MarkKO's Training Log

Training Training Logs
181

[quote]Benanything wrote:
Can’t seem to view the video. Don’t get too disheartened mate, just a bad meet, I’m sure everyone has one of those. Good work on the bench, though. I’m sure you’ll be getting your 315 bench soon. Cheers.[/quote]

Thanks! Setting out my programming for the next seven weeks helped me process. I decided to use ‘training maxes’ so basically cut 10 kg off my sleeves squat max, and five oh off bench and DL for calculation. That’s actually what I did for bench coming into this and since it worked well I’m hoping to repeat that.

Check my YouTube channel, videos should work there. I tried sharing the playlist.

182

Because the playlist link isn’t working…

183

Solid work on the bench. The bad experiences always help to learn and grow from, especially after a meet lol. There’s only room for improvement.

If you commit to the SSB squat next cycle and don’t deadlift on your squat days, it would be useful to add some light-medium good mornings at the end of the session to get in extra posterior chain work. Heavy paused seated good mornings might also help with holding position at the bottom of the squat but if you go heavy with that it might affect your programming.

184

Can’t really judge what went wrong on your squats, but you look pitched forward/start to collapse. Are you staying tight, getting a big breath of air, etc? From my perspective it could’ve happened from one of three reason:

  1. your stance doesn’t fit your mobility/proportions (if it is this, it is probably just the mobility since you were close stance squatting for awhile and probably lost mobility)

  2. you aren’t staying tight enough

  3. your upper back/abs/lower back (some mix, probably the upper back is the biggest thing)

Most likely it is probably a mixture of 1 and 3, either you have a bad groove because of mobility or stance, or you are collapsing because you can’t hold your position, or both. You probably have lots of mobility work, goodmornings (especially with SSB), and SSB squats (try paused with SSB and with normal bar) in your future.

Your bench looks good and I am happy for you, you’ve found what works for you, hammer it until it doesn’t work anymore.

Deadlift maybe try keeping hips down more? They looked high for you, you seem to do good with keeping your hips low, and preventing your hips from shooting up would probably get you through the shin/below the knee area where you are stalling at.

Overall, it’s progress, you just couldn’t show what you could squat and deadlift. I’ll say the same thing that I said to Benanything: there is an accumulative effect from training, you didn’t waste your time on the squat and deadlift if you’ve been getting solid work in (which you have). You’ll be able to do better at a later time. Also, your meet results may have been effected by change of style, you switching diets, etc.

I recommend looking into stuff you’ve changed as far as training, eating, stressors, and any other possible factors. It may just be the change in styles is making it hard for you to show your strength, it could just be that you aren’t used to lifting like that, and you’ll become even more stronger.

185

[quote]lift206 wrote:
Solid work on the bench. The bad experiences always help to learn and grow from, especially after a meet lol. There’s only room for improvement.

If you commit to the SSB squat next cycle and don’t deadlift on your squat days, it would be useful to add some light-medium good mornings at the end of the session to get in extra posterior chain work. Heavy paused seated good mornings might also help with holding position at the bottom of the squat but if you go heavy with that it might affect your programming.[/quote]

Thanks.

That’s not a bad idea, but I’ve got the next seven weeks nicely sorted out I think. Lots of reverse hypers and GHR as assists, and sumo pulling against chains for speed should keep my posterior chain happy when added to the conventional pulling I’ll be doing as well.

1 Like
186

[quote]Destrength wrote:
Can’t really judge what went wrong on your squats, but you look pitched forward/start to collapse. Are you staying tight, getting a big breath of air, etc? From my perspective it could’ve happened from one of three reason:

  1. your stance doesn’t fit your mobility/proportions (if it is this, it is probably just the mobility since you were close stance squatting for awhile and probably lost mobility)

  2. you aren’t staying tight enough

  3. your upper back/abs/lower back (some mix, probably the upper back is the biggest thing)

Most likely it is probably a mixture of 1 and 3, either you have a bad groove because of mobility or stance, or you are collapsing because you can’t hold your position, or both. You probably have lots of mobility work, goodmornings (especially with SSB), and SSB squats (try paused with SSB and with normal bar) in your future.

Your bench looks good and I am happy for you, you’ve found what works for you, hammer it until it doesn’t work anymore.

Deadlift maybe try keeping hips down more? They looked high for you, you seem to do good with keeping your hips low, and preventing your hips from shooting up would probably get you through the shin/below the knee area where you are stalling at.

