You’re very welcome dude! I’m the same way! I want easy to set up stretches! And yes, immediately following your chest work, for example, you would do your chest stretch before moving on to the next body part.
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Hahaha, my people! The Orbitz “serving” is two pieces, and I reserve that for special occasions, like driving to work with my fresh cup of coffee in the morning, after lunch, and sometimes at the end of the day while I’m doing paperwork. I’ve tried cutting back as well as cold turkey, and so far have not been able to tame it.
I feel like I need to go away to rehab, where I can spend all day in groups, doing therapeutic art, and journaling to free myself of it.
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Pause on training this morning. I was feeling queasy before lunch yesterday, and it culminated in me going to bed praying the prayer we all know of “please don’t throw up please don’t throw up”. I thankfully DIDN’T throw up, but I did sleep until my wife’s alarm, call into work and say I wouldn’t be coming in, then sleep another 5 hours, woke up feeling weak and dizzy. I’m focusing on getting my electrolytes back up and currently living off some Metabolic Drive since it’s easy to stomach.
Got too many big things coming up to compromise my recovery. I’m also proud of myself for making that decision, because I know a past form of me woudln’t.
Fun aside: my kid’s school was having a “chef’s night out” fundraiser at a local pizza place. There wasn’t a single “meat only” sorta option there (my precious wings!), so I ended up ordering a cobb salad, extra chicken, and then ate only the toppings (blue cheese, hardboiled egg, bacon and chicken) and left all the lettuce behind. My wife did a double take when I was down and then just gave me a knowing smile.
Also, one of my fever dreams last night involved being at a summer camp, going to the breakfast buffet, and being VERY upset that someone had eaten all the bacon…so that means I’m probably doing ok.
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Hoping this passes quickly. Sounds like you’re doing all the right things: food, hydration, electrolytes, sleep.
Only other thing I’d suggest considering is to attempt to sweat it out. Hot drinks, “warming spices” (think chai spices, but especially cinnamon and ginger), lots of blankets, steam, warm bath, etc.
Yes, I’d say your subconscious is planning for a complete recovery! lol
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Appreciate that very much man. Definitely all aboard the sweat train as it is. Spices are a no-go with my current protocol, but otherwise good to go.
@EmilyQ Hah! Absolutely. Got big nutritional debauchery plans ahead this weekend: can’t let a little thing like dying get in the way of that!
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Best wishes mate. Sounds like you did the clever thing by resting.
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Thanks @simo74. Already feeling like my old self. Down day was the right call. Might get in a walk outside to get some fresh air
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Did this yesterday. Was feeling pretty beat up from life in general so went for a walk. My son joined me on his bike. Sometimes a good walk and some fresh air is all we need. Sometimes its not enough,
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Holy cow, dude, this brought back so many memories. I used to love that show.
A buddy and I were talking about 1 day/week training. I remembered this article:
(Apologies if I’m not allowed to post things from his website.)
What do you think of something like that? Personally (and I will totally defer to Wendler here) I would’ve maybe alternated squats and SLDL with deadlifts and something like lunges or front squats. How would you approach a fairly barebones approach to lifting once a week?
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@simo74 Walking is SUCH a boon for so many things. It really is my “all things solution”, and definitely what I see myself doing for activity in my twilight years, haha. Definitely gonna be that mallwalker in my velcro shoes…assuming malls even exist when I get there.
@jshaving Always a pleasure to have you swing by! I honestly think Jim nailed it right there. I wouldn’t alternate at all: his selections make a TON of sense. If we’re only lifting once a week, we’re going to make that session count. In that regard, the squat trumps the deadlift. Dan John has spoken about this, but ultimately it boils down to the fact that the squat doesn’t rely on your hands to be the connection to the weight, as compared to a deadlift. This becomes important, because the hands can signal to the brain when the set is “over”. You can experience this WITH the deadlift: try pulling a double overhand deadlift your max strapped/mixed grip dead. Even though all your OTHER muscles are strong enough to make the pull, when you go for it, your body will simply say “no” and shut it down, because the hands are telling the brain “this is too heavy: we aren’t lifting it”
When we remove the hands from the equation, we can push our body STUPIDLY far. This is great for a PR set followed by a widowmaker. We can just squeeze out every last drop of us on those sets and make it that we NEED a full week to recover from the workout. Following that up with some SLDLs is a super awesome oldschool combo for hitting almost every single muscle in the body. You can see Stuart McRobert talk about this in “Brawn” and John McCallum in “The Complete Keys to Progress”. It also features in Super Squats, and even Arnold and co were fans of that. In truth, I’m just not the biggest fan of the traditional deadlift as far as a builder goes.
