Week 4 M OHP. This is getting better I think. Knocked it out pretty quick did some jump rope for conditioning. More yard work. Weight is moving down hard. I’m trying like hell to eat up but the wife is cutting and she makes supper usually. Which is fine just need to eat more…weighed 200 yesterday I ate a bunch of dinner and a couple extra shakes yesterday and this morning was up to 201. Got to figure out my sleep too. Man last night wasn’t good at all for sleep. Not sure what my deal is but maybe I’m too warm when I’m ready to sleep. Idk. But that’s got to improve.
Week 4 Squat H. Pretty good. Didn’t feel like I did much but the next day was wiped out. Rested yesterday after that and today did Week 4 of Bench L. It went well. Used the new Swiss bar for rows and ssb bar for jm press for assistance. Skipping rope and mountain climbers were conditioning. Smoked some beef ribs from our side of beef today. Dayum…they were good. Meat processor cut every rib seperate though so I tied them together best I could. Smoked with some mulberry wood for around 5 hours around 300 degrees. Perfect.
Mulberry wood is a pretty light fruity wood. Only thing I would do different is add some pecan or hickory to it.
Probably should start cutting here pdq. Bday is coming up in a couple weeks so I’m sure that will be a shit show, but other than that I bet I can get the weight to fly off. Probably just pick up more conditioning at first see what that does to me before I start cutting too many calories. I’ve had a hard time keeping the weight up at 205. Brian’s powerbuilder program has my core wrecked like never before and it probably is great for recomp. So we will see how it goes the next few weeks.
Week 5 Alsruhe’s powerbuilder DL. Heavy week. Not too heavy but feel good as I’ve felt in a minute. I haven’t done conventional deads in a while before this program. I can tell it needs work though. Antagonistic was dips and Antagonistic for assistance was banded dips. Continuing Sumos for assistance which I like.
Tomorrow doing a consult for a sleep study. I need to figure my sleep out. I never sleep not sure its sleep apnea but I’m a very light sleeper and have trouble falling asleep. We will see. Hopefully figure something out.
Doing a 2 night at home sleep study but the Doctor said that it doesn’t sound like I have sleep apnea. He says its possible, but more than likely it is a familial trait. He says that its still possible that I have sleep apnea hence the study, but he believes even the newer Cognitive Behavioral Therapy wouldn’t be of much use either since I have had issues sleeping off and on my whole life. He thinks unfortunately medications may be the best route, but he is optimistic about one treatment of a low dose of doxepin. He says its an old school prozac type drug that when used in low low doses like 3mg helps regulate circadian rhythms regulate and it isn’t anticholinergic like benadryl or other sleep medications are. Therapeutic rationale for low dose doxepin in insomnia patients
Z12 works great but if I use it too often or even a couple nights a week then the efficacy isn’t there.So I’ll wait a month and try it again and it works again. Either way sleep apnea or no this doctor seems to think we can figure it out. I was wondering if possibly it could be a thyroid issue because my wife has the same restlessness and always being tired and come to find out she has hashimotos. But he didn’t think that was an issue here since I’ve dealt with this forever. Hope we get it figured out.
Week 5 OHP. Light ohp work with pull downs, ab wheel, and skipping rope. Assiatance was pull ups and Arnold presses, Russian twist, and banded kettlebell swings. Did an extra giant set of laterals and partials and banded stiff arm pulldowns and decline situps.
Week 5 Squat. Medium squat day. Nothing too fancy here. Did some SSB for assistance. For conditioning I did one of his Challenge workouts from Phase II program he put out. It was an easier one…not that it was easy but Alsruhe has some crazy challenge conditioning programs in there.
Werk 5 Bench. Heavy day and all went great. Trying to really work on my back during this. Football bar rows and single arm t bar rows were the antagonistic. Assistance was close neutral grip bench. Ab wheel and weighted crunches for abs and banded kb swings and mountain climbers for conditioning.
Week 6 BDay Deads. Dips, Deads, Hollow Rocks, and Jump rope. Assistance banded Dips, Sumos, plank, and mountain climbers. Tried his squat challenge for conditioning from his Phase 2 program. I’m grateful people kept calling me…because no way. I made it almost 2 minutes straight with just 135 on the bar and thankfully someone called. I got 30 something squats. I did another 1:30 and was done. Was supposed to do 3 minutes rest 3 then do 2 etc…man. I need to try that again. Just not sure I want too.
Wife made me some Paella and a chocolate mousse cake that was insane. Dark chocolate…the good stuff. Couldn’t get any clams but were able to get everything else for the Paella. That stuff is damn good. I mean fairly healthy…considering too. Good day.
Did the push up challenge from Phase 2. Wow…lost track after the 160th pushup. I’m not sure you can count 25% of those push-ups as push-ups but I finished it. @TrainForPain how many of those challenges have you done yet? I am picking and choosing which probably isn’t fair but I see burpees and bear walks or the like and immediately scroll down to the next workout.
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They’re horrible!
I just finished my 5th one of these workouts, and I’ve tried to hit every rep. There was one day that was a billion lunges or something and I didn’t make it all the way through.
