I can definitely see that happening. Sticking with pressing is going to help a lot too I feel, just because it will take far less time to build up to a max compared to my deads. If nothing else, I enjoy the novelty of the new approach.
Just pulled the trigger on some MMA mats for the home. Be nice to have a dedicated training space, and maybe we can cover some VERY basic grappling.
Hah! Reminds me of one of my favorite jokes.
āI ever tell you about the time I won a 6 on 1 fight? Man, we really kicked that guyās ass.ā
Iām considering running this in September. Where can I find the info? I did google, but āDeep Waterā returned me an erotic film and āDeep Water Workoutā is a bunch of ocean swimming workouts.
Google āJon Andersen Deep Water free ebookā and the first link you get should get you set up. Otherwise, make sure you include the name āJon Andersenā in your searches. You can get it off amazon on kindle that way.
Thanks, just bought it!
Oh man, get ready for a ride. That book is a trip, and the workout is a big written out āf**k youā the first time you read it, haha.
I know Iām late for this but I have to say I really enjoyed your last blog post. I didnāt feel offended by any of the statements myself (sorry), I simply disagree with some. Obviously short statements like that are by nature matters of interpretation, which I am sure was intended.
I made it into a little game for myself and included my perspective as a trainer (keep in mind that I deal with a lot of pre-sick, injured and older clients or simply people without an athletic background or athletic ambitions as well as the typical gym bro and so on and so forth - ALL kinds of gym goers).
I got 21 āagreesā and 12 ādisagreesā.
@Koestrizer Glad you appreciated it dude, and that sounds like a productive game. Itās always worth remembering that, when I write, itās never about things as they apply to others but simply to myself, as part of my whole solipsism shtick, and when one writes under that context with a bunch of short sound bite quotes, itās bound to get interesting, haha. But fundamentally I want people to do exactly what you did: agree or disagree, just THINK about what these opinions mean and what their implications are. Thanks for the comment!
YESTERDAYS LUNCHTIME WORKOUT
Buffalo bar Squats
5xBar
5x140
3x230
1x320
1x370
9*x410 with a crunch
Notes: I have some video of this that Iāll upload later, but I was coming up from the bottom of the 9th rep when suddenly my left inner thigh muscle/groin basically collapsed on itself. I had initially thought I had re-injured my hamstring, but it turned out to be the groin muscles which have been bugging me for about a month now. Most times, when I train through the pain my body adapts, but this time it won.
What sucked was that I was rushing this workout already so I could get to work, so I had enough time to fall down on the floor, do a quick assessment of the damage, put the weights and bar away, ice it for 15 minutes, grab a show and go sit at a desk for 8 hours, which was about the worst thing possible. I still did my best to get up and move around frequently, and I kept forcing my body to move through the painful parts of the ROM so that I wouldnāt get totally locked down.
Iām fairly certain what Iāve done is muscular rather than connective tissue, as I CAN move through all parts of the ROM, just with significant pain. Iām very swollen at the moment but no bruising so far, but that may come in a few days like it did with the hamstring.
Injuries donāt tend to upset me, as I usually earn them, but Iām a little miffed about this one because rep 9 isnāt where I struggle on this particular squat workout. Were it on rep 12 or 13 and I was grinding it out this would have been completely acceptable, but this being on rep 9 makes it seem super flukey.
The things I have to acknowledge: I am very lean (for me) right now, and that is always when I get hurt. In about a month Iāve blown out the hamstring and the groin (and as an aside, I also hurt the left side of my abs from this, most likely as a result of collapsing with 410lbs on my back). When I blew out my ACL, I was also very lean. The correlation is clear. With no competitions coming up in the future and, quite frankly, me possibly just plain no longer caring about competing in strongman, I most likely need to start getting smart about my training. The solution is most likely going to be about making light weight feel heavy, at least for the most immediate way forward. I know that I have the ability to rapidly adapt to heavy loads when the time comes, and that should be what an intensification cycle is for. Itās also worth observing that when I started stretching, I started getting hurt. I imagine Iām entering parts of the ROM I havenāt been at before, and my structures in those particular spots arenāt as strong as the rest of my body.
For the immediate immediate future, my squat ROM is very small right now, so lower body training may boil down to very short ROM trap bar work for stupidly high reps and some manner of box squatting. Hatfield squats may appear on the menu, as that was effectively how I was squatting at work to get through the ROM.
Iām going to go back to what I was doing before as far as structuring my programming by book-ending my lower body workouts (so go squat-bench-press-dead-bench-press-squat), giving me longer to recover between heavy lower body workouts.
I donāt see too much impact on my upper body workouts for the way forward. Might have to limit log work on the pressing, since cleaning it will suck.
Sorry to hear that mate. I am assuming that When it went you managed to safely drop the bar or you had safeties set in the rack??
Hope you heal quickly, sounds to me like you need to eat a bit more and help speed up that recovery. The
I collapsed into the rack and cracked the back of my skull onto the bar, haha. But yeah, I never DONāT have the safeties in the rack. But even if I did, I imagine the worst Iād do is crack the concrete.
I have no plans on eating more, haha. Right now, leanness is still the goal. Iāll most likely step up the calories around mid-august.
Either way glad you survived.
Thanks man. Itās what Iām good at, haha.
Man that, does not sound like fun at all.
I get what youāre saying, but on the other hand, the fact that the muscle has been bugging you for a while seems very un-flukey, doesnāt it?
Itās not surprising that it was that muscle that got hurt: just that it was during that particular moment.
Itās a good thing I went back to the video, because it looks like I was actually on rep 8 when I failed, which makes it even crazier, haha
Iām thinking I may go back to 5/3/1 SVR II for squats when I get back. I liked the changes week to week, and that might be good for me. Otherwise, perhaps something even simpler and just sets of 10 or so. Squats keep being a lower and lower priority in my training, and if stuff like this is going to happen Iām most likely going to just keep them stupidly simple.
Speedy recovery! Youāre well experienced with injuries and tougher than concrete so I donāt expect this to become a major set back.
Funny, I was going to do this for my bench soon. How did you find it in the past?
Really sucks about the injury. Hopefully the Iron Gods grant you a speedy recovery!
@Koestrizer Thanks very much dude. That comment meant a lot. And per our discussion on psychology earlier, thatās just about the best thing you could have said to me, haha. I donāt deal with sympathy well, but appreciate assurances.
@kdjohn Thanks dude. Iām already back to bodyweight squats without much issue and seem to have ROM back. The pain sucks, but thankfully that seems to be all it is, so I can deal with that.
I only got about 3 cycles into SVRII before doing something else (I forget what), so I canāt say if itās super duper effective, but as far as pacifying training ADD it really nails the mark. I always remark that Jim Wendler is a programming sorcerer and when you follow his programs, even though they never āfeelā like theyāre working, youāll suddenly set a PR out of nowhere, but itās just that for me: I donāt get the feel that Iām achieving my goals when Iām doing 5s pro and last week was actually heavier than this week because Iām doing 3/5/1. By changing the supplemental work every week, I got out of my own head on it, and really, each week WAS challenging: just differently so.
If I do it, I may get stupid with it and change the squats each week to correlate with the changes to supplemental work. Part of me is thinking I need to take a page from Louie and alter the stimulus so that I donāt just keep beating up the same parts of my body each session.
Will we be seeing more partial SSB abomination squats?