Funny enough though, if we flipped the script and homey could train 5-7 days a week but only for 10-15 minutes a day, THEN the deadlift would shine and the squat would be on the back burner, as that’s effectively Dan John’s “Easy Strength” approach. Since the deadlift tends to be limited in the whole “hands” thing mentioned earlier, it works well for high frequency stuff. We saw that in Pavel Tsastouline’s “Power to the People” program and his modified DeLorme protocol.
From there, Jim’s RX on the bodyweight work per day is solid. I like Jamie Lewis’ 300 squats and 300 push ups per day, along with a 2 mile walk. But if we’re including chins, hell, we could just do the Cindy WOD and call it good there.
Long response, but I really appreciated the question: hope it was helpful!
AM WORKOUT (0420 Wake up via alarm)
5/3/1 BUILDING THE MONOLITH Week 5, Workout 5
GIANT SETS (press-squat-chin)
Axle clean and strict press away
10x5x113 (doubled up on sets)
Buffalo Bar Squat
5xBar
5x135
5x215
5x250
5x280
Weighted NG chins
5x5x50
GIANT SETS (press-shrug-BPA)
Axle clean and strict press away
5x5x113
Axle shrug against short strong bands bands
1x34
2x33
Band pull aparts
1x34
2x33
Buffalo Bar Squat (widowmaker)
36x220
END OF REQUIRED WORK
3x10 standing ab wheel
75x180 reverse hyper
Lateral raise dropset
BREAKFAST
Short walk w/dog
Notes:
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Came into this feeling so much better than I did yesterday. Just night and day difference: amazing what a solid down day can do. Was still not 100%, but definitely enough to be able to put in the work. Only place where I could feel the effects was on the widowmaker: I was definitely giving it my all, but I could tell my body wasn’t ready to bypass the governor and swim out to deeper waters. But discretion is the better part of valor, and it means I can really get stupid on the final week.
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Since the RX was 15 sets of presses today, I doubled up on the first round. I’d hit a press, do the squat, do the chin, then do another set of presses before changing the weights on the squat and starting over. Worked out very well: still kept the time on the shorter side for the workout. I was feeling the fatigue toward the end there.
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My abs feel like they’re being ripped apart. It’s interesting: on the squatting days, I can’t get a very full stretch on the ab wheel, but on the pull days I can go DEEP into that movement, and this tends to be the outcome of it. Really just appreciating getting in that 3x10 each lifting session: seems to be the sweet spot.
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Calories were on the low side yesterday due to initial queasiness, but I DID manage to get in 3 whole eggs and a significant hunk of bison meatloaf made by my Valkyrie for dinner, which I’m sure had some restorative qualities. Legit, if you asked me what it takes to heal: that’s the answer.
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Had to skip Tang Soo Do sparring last night, but, in turn, it meant that my Valkyrie and my kiddo took first and second place respectively in the Dojang sparring tournament. Couldn’t be prouder.
Hey this is pretty sweet
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Never a problem to get a long response from you - it’s always helpful. Thank you for the input.
That’s a great point. I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose it is easier to “quit” a deadlift set, if you were going to do a widowmaker or some other high-rep set. When the weight’s on your back, you at least have to finish that set if you don’t want to die. And once you’re back up, you might as well go back down, haha.
I have seen a lot of squats + SLDL before. I feel like I don’t see RDL’s listed very much by “older” guys…I know they’re different, but still, kinda similar. Is the RDL a newer “invention”?
