 85
Good morning
3x10 - 70
Bent-over row
3x10 - 75
1x10 - 80
DB ‘Kroc’ row
1x25 - 40
Lat pull-down
3x5 - 90. Back, biceps, and forearms were weak from the rest of the workout so I could not progress today. Thursday I will do a set with 100.
Breakdancing
Handstand kick-ups - I had a couple really good ones but the rest were pretty mediocre. I think I will have a good chance at balance if I keep my legs tight and low.
Reverse air-swipes - Same note as 9/12/11 + ‘hop’ at the end to set up the next swipe.
Bench press
3x85
3x95
14x110 - Beat 14x105. Next week I’m going to be doing 115, which is a bit of a milestone (35 on each side). Can’t wait.
DB bench press
1x10 - 25s
4x10 - 30s
Finally this assistance exercise is coming back up again. Putting it before incline bench press helped.
Incline bench press
1x10 - 65
4x10 - 70
Lat pull-down
1x5 - 90
2x5 - 100
I was gonna do just one set with 100 but 90 felt so easy I moved up early and it paid off.
Also did a couple (literally just two or three) overhead squats with the bar. I found that I can go deep no problem by pointing out my feet and using a wide grip. I wanted to show everyone else in the high school gym that yes, overhead squats can be done over a range of more than four inches.
Breakdancing practice:
Kick-ups into handstand - I think if I shoot up with the left leg and control myself with the right leg I will increase my balance time. I had some pretty good ones in today’s workout.
Front handspring - Started just kicking up into a handstand with my back to the wall, gradually moved away, and then practiced landing in a bridge. From there I did it faster so I could land on my feet. I then combined it with a couple air swipes. In short, I learned an entirely new move and how to use it in one practice session today.
I think if I do fewer moves in each breakdancing practice session (2-3) instead of how many I was doing before (5-6) I can make more progress.
Squat
3x140
3x160
8x180 - Broke 8x170 record. I love the way squatting is so intricate and complicated, yet still so brute and simple. Wait, no, all the lifts are like that, now that I think about it. Nevermind. Great PR though.
Front squat
1x10 - 85
3x10 - 90
Good morning
2x10 - 70
1x10 - 75
DB bulgarian squat
1x10 - 35s
2x10 - 40s
Lat pulldown
3x5 - 100
Breakdancing
Kick-ups into handstand: Keeping my legs, ass, and abs tight made me hold a couple 2-3 second ones pretty reliably. Excellent.
Front handspring: I realized that when I was doing it yesterday I had a lot of delay between doing the air swipes and getting into the handspring. So I worked on minimizing that today. I also worked on always landing on my feet. I have to maximize leg thrust from the ground and arch my back and hips as much as possible so that my feet hit the ground instead of the inside of my knees. My friend took a video of what I finally came up with. When he sends it to me, I’ll post it here.
Breakdancing
Kick-ups into handstand - held one for five seconds.
Front handsprings - Along with powering the legs, arching the back, and shrugging (locking out) the shoulders, keeping my feet together has helped me land well on them.
Air swipe/windmill alternation - I can do them both separately so I want to be able to alternate between them. I’m practicing this really slowly to start.
Air chairs from freeze - It’s all in the balance of the upper body as the legs come up.
Transition into chair freeze - I need to practice this to get it down as fast as possible.
Here’s a video of my front handspring in a short ‘set’ of moves.
Measurements:
Weight: 141.5 (down by .5lb)
Waist: 29" (down by .25")
Chest: 36" (down by 1")
Chest looks like it fell a lot but I remember how unusual the 37" measurement of last week was. The week before, it was only 35 5/8". I think I messed something up with last week’s chest measurement.
Overhead press
5x70
3x80
8x90 - I’m not sure if 8x90 beats the previous 11x85. This is the first time I OHPed 90 lbs in the 5/3/1 program. I don’t know.
Wide grip OHP
3x10 - 60
Standing DB skullcrusher
2x10 - 35
1x10 - 40
DB overhead press
3x10 - 20s
2x10 - 25s
Lat pull-down
2x5 - 100
1x2:F - 110 - Looks like hitting 140 on this machine (and thus having enough strength to do chest to bar pull-ups) is gonna take a while. But I’ll make it happen.
