We have had some pretty serious rain for the past couple of days, and I started to get some water in my basment yesterday. Spent most of the day with the wet vac, keeping the trickles of water at bay. I wasn’t sure if I’d have my gym back together in time for todays lift.
I woke up this morning and had 3-4 inches of water covering everything. Called out of work…
03/15/10 - GPP
A1) Wet Vac
x 5 hours
A2) Carry 12 Gallons of Water up basement steps
x 5 hours
I timed myself and it took between 2min30sec and 3min to fill the wet vac and carry it outside and dump it. I figure I easily did 100 trips, maybe more, with about 100lbs of water per load. My back is going to hurt tomorrow.
I checked every Home Depot/Lowe’s/Sears around for utility pumps or sump pumps and the entire state is out of stock, and everyone’s basement is flooded. Even checked the big plumbing supply stores.
I made one last ditch effor back to the same Lowe’s I started at and they had one battery operated back up sump pump (the one that kicks in if you lose power). I just hooked it up, and finally looks like it’s emptying out. Hopefully the battery doesn’t die before it’s empty. It will recharge whenever the pump kicks off. What a day. To top if off, I finally made it in to work for my last two clients of the day, and left my wife to wet vac the remaining puddles.
[quote]mrodock wrote:
What a rough day! Hope that rain slows down, wow.[/quote]
Thanks. Sunny and 60 degrees today. We got about 10 inches of rain in total. The sump pump worked all night and all the water is out of the basement. I’ve got a couple of fans blowing, and the doors and windows open, so it should dry out pretty quick. Needless to say the gym is out of commission for a few days, but I’ll find somewhere else to train for a few days. Could have been a lot worse.
Well, the basement is still a little too damp to put the gym back together, so I had to train at a real gym today. Hopefully I can return to normal by the weekend.
03/18/10 - Bench Day
A) Bench Press
…225x5
285x8x4
B1) Incline DB Fly
25x8
35x10
45x10x3
B2) Incline DB Press
25x10
35x12
45x12x3
C) Rope Pushdown (different machine than normal)
60x10
100x20x3
The last set of Bench was a real grind. My plan is to go up to 295x8x4 next week, and then drop down to 5x5’s for a few weeks. 295 will be a real challenge for all 4 sets…
A) Seated Shoulder Press
barx20
95x12
135x6
195x8x4
B1) Upright Rows w/EZ curl bar
EZ+90x12x3
B2) Side Delt Plate Raise
25x10x3
C) Front Delt Plate Raise
45x20x3
I was going to put all the rubber flooring back in place and put the gym back together, but we might get another 2 1/2 inches of rain tomorrow. I don’t think I’ll end up with another flood, but it is possible that since the ground is still pretty saturated, I might end up with a few streams of water rolling across my floor. I decided to just put down one piece of 4’x6’ rubber flooring and set the power rack on that, so I could lift today and tomorrow.
If we do flood again, I have a sump pump set up in the area where the majority of the water came in on the front side of the basement. The water streams come in from the back at the bulkhead. This water never pools, it just runs across the floor to the front and crosses under my gym floor along the way. It never causes damage, it’s just a pain in the ass moving all the wet flooring to let the concrete dry out and prevent mold. Here’s to hoping we stay dry…
My basement is finally dry, and I will put the flooring back down, and start training at home again tomorrow. Today went pretty well, but the music playing in the gym was god awful, and the 2nd biggest guy there was about 165lbs.
Monday got a little crazy on me, and I had to miss my Squat day, and Tuesday I was on the road all day. I may do a Squat/DL hybrid of some sort tomorrow to make up for it.
Shoulder press felt heavier than I thought it would. Everything else felt good, and the upright rows haven’t bothered my shoulder yet. I will progress these very slowly and see how it responds.
A) Safety Bar Squat (Yoke Bar)
barx10
155x8
245x5
335x8x3
B) Hypers
+50x12x3
C) Lat Pulldown
100x6
140x6
180x10x3
Broke out the SSB today. I haven’t used it in quite a while, and it beat up my upper back pretty quickly. I definitely want to bring this back into my training. I’m thinking about using it on my DL day as a supplemental movement. Not 100% sure yet. I’ll figure that out next week while I’m in Mexico sipping Tequila on the beach.
[quote]Phillip Wylie wrote:
Nice workouts. Enjoy your trip to Mexico. [/quote]
Thanks, just got back from a week in Playa Del Carmen (Mexico), ate too much, drank too much, and was pretty lazy all week. I either caught a cold on the plane ride back, or allergy season is in full effect. Either way, breathing was labored, and I felt weak. I eased into it today, got real deep on the Squats and pause each one in the hole for a second.
04/11/10 - Squat Day
A) Excessive warmup
B) Squats
barx10x2
135x10x2
225x8x2
315x8x2
405x3x2
C) Lat Pulldowns
100x10
140x8
180x8x3
Did a bunch of stretching afterwards. My groin feels great. My right hip flexor felt tight today, never really got it to loosen up, not injured just tight. I have a feeling this whole week will be an easing back into it week, but if I feel good at some point, I’ll start hitting it hard again.
I’m going to try to do some cardio every day, just because I felt like a total lardass after a week of all you can eat and drink in Mexico.
Bench felt ok today, I thought I would have been a little weaker. I still want to get my Incline up, and I figure the best way to increase it is to actually do the lift occasionally. Somehow it got neglected over the past couple of months.
I have decided not to pull heavy from the floor every week for a while and see how it goes. I’ll probably pull from the floor every other week, and do higher rep accessory work on the other week.
Not much exciting here, just getting in some higher reps.
Hey Modi, you have a great log going here. I really enjoy following your progress as well as Meat’s logs. I also wanted to echo what another poster wrote in that you really got jobbed on your squat attempts at the Arnold. Those looked like “convincingly deep” squats to me.
