Below the knee block pulls - 3x192.5, 3x258.5, 3x302.5, 3x346.5, 3x390, 3x445 Grip may be an issue limiting me here, I am considering buying straps. I’m also considering buying a belt, although I’ll probably wait a bit before doing that.
No conditioning
Reasonable tired after not sleeping much for the Pac v May fight, so got in some decent work and got out.
Hit the jack pot, just discovered a whole stack (8x55lb) of tractor weights lying around, so I can tie them on to my bar for additional weight (I have about 470lbs total weight in conventional plates), so I can keep adding weight for a long old time.
BTW: I have a copy of this book, that I use for teaching scout leaders when I am back in the States. No insult on your skills, for all I know you may be a regular Leatherstocking:))
For humor: You do know where the phrase “caught red handed” came from?
Below the knee block pulls - 3x192.5, 3x258.5, 3x302.5, 3x346.5, 3x390, 3x445 Grip may be an issue limiting me here, I am considering buying straps. I’m also considering buying a belt, although I’ll probably wait a bit before doing that.
[/quote]
Buy a belt but don’t buy straps man! Just strengthen your hands up! Your hands are the tools that you have to apply your strength to the world so they need to be able to apply more strength than you can derive from any part of your body or you’re selling yourself short. You’ll get used to having all that weight in your hands, it’ll just take some time.
[quote]idaho wrote:
Some help for your Walden kick;
BTW: I have a copy of this book, that I use for teaching scout leaders when I am back in the States. No insult on your skills, for all I know you may be a regular Leatherstocking:))
For humor: You do know where the phrase “caught red handed” came from? [/quote]
Thanks Idaho, while I’m not a total novice, I am always looking to learn, that looks like a great guide, I’ve just sorted myself with a copy. It’ll sit nicely alongside my SAS survival guide that I’ve had since I was about 5.
No I do not know where the phrase comes from (poaching?) but would definitely like to. Hope you’re staying safe.
Below the knee block pulls - 3x192.5, 3x258.5, 3x302.5, 3x346.5, 3x390, 3x445 Grip may be an issue limiting me here, I am considering buying straps. I’m also considering buying a belt, although I’ll probably wait a bit before doing that.
[/quote]
Buy a belt but don’t buy straps man! Just strengthen your hands up! Your hands are the tools that you have to apply your strength to the world so they need to be able to apply more strength than you can derive from any part of your body or you’re selling yourself short. You’ll get used to having all that weight in your hands, it’ll just take some time. [/quote]
I will do as you advise, Lofty! I realised this morning actually, as my forearms and wrist tendons were sore (the good kind) that actually these are doing a lot to build up the strength in that part of my body, that will probably have a good deal of carry over to other lifts.
[quote]donnydarkoirl wrote:
So late picking up on this thread, sorry!
Followed![/quote]
Great to have you along mate, seeing all the good stuff going on in yours, Irish’s and Lofty’s log encouraged me to start this, and tap into some of the wisdom here to help keep me on the right path.
[quote]idaho wrote:
Some help for your Walden kick;
BTW: I have a copy of this book, that I use for teaching scout leaders when I am back in the States. No insult on your skills, for all I know you may be a regular Leatherstocking:))
For humor: You do know where the phrase “caught red handed” came from? [/quote]
Thanks Idaho, while I’m not a total novice, I am always looking to learn, that looks like a great guide, I’ve just sorted myself with a copy. It’ll sit nicely alongside my SAS survival guide that I’ve had since I was about 5.
No I do not know where the phrase comes from (poaching?) but would definitely like to. Hope you’re staying safe.[/quote]
Yes, poaching. Now, heaven forbid, I would never call you a Scot, but, Merry Olde English Kings adopted the same law. The king was considered to own all the wild game on their borders, so, they employed “wardens” to patrol the countryside in hopes of catching someone like you killing and gutting one of the King’s deer. Thus, caught red handed.
Origin
“Red-handed doesn’t have a mythical origin however - it is a straightforward allusion to having blood on one’s hands after the execution of a murder or a poaching session. The term originates, not from Northern Ireland, but from a country not so far from there, socially and geographically, that is, Scotland. An earlier form of ‘red-handed’, simply ‘red hand’, dates back to a usage in the Scottish Acts of Parliament of James I, 1432”.
Red-hand appears in print many times in Scottish legal proceedings from the 15th century onward; for example, this piece from Sir George Mackenzie’s A discourse upon the laws and customs of Scotland in matters criminal, 1674:
“If he be not taken red-hand the sheriff cannot proceed against him.”
