Man, whole lotta good discussion going on here. This is going to be a HUGE update, so I’m gonna log all the training stuff first and then go back and speak to individual comments.
Ok, first, details on that building the monolith workout.
Did giant sets of row-dead-bench until I ran out of rows, then dead and bench until I got to workset weights. Up to that point was plate change rests. One I hit worksets, I took 1.5 minutes between dead and bench and 2 minutes between bench and dead. Today was the heaviest day of the entire cycle, so I took my time. Very satisfied with the deads: attacked them with aggression but without getting pysched up, and still zero hitching/ramping. I’m saving that for when I REALLY need it. Benching was UGLY. This was a workout I survived, rather than thrived on. As I wrote: this is mid-terms and this was a wake-up call. I gotta hit 10lbs more on all of these in 3 weeks: time to up the food game.
I DID end up hitting the j-hooks on the very first set of benching which, in turn, got me to focus a LOT more on my bench set up, which was ultimately a positive. I’ve got a lot more in me on bench if I care to actually do it right.
Left hamstring at least showed up to play that day, which was good. Used a lot of willing to get it to heal. I can till get a twinge out of it, but it performs as needed.
OK, now the rest of the day’s training
1000
80lb weighted vest walk with the dogs for 30ish minutes
Daily work
Lateral raise stripset
20x10lb plates
20x5
20x2.5
20xEmpty hands
1600
Tabata 1 armed alternating snatches and swings w/KB
1915-2020
Tang Soo Do class. Went over the first form and then we did some sparring combinations on the stand up bags (wavemasters). Funny enough, the instructor wanted us to use stuff he learned from Krav Maga, as he found it more effective for this scenario and, in turn, the stuff from Krav Maga was stuff from boxing…so I’m re-learning how to box in my Tang Soo Do class. I was really in my element for that. Worked jab-cross and jab-uppercut-jab combos, then finally brought in some feet with a front kick to jab-cross and a side-kick to reverse punch combo. Was a good workout, broke a sweat and taa daa Mrs and I both got our first stripe on our white belts. Did it in 3 classes. Instructor complimented us on how quick of learners we all are.
Just a moment to nerd out on martial arts, because it was my first love and it’s great to come back to it, but it’s pretty cool and a bit funny how so many of the eastern styles have defaulted to just using boxing for the hand work. No need to reinvent the wheel: boxers know how to punch and how to not get punched. Much like @kdjohn discussed in his own post: when you focus on only 4-5 techniques, you get REAL good at them.
Saw the Mrs struggling with something that took me a while to overcome on my own too: she’s so used to the chamber punch that her hand kept coming away from her face during the boxing work. I found a way to make chambering make sense to me, but really, I wish schools would drop it. It does more harm than good.
2100
Tabata DB thrusters w/20lbs DBs
And now here I am on the night shift…