By far the worst for me (to date) was the deck of cards one. The exercises were body weight man makers, which are Satan’s doing, hollow rocks x 2, inverted rows, and Cossack squats. I was a puddle by the end. It was brutal.
I saw a CrossFit video of a couple of the games athletes getting so smoked they were basically laying on the ground and dragging themselves up for their burpees. That made me feel a lot better about how sloppy these get by the end. So I think you’re good on your push-ups!
So you haven’t hit the push up challenge yet. You’ll run into it soon i believe. Reading through it I saw one challenge was a 12 minute plank. I rarely have done much direct ab work until running some of @Alpha stuff and was thinking great I don’t shake like a leaf when doing minute planks must be doing something right…but 12 minutes… i maybe maybe could squeeze out 3 without cheating. Maybe.
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Well this is scary to even read. I did one of his programs several years ago and it had the long planks in it. I don’t remember exactly how I cheated, but I know I didn’t make it through!
I like that this stuff is hard, but I am not loving the EMOM stuff. Maybe I just haven’t got my stride or I’m too stuck in my ways.
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I was dragging ass today but got in @Alpha Powerbuilder week 6 OHP. For Assistance I did those Lee Boyce banded DB OHPs my left shoulder felt weird doing those. Not sure whether it was good or bad but maybe need to do them from time to time. I will say my core has never felt more tight after doing this program. Down to 201 this AM.
Sleep Doc called me yesterday and said I had one minor episode of apnea during the whole sleep test. He doesn’t recommend the CPAP but the low dose doxypin is worth a shot. So I’ll start that soon. He said he would rather prescribe the generic drug but the lowest dosage of that is 10mg and of course they are capsules. He said I could 1980s it and get the cocaine razor and mirror out and split the capsule and then split the powder in half and put it in water. That seems like a boat load of trouble. He said of course the drug has been around for 50 years however the drug company lowered the dosage and renamed the same drug to hike the price for use as a sleep aid. So he said try the full 10mg if its too much we can try something else. Z12 has been working great here lately though too so we shall see.
Squat day. Not my favorite but…gotta squat. Leg curls as the “antagonist”…or agonist more like warm up today. Light squat session so really worked bracing and back. Weighted crunches super set with Russian twists. Jump rope till I was gasping. Then rinse and repeat upping the squats. Assistance was glute bridge, front squat, decline sit ups, and mountain climbers until my abs and wind were messed up.
Then…then…lunge challenge from phase 2. I tried to really hit the PC today but with the lunges the quads are in pump city. The first 5 minutes of that challenge completely sucks but at least it gets better.
After the squat session we had my father in laws bday. Fried chicken and cake. Then for my belated bday present my father in law brought over his brush hog and we cut a trail from our house down to the pond. Lots of cutting wood and brush hogging, lots…and poison ivy and snakes. It looks cool. I’ve got a lot of cutting to do and burning but after that it should be nice.
Took the Family to a local state park yesterday. Tons of hiking with children on my back and shoulders. Hard to climb some of the cliffs with them hanging on you but we managed. Still putting on weight…which I’m irritated with. Its not much but its not going the direction I was wanting for the challenge. Don’t have a ton of time left.
Killed Bench Day week 6. Onto week 7. Not much to report other than nice session lots of effort. Bench seems to be holding up and shoulder is not sore at all. Just wondering if its how @Alpha lays out his training. May be something I stick to in the future with all the shoulder crap I’ve dealt with.
Week 7 Deadlift Heavy. Deads were good. Feeling like I’m getting good at it again. Good sign is that I think I’m going to need to buy more weights. Dips, weighted sit ups and mountain climbers for the Main Mover. Assitance as usual was Sumos, banded dips (with some “reverse shrugs”), hanging leg raise, and kb swings. Conditioning was 5 rounds of 100 skips, 5 pull ups, 10 push ups, 15 air squats. All in all great day. Really enjoyed this one. Looking leaner, but still want to drop a couple more lbs.
Weight this AM was 202. Doctor’s script for low dose doxepin works but its strong. I wish they could cut it in half. I am still pretty drowsy.
Alright took the weekend off had some beers and ate like a pig only one day…and not really that bad even. I did Week 7 @Alpha Powerbuilder program OHP. It was a light day so not much to report for the light conditioning though I did a giant set of Skips, High Incline BP (front delts suck my OHP sucks…just trying anything at this point), Shoulder weird 6ways thing. I can’t find the video of what I did on that but basically: lateral raise into a cuban press and then reversed the whole thing. Assistance was Seated Viking Press on Powertec Machine…that seems to get my delts going pretty good.
Man I’ve been back and forth on this…and I am not sure where to go next. I know my strength sucks…but it is also look good shirtless season. I have a couple more weeks of Powerbuilder, and I’m going to knock those out. I was thinking of BBB Challenge to work on both size and strength but watching cals on that is not recommended. But there is some strength focus as with any 531 program which I really probably need TO get bigger. However, there is something in me that loves the bodybuilder type workouts. Wanting to run Reactive Pump and give Meadows stuff a try. That looks like it can be ran in a deficit calorically. I don’t want to do it in too much of a deficit because I do want some size on me but I could lean up a bit more…decisions…