The earliest known printed version of ‘red-handed’ is from Sir Walter Scott’sIvanhoe, 1819:
“I did but tie one fellow, who was taken redhanded and in the fact, to the horns of a wild stag.”
Scott was an avid student of Scottish history and folklore, which he relentlessly mined for inspiration in his novel writing. He is certain to have heard ‘redhand’ before writing Ivanhoe. The step from ‘redhand’ to ‘redhanded’ isn’t large, so calling Scott the originator of the term is perhaps being over generous to him. Nevertheless, the enormous popularity of his books certainly brought ‘red-handed’ to a wide audience and, without him, the term might now be long forgotten.
16th and 17th century Scottish sources provide various examples of ‘apprehended redhand’, ‘taken with redhand’ etc. but the earliest known citation of the currently used ‘caught red-handed’ phrase is in the English novelist George Alfred Lawrence’s work Guy Livingstone; or, ‘Thorough’, 1857:
Good find on the plates. One of my future goals is to invest in a prowler, then I will need plates and a place to push it.
This was a huge day for me, lifting-wise. I’ve never felt close to a BW bench press before. Today’s work called for 176lbs, which is close to BW, and is far and away the most I’ve ever benched before, so it seemed like the time had come to go for it. I knew I’d be doing this all week. After last week’s shitty session, I’d had this one in mind all week. BW bench has been a milestone for me for some time now (especially given the shoulder issues in my past, and the fact that I have no spotter and wouldn’t be found for a while if I got stapled), and I was worried I’d be psyched out by it, so I’ve basically been eating all week to ensure I hit it. When it rolled around, I was extremely focused, and honestly it felt pretty light. I didn’t want to get greedy and go for reps. I’d prepared to hit a single, and I did. I know 5/3/1 doesn’t call for 3 singles at the same weight, but I felt, having got it, that I needed to prove to myself it wasn’t a fluke, and that I had this weight easily. I crushed the rep each time, and I’m pretty confident that with a spotter to make sure I don’t die of exposure if I get it wrong, I’m confident I could easily smash the 200lb barrier.
Likewise, with the rows, I decided not to be neurotic about form, or any of that jazz, and just to smash something heavy, an they felt good.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my training recently, and some of the things that have been written here and elsewhere on the internet by posters I admire and respect, and my main goal over the next few months is to really dial up my focus and presence when I’m training. I’m conscious that I haven’t been attacking my training as aggressively as I should have been, and it’s probably caused me to plateau prematurely. I often lose focus and find myself thinking of other things when I’m training, and I realise that as a result I’m probably not providing myself with enough stimulus to make progress, or haven’t been until the past week or so.
Anyway, regardless of programming, over the next few months the main goal is to attack my training like a mad man, and smash through my target numbers posted a while back.
Programming wise, I’m probably going to reset my 5/3/1 back to the weights from cycle 3, as suggested by Wendler, as in a week I’ll have finished my 5th cycle.
Good session. I think I had a breakthrough on squat form. I tried looking up rather than straight ahead, and it seemed to pull my whole body into alignment. I used slightly different muscles, which felt a bit funny, but the weight went up much easier. I was sat much more upright I reckon. Felt it more through my traps and mid back than I had done before.
Rack pulls were also good. Felt awesome to get 495lbs up. It was incredibly hard, but I think I learned something about how to be strong, if that makes any sense at all. I had to work pretty hard to get it up, but then I actually realised that I could do it again with minimal rest if I needed to, and probably again after that. I am confident I could pull this from the floor in the next 6-8 months.
Thanks for getting me into these Lofty, they are having a big effect on my understanding of training.
Weighted chins - 5xbw, 5x11lbs, 3x33lbs, 3x55lbs, 5(sets)x3x33lbs (I realise that in all my previous logging I’ve been recording the kg weight, out of keeping with the rest of my logging, which I’ve been converting for my majority American brethren).
I wanted to get out and not bother doing conditioning because it was late and I’d eaten, and I was being lazy - so I forced myself just to give myself a thrashing for trying to get out of it.
Using the complex (90lbs): 5 hang cleans, 5 presses, 5 back squats, 5 good mornings, 5 front squats, 5 rows
I went straight through the following with no breaks:
I’m away from tomorrow on exercise for a few days, and so that’ll give me a few days’ deloading after completing cycle 5 of 5/3/1. That’ll be a 5 day deload (12th-17th), which will be the longest break I’ve had from lifting since September, so hopefully when I lift again on the 17th or 18th, I might have benefited from the time off.