Breakdancing
Kick-ups into handstands - NOT a good idea after a workout that hits the triceps, shoulders, traps, and forearms. I was flopping around like a fish out of water. I had the whole girls basketball team laughing at me!
Air chairs - Coming along. When I do the kick part of this move I have to move directly backwards to keep my balance. Think of it like putting all my weight on my neck.
Air swipe/Windmill alternation - I can do one, I can do the other, I can now alternate them at a pedestrian pace. But windmills are seriously bruising up my shoulder (no ROM problems, just bleeds annoyingly) so for a full week I will fight the temptation of doing these.
Deadlift
5x155
3x175
6x195 - This used to be my 1RM (after it was 185, of course.) It’s great that I pulled it six times today instead of one, but I’m not sure how this compares to my previous 11x185.
Power clean
1x10 - 80
2x10 - 85
Good morning
1x10 - 70
2x10 - 75
Bent-over row
2x10 - 75
2x10 - 80
DB kroc row
1x25 - 45
Lat pull-down
2x5 - 100
1x0:F - 110 (Back and biceps were too dead to progress)
1x5 - 100
Breakdancing
Kick-ups into handstands - Nothing new to say. Get better at them.
Chair freeze+kick - Left leg coming up first and high helps me balance very well. Stumbled upon this one.
Get-up from chair freeze - I can get from here into a crouch, do a helicopter or two to keep my audience’s eyes busy, and then get up.
Breakdancing
Handstands - Get better at them.
Front handsprings - Put everything I have into each repetition of this technique. I had to cut the session short after I screwed up on one (not enough power) and my left hip smacked right into the floor. It feels fine now. But this is why, from now on, I will never do breakdancing practice the day before deadlifting/squatting.
Benching 115 tomorrow! My previous record is 14x110. I’m going to break it.
Was really excited to hit the semi-milestone of benching 115 today.
Bench press
5x90
3x105
10x115 - I did not break the 14x110 record. But this is fine. This record beat the 10x110 of last cycle’s 5/3/1+ week. I don’t think I’m supposed to be able to break records every single week, as I’m using a higher % 1RM. So I think it’s better to compare how I do to last cycle’s all-out set of what week I’m on rather than what I did last week.
Incline bench press
5x10 - 70
DB bench press
5x10 - 30s
Lat pull-down
2x5 - 100
1x5 - 110
Breakdancing practice:
Everything but windmills.
Get better at handstands.
Transition into chair freezes faster.
Squat
5x150
3x170
3x190 - I was disappointed. But the projected 1RM from this beat the projected 1RM from the 5/3/1+ week of cycle 2.
Front squat
4x10 - 90
Good morning
3x10 - 75
DB bulgarian squat
3x10 - 40s
Lat pull-down
1x5 - 100
2x5 - 110
Breakdancing
Worked up to:
Footwork + 3 one-legged air swipes + Suicide + 180 kip-up, and
1 two-legged air swipe + footwork + front handspring
Also practiced handstands but those just downright sucked nuts today.
I think I’m doing assistance work the wrong way. If my goal is to get stronger without gaining weight (read goals), I should focus on increasing my ability to output what power I have as hard as possible, not doing ‘hypertrophy range reps’. So I think I should cut the reps per set on assistance work to 5 or so.
Breakdancing practice today. Right from my diet/workout tracker spreadsheet because I’m too lazy to retype it here. And “kick-ups” means kicking up into a handstand, from a kind of hands-and-knees position. Not to be confused with “kip-ups”, which involve laying down on the ground and thrusting one’s hips and legs upwards quickly to let him stand up immediately.
Decided that for cycle 4 I’m going to do 6 heavier reps per set on assistance exercises and deload with half of that but with the same weight and sets. If my goal is to gain strength without gaining weight, then I might as well train this way.
I’m also going to take breakdancing practice out from after the upper-body lift days so that my lower body can be fresh for deadlifting/squatting the next day. (I find that breakdancing on an upper body day saps a bit out of my legs for the next day’s lower body training.) So instead of breakdancing M/T/W/TH/F/SA it’ll just be T/W/F/SA. This way the lower body lifting is top priority, gets first dips on being trained, and my lower body muscles always get at least 24 hours to recover for the next session involving them.