Overall, it’s progress, you just couldn’t show what you could squat and deadlift. I’ll say the same thing that I said to Benanything: there is an accumulative effect from training, you didn’t waste your time on the squat and deadlift if you’ve been getting solid work in (which you have). You’ll be able to do better at a later time. Also, your meet results may have been effected by change of style, you switching diets, etc.

I recommend looking into stuff you’ve changed as far as training, eating, stressors, and any other possible factors. It may just be the change in styles is making it hard for you to show your strength, it could just be that you aren’t used to lifting like that, and you’ll become even more stronger.
[/quote]

Also, thanks.

With the squats it was 1 and especially 3 as you say. In my first attempt you can see my upper back isn’t tight enough but I was strong enough to get around that. I rushed my setup on the second, got marginally too wide and combined with rooted elbows I just didn’t get the tightness I needed.

Similar with the failed pulls, I rushed my setup and hips were that little bit too high not to mention my head wasn’t where it needed to be.

I also made the mistake in the lead up to squat too heavy too often.

187

Back into training for the push/pull and damn it feels good. More on that later.

For the full power meet in mid March 2016 I decided to set goals in each lift and work backwards from there, mostly to check how realistic they were.

From mid December this is how the (heavy’ days for me will look like in poundage.

Weeks 1-4
Squat 374 lbs-429 lbs all wrapped, sets of 5
Bench 231-253 lbs, same structure as I’m doing currently
Deadlift 440-495 for sets of 5

Weeks 5-8
Squat 429-484 for sets of 3 all wrapped
Bench press as before but 253-275 lbs
Deadlift 495-561 lbs for sets of 3

Weeks nine to twelve will be much the same in load but reps will be mostly singles and doubles.

Today’s training

Bench press vs chains
8x2 @ 132 lbs plus 22 lbs chains

Sumo deadlift against chains
8x2 @ 275 lbs plus 66 lbs chains

Reverse hyper
264 lbs for 16, 13, 20

Alternated DB incline press/ chest supported rows
60 lbs/arm for 11/11, 10/10, 10/10 -got a massive pump from this

20 band pull aparts.

188

Today’s training

5x5 286 lbs SSB squat, on average 8 RPE - loose 10 mm belt more for proprioreception than anything and out of the mono. Getting an idea of what width works.

3x10 156 lbs SSB lunges - quad pump and lower back too

3x5 209 lbs bench press all around 8 RPE

GHR/weighted dips/hammer curls in a kind of circuit to save time - 44 lbs for dips, 30 lbs for curls

14/7/10, 11/6/10, 14/6/10

22 band pull aparts

189

Glad to be back in the gym.

Today’s training

SSB squat vs chains out of the monolift
8x2 220 lbs plus 66 lbs chains all around 6-7 RPE - chains are very different to bands. I quite like them. The way the load increases towards the top feels much more natural than with bands. Inner right buttcrack not overjoyed with my depth: I do squat much deeper with the SSB.

3x5 209 lbs bench press all around 8 RPE - kept slipping on the bench a bit so this wasn’t my best benching as I kept losing tension. Still nowhere near difficult, just not as easy as it would be otherwise.

3 sets alternating GHR/weighted dips with 44 lbs chain
16/7, 12/6, 14/6

Kroc rows
3 sets of 100 lbs L/R 14/12, 10/12, 10/10 - so not really Kroc rows…

18 band pull aparts

190

Feeling a bit tired and sluggish bit still glad to get to the gym. Anything involving deadlifts generally gets me going.

Today’s training:

Bench press 4x3 @ 231 lbs, first two 8 RPE and second two 9 RPE - by the fourth I was tired

1x4 at and a failed 5 at 231 lbs - lost tension once I came off the chest. Shouldn’t have gone for the fifth and I knew it but ego got in the way. On the plus side, reps one to four were absolutely fine.

Deadlift clusters

462 lbs for 10 singles with 35ish second breaks - had to use my Inzer 10 mm belt as the brand new so called heavy duty lever on my Harris belt (never used, replaced the original, first time ever using that lever today) snapped. Pretty pissed off, so I’m looking at how to get a Titan Brahma.

Reverse hyper
3 sets with 308 lbs for 24, 22, 16

Alternating DB incline presses/chest supported rows
3 sets 60 lbs/arm for 11/11, 11/10, 10/10

Hammer curls, 30 lbs
3 sets of 10

23 band pull aparts

One of those sessions where I came on wanting to be really efficient but failed.

191

Got myself a black lever Brahma from Liftinglarge. Also an extra pair of Slingshot knee wraps becuase it didn’t make the postage much dearer and the wraps are heaps cheaper.

Got to love how Liftinglarge charges so much less for postage to Australia than any other US site.

192

Worked an extra shift so had to make training super efficient and above all fast.

