Really appreciate it! It’s stupid how I self-sabotage whilst going around spouting off about how critical it is to just put in the reps.
Got a day behind due to prepping for and then attending club volleyball tryouts (not me, my daughter)… a decision I will happily make 10/10 times. She apparently absolutely killed it. We haven’t heard from the team, yet, so I don’t know where she landed, but she was really pleased with her performance. She doesn’t artificially pump herself up, she’s actually pretty honest with herself, so if she was happy then I know she showed up.
Had an absolutely horrible leg workout today. Not the good horrible, the “my body forgot how to squat” horrible. I was looking back, and the last couple weeks I’ve been mostly lifting in the afternoons. I think I “forgot” how to lift in the mornings and fasted, and I couldn’t come near keeping up with the already aggressive progressions.
@T3hPwnisher I remember you had kind of a planned delta between your good conditions and bad conditions performance. How did you manage that when there’s a weight you’re “supposed” to hit. Typically I don’t worry about it, because I just work up to what I work up to without a real plan, but this morning irritated me.
I know you didn’t ask but feel compelled to share my thoughts on this question. I think a lot of us are at a point where we need to be ready to take two steps back if it means taking one step forward in the future. If you know you have been working out in the afternoons vs mornings and you had a bad leg day; which is usually the hardest day of the training week where you also have to show up mentally, and you are also trying to “squeeze” that into what I have to assume is already an early and busy morning that followed a previously busy day in which you where being the good leader of your house (and workforce) which involves helping others get through their day without doing a lot of complaining/fretting yourself. Man that’s stressful and I think a lot of us get that you can have a bad leg day. I say take it easy on yourself a bit but also don’t be a wimp. Get those planned reps somehow. If you didn’t do your planned number of reps per set at a given weight. That stinks, and we have all been there but what you can do is chip away at doubles and singles and get those reps somehow which may be better than nothing. All this goes out the window if you can’t recover from it and it screws up the rest of your week. No easy answers at this stage but you already know that.
I really like this. That’s a good plan. My norm is I just work up to something and maybe a backoff, so it’s more about I get all the reps in at whatever weight I can do that day. For the main lift, I like this idea of, ok, it was supposed to be 12 reps (or whatever); if that’s 8 sets, it’s 8 sets.
I go back and forth between these two approaches…doing mostly what you mentioned (get as many as I can at a given weight) lately, but that grows stale after awhile and I am starting to transition back into a structure for strength training again. Not having a true target and doing the best you can on any given day seems to be good when in a calorie deficit and building strength isn’t your goal but rather hanging onto what you can while getting rid of body fat.
I think we need to plot out seasons for hard focused strength training and put a time constraint on it in the year: doing this for X weeks, and this is what I want to achieve by then. If you come up a bit short but made progress that’s still progress and you get out of it what you put in.
I go by effort these days. If I hit a 50lb PR and it was easy, that’s a failed day. If I go 50lbs below and blow out every blood vessel in my face to get it; that is a success. Because strength can be impacted by things like sleep and nutriton, but effort is MINE to control.
I finally got to a CrossFit class with my wife yesterday evening. She loves it. The first part of the class was floor press and dumbbell presses and rows, so I “won” that part. At the end, we had to do 50 burpee box jumps. That was hard and I did not win. My paralyzed foot didn’t come with on one of the jumps, and my toe caught the box and I fell. I was fine, but the coach thought I couldn’t make the box and had like crashed into it and kept checking on me after that. That was on me, but it still annoyed me - I want everything to be old school and him just say “get up and finish” and move on. I also just don’t want to be athletically embarrassed, obviously. He was a nice guy, though.
Today was chest and shoulders. There’s no volleyball this weekend, because of the holiday, so we had all the time in the world and my wife joined. I thought I would have a rough time after pressing yesterday, but it was fine.
MB OH Throws
3 x 3
Slight Decline DB Press
20/20
40/15
60/4
80/4
100/10
Didn’t add reps, but control was really solid on these
Incline Bench
45/8
135/6
185/4
205/8
This is really good for me!
Tire Flips
3 x 5
This was the little soft tire that weighs 135 - I was doing it more like a scoop toss than anything
One-arm BB Row
-/8
25/6
50/6
75/4
100/6
75/8
One-arm Supinated Pulldown
I got some cool handles off Amazon that I’ve seen folks using on YouTube, so I played with those here
Warmups
60/8 x 2
Rack Pull
Had already decided I’d go light on these, and it ended up being all I really could have done anyway. Kept lats really tight
135/3
225/3
315/6 x 3
Curry 3-Way Pulldown
Basically a mechanical drop set on pulldowns
3 x 6 + 6 + 6
Banded DB Pullover
35 + Orange Band/ 10 x 2
DB Shrug
3s flex at top
85/10
95/10
100/10
Hanging Leg Raise
4 sets
Now we’re off to Great Wolf with my daughter and her friends for her birthday party - had to find a holiday weekend with no volleyball!
Great couple days of water slides and awesome arm workout today (after a super long dog walk because it wasn’t single digits!). Everything was on point. I went way lighter than I wanted on everything, and I was getting biceps cramps I was so pumped. This one’s a keeper.