Anyway, I notice that you do a lot of straight sets in your training (even on your main power movements). This seems to go against the norm lately, where most guys seem to want to ramp up on almost every movement. I have found that I get good strength gains from ramping, but that my overall size gains have been lacking from this approach. Have you noticed better size gains from a more volume-oriented approach as opposed to when you performed more ramping? And thanks for sharing as much info as you do on this site.
[quote]Stl Ram wrote:
Hey Modi, you have a great log going here. I really enjoy following your progress as well as Meat’s logs. I also wanted to echo what another poster wrote in that you really got jobbed on your squat attempts at the Arnold. Those looked like “convincingly deep” squats to me.
Anyway, I notice that you do a lot of straight sets in your training (even on your main power movements). This seems to go against the norm lately, where most guys seem to want to ramp up on almost every movement. I have found that I get good strength gains from ramping, but that my overall size gains have been lacking from this approach. Have you noticed better size gains from a more volume-oriented approach as opposed to when you performed more ramping? And thanks for sharing as much info as you do on this site.
[/quote]
Thanks. The judging was strict. Not much else to say.
That’s actually a good point and a good question which I have considered a lot lately. I have definitely gotten some good size gains from the all the volume. I used to do a lot of 5x5 (straight set) stuff, but recently I think the straight sets came from from my time spent with Sheiko and then Smolov.
I gave quite a bit of thought (last week while sipping tequila) to what I would do this training cycle. I still like the 5x5’s and 3x3, but I’m considering ramping the weight on each set, like you mentioned, to a final max 5 rep set or max 3 rep set.
My other option is to keep the weight the same on all 3 to 5 sets, but add a chain to each set to overload the top. As much as I hate the high rep stuff, I have found that 8-12+ reps and 4-5 sets has been great for adding some extra size, so I will keep my acc/supp stuff straight sets in that range.
I feel like my last 6 months was basically a rehab cycle, and it’s time to get strong again.
A) Seated Shoulder Press
barx12
135x8
185x4
205x8x4
B1) Upright Row
EZ+90x12x3
B2) Side Delt Plate Raise
25’sx12x3
C) Front Delt Plate Raise (with plate holder)
60x20x3
D) Spin Bike
x15min
Shoulders felt good today. I modified the way I was doing the Upright Rows, so that I lean forward just a little and tuck my chin and it doesn’t bother my right shoulder (biceps tendon) at all. I feel like I will be able to start adding some decent weight to these if I can stay pain free.
B) Squat
barx12
135x10
225x8
315x3
365x5
385x5
405x5
425x1
C) Lat Pulldown
100x6
140x6
180x10x3
D1) 45 degree Hypers
45lbsx15x3
D2) Weighted Situps
45lbsx20x3
Frustrating day on the Squats. The weights all felt light, but my left high hamstring, and then my left glute bothered me on every rep at 365 and up. The weight felt fine out of the hole, but as I tried to push my hips through to finish, I would get a deep aching pain. I tried working through it, but was unable to fire my left glute and kept coming up sideways. I stopped to foam roll for 5 minutes after the 405 set, bumped the weight to 425 and racked it after the first rep.
Everything else felt fine, and it didn’t bother me at all on the weighted hypers. I’m just going to attack it with foam rolling and stretching this week and see how it feels for DL day.
E) Spin Bike (10sec on/15 sec off)
5 min warmup
5 intervals
2 min recovery
5 intervals
2 min cooldown
Bench felt good today. I have wanted to add the chains back into my training to work on my lockout. I just kept adding a set of chains to each set of 275 to see where I was at. I haven’t decided whether I want to try to work up to 5 reps with 5 chains at that weight, or just stick with something like 3 chains and try to work my way up with the bar weight. I’m probably going to lean towards the latter, since 5 chains will be pretty light on the chest and very heavy at lockout. I’m not sure that there will be enough carryover from the 5 chains. Maybe I just answered my own question.
I am definitely going to keep the Incline Bench in the rotation. I’d really like to get up to 275 for 5 on these. Today felt hard, but it wasn’t an all out effort.
Finished with some heavy Rope Pushdowns (I do these on the Lat Pulldown machine, so the stack is much heavier than on a pushdown column). And then wrapped a Green band around my back and did 3 sets of 10 incline pushups. I just used the saftey bars in my power cage, and they were set to pin #11, and used that height. Got a good pump from these, I’ll lower the pin height as they get easier.
A) SLDL from Floor
barx12
135x8
225x8
315x8
365x8x3
B) Pendlay Rows
135x8
225x8x3
C1) Shrugs
365x15x3
C2) Abs over GHR
10x3
SLDL’s didn’t bother me as much as I expected. My hammy/glute issue seems to be worse when I go from bent knee and bent hip to full extension of both. With my knees locked in just a slight bend from start to finish on SLDL, it felt pretty decent. I think RDL’s would bother me more right now, or maybe the foam rolling is helping already (wishful thinking).
Been a while since I updated my log. I had 3 pretty shitty lifts since 4/22. I had/have a lower respitory infection. I lost my voice for 3 days, and have been coughing up some funky flem balls. Seems to be getting better, so I attempted a real lift today.
B) Incline Bench
225x5 245x5x3 (PR +10lbs for set/rep scheme)
C) Rope Pushdown
85x12x3
Bench felt a lot harder than I would have liked, but I haven’t lifted heavy in about 2 weeks. The PR’s are misleading since I have never really set any 3 chain PR’s.
Surprisingly Incline felt much better than expected. I thought I would stick with 225, but it came off my chest fast and easy lockouts, so I upped the weight from 2 weeks ago for a somewhat real PR.