Any thoughts on bench vs press? I see the press as more of a fullbody lift that might be helpful if you’re only lifting heavy once a week, but on the other hand, the bench will pretty much always be a heavier lift.
There really never seems to be an “end” to a squat set. It’s like you can always just stand there and take in more breaths and get out ONE more rep, whereas the dead just seems to finally say “no”.
They RDL is definitely a newer lift, and it’s one of those where, like the Z-press, it got lost in translation. The story goes that the American weightlifting team observed the Romanians at some meet performing this deadlift in the warm-ups and determined it was the “secret to their success” and dubbed it the Romanian deadlift, only for it to later be realized that it was just something that one particular lifter was doing on that one particular day to get warmed up, haha. The SLDL has a richer history, and dudes used to stand on platforms and have the bar on their feet to increase the ROM. It ALSO used to be done with a totally rounded back that would unround through the lift up to the top
There’s a GREAT photo series of Stuart McRobert demonstrating this SOMEWHERE on the web, but I’m struggling to find it right now. I’ll have to keep digging.
EDIT: This isn’t it, but it at least shows the starting position
Regarding bench vs press: I ALWAYS favor the press, especially when taken from the floor. I find it to be a superior physique developer, but part of that is because I think yoked shoulders, traps, rear delts and spinal erectors look cooler than a full set of pecs. BUT, along with that, if a dude is cranking out a TON of push ups and dips on the downtime, their pecs are gonna get plenty worked. All that said, another solid compromise would be incline benching.
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That’s really interesting, never knew about the backstory of the RDL. Glad you’re feeling better after some rest and meat.
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Hey thanks so much man! You and I both know the healing power of food. And this was MUCH better than my previous approach of like 5000 calories of Burger King, haha.
And I may even have the story TOTALLY wrong, but if nothing else, it’s a good story about a story. So much of lifting back in the day was just the telephone game, but I think that telephone game actually had some benefit to it. You have some dude that squatted 300lbs, and by the time the story gets to young Paul Anderson he hears it was 600lbs, and he goes “Hold my milk: I got this”
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Jefferson Curls! Those are pretty old.
High rep seems to be best; 10-20+. Some people said “don’t use more than 100 pounds”, later that went to 150, and later that went to “bodyweight” and even later “1.5x bodyweight”. Nobody was going too heavy though, it was intended specifically as a spinal erector builder.
I know a lot of people aren’t that well read in this, but I appreciate that you are and that you can throw out references for all this stuff.
EDIT: Here’s from 1924
EDIT 2:
There’s an interesting note on mobility here. You use the lift itself to make you more mobile, not the other way around. Plenty to be learned from that.
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Maybe it will be a virtual mall with a treadmill. I deff hope to be the old guy that walks everyday and sits on a bench and feeds the ducks
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On one of my hikes, we ran into a couple who were hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. They had already hiked 2000 miles and who knows how much elevation by the time we met them. They were in their 60s, at least.
So if the malls and the ducks don’t pan out, there’s always that.
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@LoRez Appreciate those props dude. Old school game recognized old school game, haha. Great passages there too.
@simo74 That’s definitely a dream for peace right there. Might be hard for me to feed the ducks while I catch myself day-dreaming about eating all of their eggs though, haha.
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Already shaping up to be an awesome day. Slept off and on until 0700, got in 50 squats and 100 push ups, amazing breakfast and then hit a (recent) deadlift PR of 13+3+3x405
This was a VERY successful ROM progression cycle that got me here. Just this little 5 minute workout once a week is what I need. I’ve really tried so hard to re-invent the wheel on this, and I imagine it was fear of success. Still felt that pull in my left bicep, and I was overextending the lockout just to prove a point to myself, but this is a big W, especially for something I pulled in my pajamas right after breakfast.
Dig that DK shirt. I feel like to really tie it all together nerdstyle, I should break this out
Yup. Carnivorous Berserker Gorilla. I found my spirit animal.
We’re going for a family 5 mile walk soon, I got in another 200 push ups before that, and then I feast on ribs at my favorite local BBQ place. Lunch was a fair amount of carne asada. This is living.
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