I plan on using the time, where possible, to think a bit more about my programming and areas I could improve. I’m quite enjoying the current set up, but I’m pretty aware that it’s not optimal, and I could be seeing better results from my strength training. Like a blind man at an orgy, I’m having to feel my way around.
I’m going to start trying to prelog my intended workout for the day, where time allows. I think it’ll help keep me focused, and establish the intention of the workout in my mind before I do it. That way I can explain what I’m doing and why, and when I look back on my training in a few months, I will be able to see whether my results match the intention. I’ve had 5 days off now from training, which is the most I’ve had off lifting since September. It’ll be interesting to see if it’s had an effect.
Anyway, back to training this evening. I’ve finished 5 cycles of 5/3/1, and I plan to keep using this programming for now on my strength focused days. I’m looking to make the next 5 cycles significant, and to hit my short term strength goals by the end of them. I’ll be resetting now to the weights for my 3rd cycle of 5/3/1, as suggested by Wendler. This has come at a good time, because I suspect I was close to stalling in my upper body lifts by the end of the last cycle. Tentatively, I am looking at breaking the next 5 cycles as follows:
Cycle 1&2 - beat previous rep PR on every single + set comprehensively, maybe do the odd joker, but pretty much ignore them for now. Focus on volume on the backoff sets, plenty of reps & paused reps. Also increase volume of assistance work where time allows.
Cycle 3 - My current cycle 5 weights. The aim of this cycle will be to hit a rep PR for each + set on every lift, and to keep a higher overall volume of backoff and assistance work than I did for this cycle last time around.
Cycle 4 - Switch to more of a strength focus, the aim of this cycle will be to hit every prescribed weight for each lift cleanly and confidently. I will reduce backoff and assistance work if necessary. I will look to take small joker sets where I’m able to build confidence under heavier weights and set myself up for the next cycle.
Cycle 5 - This will be all about hitting my goal weights. There won’t be any rep PR sets here. All the focus will be on hitting the numbers I’ve been looking at as ‘strong’ for some time. Backoff and assistance work will be adjusted accordingly. This cycle will be huge psychologically, and set me up for the next stage of my lifting career if I get it right. This cycle will be about doing whatever is necessary to hit those numbers.
I’ll still look to hit a number of rep&conditioning sessions in between strength sessions, but the focus will mostly be on maintenance of conditioning, while adding to mobility an athleticism, so I’ll probably look at more jumping, more tumbling, more things that involve getting from the floor to standing, or moving in unconventional patterns. As of next week I will be switching my diet to exclusively things I have hunted or grown myself (bar rice, potatoes, seasoning etc), so my diet will be full of lean wild meat and fresh untreated vegetables, supplemented with starchy carbs.
I think if I get it right the next 15 weeks of training could be extremely productive.
Barbell curls - 20kg BB as many reps as possible rest pause style.
Short conditioning session to finish
The intention here is volume, obviously, to help build the musculature to support my bigger lifts at the end of cycle 5. If I have a concern it’s that some of my bench strength set stuff looks a little bit too light to give the desired stimulus, but we’ll soon see.
Rows - I thought about lowering the weight, but I’ve always concentrated on higher reps with the row, and last week was the first time I’ve ever really just said fuck it and went for a higher weight/lower rep scheme. I enjoyed it and I want to push on with it. I will be limiting the number of exercises I do during this 6 week volume period, so I will end up doing high rep rows on my squat and deads day probably.
Rollouts and barbell curls to build up muscles I don’t train directly usually.
Edit: Hit all the weights as documented. Felt pretty good. Got a pump in all the target muscles, so I think it was an effective session. I think this way of training could prove to be quite effective - basically a mini 6 week hypertrophy phase, a 3 week ‘powerbuilding’ type phase, and then a 6 week focus more on max strength phase. Time will tell.
I have a conditioning session to catch up on, as yesterday time ran away from me. I’ll probably get it in over the weekend. I got thrashed for 3 days solidly by the army over the weekend, so my conditioning quota for the next 7 days is more than met.
5/3/1 Squats
5s week - 5x160lbs, 5x181.5, 15x209lbs
FSL - 3x8x160lbs
Neck bridges - front and back 4x60s
Middle of the knee blockpulls - 3x3x370lbs, 1x12x335lbs - This was hard - middle of the knee is a surprisingly weak position, just couldn’t get in a groove.
Notes: Volume is its own challenge, that I’ve not really experienced before. I was still sore in my back today from the work on Monday.