In order to remedy my shoulder, I began my training session with a lot of lightweight lateral and front raises, starting w/ no weight and SLOWLY moving up to 5lbs. Then, I tried a couple light powercleans, but after flipping that tire the day before it wasn’t happening. After, I did 3x5-10 overhead presses with an unloaded trap bar. I pressed much differently than usual, an instead of launching it off my shoulders I slowly eased it off, gaining speed throughout the ascent to a rather fast lockout. Followed this up with tons of lateral & side raises, working up to the 25lb dumbbell. To finish everything off, I did 4x25 kneeling med ball throws with 20 lbs.
My shoulder’s 100% better today, but I’m not going to press overhead with weight for a week or so, and I’ll be taking 'er easy on bench.
Getting a lot stronger. This weekend I hit 285 for several triples in squat. I’ve also began incorporating glute-specific movements and am already seeing progress. Using 200+ for high-rep sets of hip thrust.
Also started training for my half-marathon. My dog and I ran about 4 miles through the trails and salt flats of a local brackish riverbank. diverse terrain throughout from the quick-sand like river edge, to the overgrown bushy trails, to the hot flat salty dirt. No cell phone, no shoes, no noise other tan the wildlife; just us and nature…it was awesome.
Yesterday I veered off my current routine. My girlfriend sustained an injury and I’ll be doing my own thing for legs/lower body right now. so yesterday I went in and did:
Hang cleans:
30 @ 185 (singles, doubles, and triples)
*I think I’ve been doing too much back squatting for these. I was leaning forward way too much and had to constantly “good morning” myself out of the hole.
Front Squat:
3x3 @ 225
Good Mornings:
2x8 @ 185
I wanted to keep the weight & volume fairly low as I need to really start focusing on running. I need to get to running more, plain and simple. 1x/week isn’t going to cut it if I’m looking to perform well in the half marathon in the coming months. Luckily, in these early stages of my program (Hal Higdon Half Marathon Novice) my scheduled runs are distances that I don’t have any issue with, but that luxury won’t last, and unless I start building weekly mileage I’m opening myself up to injuries. Going for another barefoot trail run this afternoon; I’ll be doing 3 runs this week. Hopefully the barefoot running will help mitigate my reoccurring bouts of shin splints, plus it puts me in touch with my inner hunter/gatherer. If only I had a mastodon to chase.
Hit upper earlier this week. Worked up to a 5 rep db incline w/ 85’s. Did bw conditioning before heavy sets.
Today, I ran about 2-3 miles down a pier made of nothing but large boulders for about 75% of the way. Each boulder is completely different. Some large, some small, some smooth, some jagged, some roundish, some squareish, some close together, & some far apart. Almost took a few sketchy spills. It was my first time making it to the end, challenging terrain. Probably shouldn’t have run it barefoot in hindsight, I’m paying for that now.
Blasted upper body today. I’ve noticed my ability to do dead-hang pull-ups has significantly decreased; I can only knock out about 9. My weight hovers around 190 (6ft), the heaviest I’ve ever been. Maybe I’m just focusing more on controlled reps than before…
Nonetheless, my strength is steadily going up. I’ve really been focusing on keeping tight, and drilling solid form on my main lifts, and focusing on mmc on all assistance work.
GF is back to training legs again, so we went full-tilt last night. First time my legs felt that shaky in quite a while. Hit a PR of 275x5 in back squat!
While I won’t write what I’m doing, I want to write about my methodology.
One I established my 1rm a couple of months ago, I’ve currently been using weights based off those percentages. At first, it was a bit shaky. However, after 2 months of using the same percentages, I really feel like I’m beginning to manhandle the weights. Sure, I’ve had a couple of slip-ups hitting 85-90% for multiple sets & reps; but that’s to be expected. I think when I retest, my maxes will be a fair bit higher.
This methodology has really gotten me believing in the philosophy that progression doesn’t always come through adding weight onto the bar, or increasing range of motion, etc. Whilst it’s difficult to quantify, my reps are cleaner, more focused, and tighter. I could probably ride this train for a bit longer, but we’ve only a couple weeks left on this program and I’m ready to shift focus a bit. However, I’ll continue this principal by setting a reasonable training max for my next program (going to hop back on 531/351).
In addition, we’ve been hitting conditioning pretty hard so I feel it’s okay prep for distance running for now. Post-comp, I’ll have a month to buckle down as I up the distance, so I’ll probably do a 2 days/week template and run hard for 3 days/week.