DB Hammer Curl
Warmups
3 x 12 or so
DB Concentration Preacher Curl
3 x 8-10
EZ Curl
3 x 8 + 6 partials
Could barely raise my arms by now, and I’m just using the 50# on the last set
Rope Pressdown
Really got over these and spread the rope apart and flexed each rep
Warmups
3 x 12ish
Double drop on last set
Close Floor Press
Warmups
185/8 x 3
DB Skullcrusher
I actually take these to my shoulders and feel the stretch better
3 x 10
SSB
Chains all sets
45/10
135/6
185/4
225/8 x 3
Squats felt pretty good today, so that was nice
KB Reverse Lunge
35/15
35/12 + 6 + 4
Leg Press
Super close stance, 1 minute rests, leave your feet up on the platform in between sets - lots of blood
2pps/6
4pps/15 x 3
DB SLDL
70/8 x 3
Cable Crunch
4 sets
Then, as I was wrapping up a full-on bodybuilding leg day, my wife asked me to join her at her CrossFit class right after. I had time, so I did. My legs were quivering the whole time.
We started by working up on push jerks, which is not a move I know how to do, plus my legs were tired so I was just basically doing a press. A couple of the folks were strong!
Then we did a circuit of assault bike, DB bench, and ring rows. I did great at that one, so I felt good.
Then I was smoked and hungry, so it ended right on time.
Tomorrow there is a WWE event in Australia, so it’s live at 5am local. My daughter wants me to wake her up to watch it! I think she just likes having this thing with me, which warms my diseased old heart. I don’t sleep anyway, but obviously I’ll pretend to all the other moms at volleyball it was a huge sacrifice and I’m the greatest father on earth. It is kind of funny the Rock is part of the story right now - like I watched that dude when I was your age!
Just got caught up on your log and I agree that the 8 day week has been huge for my recovery on all of these Mountain Dog programs. It’s due to my wife’s schedule as a nurse but it’s still been awesome for recovery! Basically the schedule is MTW-Train ThF-Rest SatSun-Train MT-Rest WThF-Train SatSun-Rest repeat. It’s a schedule that definitely lends itself best to a bro split or PPL since I’m usually training three days straight then I get a nice rest before hitting it again. Glad you’ve been able to stick with the program and have been finding success with it! Seems like you’ve really been figuring things out with yourself and your recovery!
@davemccright thanks man! I’m not particularly lean, but maybe outline of abs, but I am looking big right now! It’s awesome and I feel ok.
Yesterday was a long one! I didn’t sleep but maybe 2 hours the night before, then got my daughter up early to watch WWE. It’s super fun that she loves this. She made her signs to hold them up while her favorite people were on - really cute. The women now are legitimate jacked athletes, not just models like when I was a kid, so it’s pretty cool. I’d say they’re more fun than the men’s stories since we’ve been watching these couple months.
Then I went and did CrossFit again with my wife, because I said I would. It was tough. I don’t remember the warmup, but the main workout was an EMOM where your first minute is 5 burpee pull-ups, your next is 16 calories on an air bike, the third is clean and jerks (they had me do 155), and then the last is a minute rest. You kept going until you hit 50 reps, which I almost got in 6 but had a couple left so had to do 7 rounds. 8 rebounds was the target/ cap.
I was going to do chest/ shoulders after that, but waited until this morning. The soreness is unbelievable, but my performance doesn’t seem impacted.
MB OH Throws 3 x 3
Slight Decline DB Press
30/20
50/10
70/4
90/4
100/10
I was supposed to go up, but didn’t feel like I had it, so I just wanted to really own each of these reps. I think that was the right move.
Incline Press
135/8
185/4
215/6
Very pleased with this!
DB Hex Press
42.5/6
55/10 + 6 + 4
Kept these on chest in between - tons of blood
Cable Flye to Press
4 x 10
Took a couple to get in the groove, but once I did it was a cool movement
Band Rear Delt Pull
This is one arm at a time, across your body
3 x 15
DB Side Raise Partial
35/25 x 3
DB Top 1/2 Side Raise
10/10
15/10 x 2
Toe Press
4 x 10 + 10s stretch
KB Tate Press
I started with a set of these, but it didn’t feel good on my shoulder and elbow, so I just did a couple sets of press downs
Then I trained my team and now we’re at volleyball! If they finish in time, I’ll play basketball tonight; that’s not looking like it will happen, though. These tournaments are long!
I intended to do this workout yesterday, but was feeling very beat up so I leaned into the “recovery” mindset instead and put it off to today - I swear this is a cheat code; I had a fantastic workout.
I did miss a CrossFit logging somewhere in the last couple days, but I treat that as conditioning, so it’s all kind of “extra” and just falls where it may. I am doing better lately having each workout just be its own thing - either I’m lifting, or I’m walking, or I’m doing hard conditioning - rather than try to mash it all together. As long as I’m working from home, I may as well take advantage of that option.
I also got to do a parents/ kids volleyball practice with my daughter’s team the other day. This is the first year they can actually just straight up beat all the dads, even if we’re trying; that was very cool - I was very pleased with them.
Anyway, today was back!
One-arm BB Row
I got a Meadows Row handle, and wow it totally changes this movement. I really liked it. Huge contraction, makes the weight heavier.
-/8
25/8
50/4
60/10
60/16 - challenge set, loosen up form
One-arm Supinated Pulldown
Used my cool guy handles on these as well - another win
Couple warmups
60/10
60/16 - challenge set again
BB Pullover
This took some feeling out - my elbows didn’t love it at first
65/10 x 3
Curry 3-Way Pulldown
50/ 8 + 8 + 8 x 3
My back was on fire by the end of this