Today’s training:

8x2 143 lbs bench press vs chains adding 22 lbs at the top, all well below 6 RPE - arch felt great, got so much pressure going I burst a bunch of tiny blood vessels around my eyes.

8x2 308 lbs sumo deadlift against chains adding 66 lbs at the top all well below 7 RPE - managed some sets with double overhand grip.

Got both bench and DL sets done each in under 10 minutes each. That’s kind of good for me.

Because I was a bit short on time I just did each assistance exercises for a single AMRAP set:

Reverse hyper with 374 lbs 25 reps
Incline dumbbell press 60 lbs 16 reps
Chest supported rows 60 lbs/arms 15 reps
Another reverse hyper set at 374 lbs 13 reps
Pull aparts 20 reps

193

Very short turnaround between sessions, about 13 hours. On the plus side, managed to not wake the munchkin when I left for the gym. On the minus side I’m super tired.

Today’s training:

5x5 308 lbs SSB squat to box all around 7-8 RPE except for the last set which was more like 8-9 - using the box because I need to stop burying my squats so damn deep. I set it at a depth I know would get white lighted but isn’t super low. Used my 10 mm belt loose more for err the feel. Squatting out of a mono really is nice.

Bench press
3x5 209 lbs on average 8 RPE - yesterday’s and today’s setup felt great and the bar moved very smoothly. Given how tired I am, I am massively pleased with how good benching and squatting felt today.

Leg press 50x264 lbs rest/pause set : normally I’d have done three sets of SSB lunges but I didn’t want to hang around but wanted to hit my quads. This did that quite well.

Two sets alternating weighted dips with and extra 44 lbs and 30 lbs/arm hammer curls
8/12 per arm, 6/10 per arm

20 pull aparts, used a heavier band because the light one was being used.

194

For a change I thought I’d stick up a couple of photos of me.

EDIT my bw is sitting around 210 lbs and I’m 6’. At a guess my body fat is somewhere around 20%, maybe a shade lower.

195

1520×2688 669 KB

I’m finally getting some traps as well. Nothing big, but they’re getting there. I have up admit that I’m pleased though.

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1080×1920 256 KB

Today’s training:

8x2 242 lbs SSB squats to box vs chains (about 66 lbs at the top). All very easy, all around 6RPE - box was set a bit high though, see picture

1x20 242 lbs SSB squats to box to get a bit of a quad pump.

3x5 209 lbs bench press all around 8 RPE. Bar rolled in my hand a bit on sets one and three which wasn’t great but at that weight didn’t do too much.

3 sets alternating GHR and weighted dips with 44 lbs for 18/7, 16/7 and 17/7

Kroc rows 3 sets at 100 lbs for
20/20, 11/10, 10/10 (L/R)

23 band pull aparts.

197

Today’s training:

Bench press
4x2, 1x4 242 lbs, first four sets around 8 RPE and last set 10 RPE - hit the right upright on the fourth rep of the last set. Wore a belt for the last two sets which made a huge difference. I used my Inzer 10 mm at 3 holes left. Haven’t felt my abs work so hard in a while.

Deadlift clusters
Five singles at 495 lbs, stopped when the fifth felt like it was grinding. Rested about 35 seconds between reps

Reverse hyper 3 sets of 24, 21 and 20 with 352 lbs

3 sets alternating db incline press/chest supported rows with 60 lbs/arm for 12/12, 11/11 and 12/10

Hammer curls 3 sets at 30 lbs/arm for 10/10, 10/10 and 10/10

25 band pull aparts

198

Really eager to get into the gym which is always a sign things are going at least passably on the recovery front.

Today’s training:

8x2 165 lbs bench press vs chains adding 22 lbs at the top all around 6-7 RPE or even a bit lower.

8x2 341 lbs sumo deadlift vs chains adding about 66 lbs, all around 7-8 RPE - very marked difference in how they felt effort-wise compared to the 308 lbs last time.

I think this was the third set

Reverse hyper 3 sets with 352 lbs for 28, 21 and 25

Alternating db incline press/chest supported rows with 60 lbs/arm 3 sets of 12/12, 12/12 and 12/12 - while this is just assistance I’m taking my ability to hit 12 reps on each set for the first time when having had heavier main movements as an indicator I’m getting stronger.

25 light band pull aparts

199

Sumo deadlifts looking fast, keep up the good work.

200

[quote]Benanything wrote:
Sumo deadlifts looking fast, keep up the good work.[/quote]

Thanks! They didn’t feel super fast, but that’s chains for you. I’m sticking at this weight now but will add more chains, which should make it quite interesting.