*On a cool side note, my gf and I are going to be doing 531 together post-competition. We’ll trade off templates every 3 weeks. She’ll pick one template, I pick the next; so on and so forth. It’s great sharing a passion.
Last night, I hit a series of 5 rep clusters @ 365 in deadlift. After which, I decided to do a down-set and ended up setting a huge PR, hitting 315 x 11. This is after hitting lower body hard only 48 hours prior, and lower body again yesterday. This is my first week playing around with clusters, and I have to say, they’re great. I feel as if they really rev up my CNS; usually the 3rd rep is the easiest. I can also keep the volume & intensity high, while managing fatigue. In our workouts, we have very little recovery from day to day, but setting these PRs makes me feel like our bodies are capable of so much more than we give them credit for.
WORK
Squat: 3 x 45, 3 x 135, 3 x 225, 1-1-1 x 315, 1-1-1 x 315, 3 x 275
*1-1-1 means a 3 rep cluster.
(10/6/15)
CONDITIONING
Tonight, we’ll be running about 5-6 miles on a trail.
NOTES
Competition training is winding down, and the focus will be shifting even more onto conditioning as strength will be put on maintenance for the half marathon. Although, hell, focus has already been on conditioning for weeks and I’m still setting lifetime PRs.
…Screw the rules, I’m going to keep getting stronger and better conditioned simultaneously.
I tried out sumo deadlift seriously for the first time. It’s a weird movement. I found myself “spreading the floor,” something I don’t really do at all or have never noticed doing conventional. I’m super weak at this variation, I probably would max at around 375 or so, given that I hit multiple 5’s with 315. Obviously it;s a new movement, but my leverages really seem to favor conventional. It smoked my legs for back squat though, something I was not expecting. But at the same time, it seemed to prime me for the squat. I hit multiple sets of 10 in squat with 225. Total breathers; it took a lot of digging to crank these out (somewhere in the session we tossed in some conditioning). I think I’ll keep sumos as an accessory for squat (which in a funny way is a good accessory for deadlifts)
Been out for a couple of weeks traveling. Great mental & physical break. Did some hiking, climbing, and a few token fullbody workouts. On Monday, my fiance and I will be giving CT’s “The Complete Power Look Program” a go. My goals are to get overall strong, and narrow my focus to the big 3 for my first meet next summer. Her goals are to turn her 1rm into her 3-4rm in 3 months for deadlift, bench, and squat, and cut weight in the process. This program looks like it fits both our goals well. She’s going to get me on a nutrition plan, which post (her) competition she now knows much more than I.
Notes: first time trying to max of using my newly learned “powerlifting bench” I followed Jim Wendler’s bench written bench set-up to a T. Painfully tight arch, balls of feet dug into ground, traps shrugged into bench. I need to tweak it a bit though. Standing, my shins are quite a bit taller than the bench itself, so having the balls of my feet touching is really awkward for me, and I keep slipping. I also felt my arch was too high. It knocked off some ROM, but leverage-wise it didn’t feel optimal. Next time, I’m going to widen my legs and place heels on the floor, and tighten my back and shrug from there, but not arch to the same extent.
Restesting our maxes to start the power look program this week. We decided to switch the deadlift & front squat day. The main reason is that the gym was packed and we didn’t want to wait half an hour for some jagoffs to finish up their curl sesh in 1/2 squat racks, and the deadlift area was empty. Anyway…
Hamstring curls 2x25
Deadlift:
1x135
1x185
1x275
1x315
1x365
1x405
miss x 435
1x415
Machine pulldown/row
3 strip sets
3 rounds:
straight arm pulldow
straight bar face pull
Notes: I want to be disappointed that my pull hasn’t moved up since my last 1rm test, but considering that I’ve only seriously trained legs once prior in the past 3 weeks (sghp layer session a few days ago), I think I’m doing pretty good. Was a somewhat of a shitty pull, but I’ll chalk that up to being out of practice.
Back squat:
185 x 1
225 x 1
275 x 1
285 x 1
315 x 1
325 x 1 PR!!!
HER
Front squat:
Bar x 3 (shaky)
95 x 0
Back squat:
135 x 1
140 x 1
145 x 1
150 x 1 PR!
Notes: we tried front squat like the program suggested, but she was far too unfamiliar with the movement to follow a peaking plan for it. We’ve decided to keep front squats as supplemental, as it’s something we both need to work on. Aslo, I’ll be logging her stuff as best I can.