I find that during and after the third week of the cycle, I’m more irritable than normal. I frequently have to tell myself to take a deep breath and count to ten. I’m also more on edge than I usually am. Then magically I feel fantastic during week 1 of the next cycle, after I’ve deloaded/recharged. I’ll see how cycle 4 goes with the two changes I’ve made.
Overhead press
5x45 (supposed to be 40 but I didn’t want to waste time looking for a 35 lb bar)
5x45
5x55 - Broke a PR!
Wide grip OHP
3x5 - 60
DB skullcrusher
2x5 - 35
1x5 - 40
DB OHP
3x5 - 20s
2x5 - 25s
Box jumps - slightly above waist
1x5
I should’ve done more of these. They give me a great fired up feeling.
Breakdancing - Bloody shoulder healed up a bit so I put some band-aids on it and got back to windmills today.
Kick-ups into handstand - Control balance with left leg and hands seems to work.
Air swipe/windmill alternation - Technique is good but not fast enough.
Windmills - Looks better if right leg stays off the ground at all times and upper body is supporting itself as often as possible. Also, do them faster.
9/27/11 - Tuesday
Cycle 3, Week 4, Day 2
GOD DAMMIT I WANT TO START A NEW CYCLE AND USE HEAVIER WEIGHTS ALREADY
Deadlift
5x85
5x105
5x125
Power clean
1x5 - 80
2x5 - 85
Good morning
3x5 - 75
Bent-over row
2x5 - 75
2x5 - 80
Running broad jumps - About 1.5-2 yards on most of them.
1x15
Same fired up feeling as the box jumps. Did not do 15 in a row, I rested quite a bit between each one.
Breakdancing
Air swipe/windmill alternation - Looks sexy. Fixed up technique and now I’m doing it smoothly and with a respectable speed. I’ll still keep pushing myself to go faster with these though; they’re a key move to me now. I’m on track for breaking it down at homecoming this Saturday.
Additionally, I found out that what I thought was ‘neural drainage’ or whatever was actually me being over-stressed about every calorie that I took in, and my constant self-obligation to give myself an intense pep-talk whenever I thought about whether I would hit a PR that day. So I’m taking it easy during the day, and that will help me perform better when the workouts actually come around.
Prowler push
80 lbs (this is the extra weight added on, I don’t know how much the sled itself weighs)
Around my school parking lot. I’d say it’s about 1/8 mile. I always go as fast as I can and push with the tall pole parts.
Box jump
1x5
Legs were dead from the prowler push so I took it easy on these.
No breakdancing today, tomorrow or Friday. I have bruises from breakdancing so I want those to heal so I will not be in unreasonable amounts of pain while breaking it down on Saturday. I have the techniques down so I’ll be good. So I’ll do prowler push in place of breakdancing practice after my workouts.
In order to expedite healing from my various bruises incurred through breakdancing mishaps, I took down two extra chicken breasts today on top of what I normally ate. I will also do this for tomorrow and Friday. My protein intake will go from 150g/day (a little over the 1g/lb BW rule, more of a ‘body maintenance’ intake I find) to a little over 250g a day for today, tomorrow, and Friday. This will be a one-time experiment, hereafter known as Operation Chicken Breast (OCB). Stay tuned for the results.
Box jumps
20x1 - same height as last time
5x1 - just a tad bit higher
Better to write it as 20x1 instead of 1x20 because it’s more like 20 singles instead of 1 set of 20 box jumps, for example.
I feel that explosiveness from box jumps would be better for my breakdancing ability than a slow, grinding, leg-pumping (but still fun) prowler push.
Breakdancing
Brushed up on my technique with everything (except windmills in which I am confident about my ability but do not want to risk bruising my shoulder now) for the homecoming dance tomorrow. A bit nervous, but if I focus and give it all I have I know I will do very well.
Broke it down at the homecoming dance today. Left after 30 minutes because the music sucked. Worst way to spend $10 ever.
I performed well, there are only two mistakes that I made while everything else was pretty much perfect. I was a little nervous but that helped me more than it hurted.
Did 3 sets of moves:
One-legged air swipes (4)
Suicide
180* kip-up
Two-legged air swipes (2)
Air chair
Two-legged air swipes (1)
Kip-up
Two- legged air swipes (1)
Front handspring - Executed PERFECTLY.
