A totally brand new set of Eleiko training plates!
No Eleiko women’s bar…
But progress
My goal is to snatch the pretty green ones…
40kg… I got to 42.5kg some time last year, I think… But it is harder for me with a guys bar (wah).
The gym is really very well equipped. Belts and chains and bands and sandbags up to 50kg and tires (smallest is 160kg and largest around 300kg)… Proper farmer’s walk handles (20kg a piece)…
My goal is to flip the smallest tyre… I’ve flipped 120 kg, but that was a mission…
There are a fairly random assortment - but a high percentage of people training properly. There seems to be a strength club so I guess I’m gonna have to join. There is a MMA club, too, that I’m kinda curious about… Think I saw them today with their puzzle mats in the basketball stadium… There is a proper Weightlifting Club a little bit of a hike away. National training centre. One day I’ll pluck up the courage, but I want to have some fun rediscovering things for myself. And since my totals will never be amazing I sort of obsess over technique…
I guess my goal for the next little while is just to get back into things again. Gradually get to know some of the locals. A couple of people have set up shop next to me and kept me honest with my squats already, so I’m really full of optimism about this place
I do think that this is a really very wonderful thing to have happened for me
I suppose I could see where they would be handy… however sometimes regular weights don’t exactly weigh what they say they do. For example a 10 kg plate may actually weigh 9.80 kg and another 20 kg plate may actually weigh 20.75 kg. So, Im trying to say I wouldn’t get too caught up with the fractional plates.
And today there was a brand new Eleiko training bar (men’s, 20kg) and a sign on the wall saying it is for the platform not the squat racks etc.
Not a women’s bar - but that was always gonna be a pipe dream. I still feel privileged for an Eleiko bar…
Feeling a little like the person in the `don’t be the person with the $100 shoes and the 20c squat’ saying :-/
Got all the gear now, nothing to be done but the work.
I was going to get to front squat 40kg for 3x5. I didn’t quite make it. Fought the fight with 37.5kg, though. Gluteal activation out the hole… It wouldn’t have gotten any better with more weight and 37.5kg was honest work.
Played with snatches… Amazing how to start with the Eleiko just felt wrong. And then all of a sudden it just felt right. The grip felt perfect. The grip width finally came together for me. They really are the most beautiful bars and you really can FEEL the difference.
Bird - I don’t get too hung up on the objective weight since I don’t train with competition grade equipment weights will vary a little…
Fractional plates are important to me for adding just a little bit more weight to the bar, though. In particular… Adding weight without it feeling any heavier. That is how my snatch has incrementally gotten better. It is how I’ll trick my squat into going up, too. The weights I’m moving… Any percentage program (e.g., 5/3/1) also profits considerably from fractional plates. Given my objective numbers… 2.5kg of an increase is a lot…
been having a minor meltdown with uni. this uni used to be a tech and the classes i’ve been auto-enrolled in are more like tech classes than first year uni classes and it is driving me BONKERS since i could teach those classes etc.
had an assertiveness fart in the gym, too. some dude wanted the eleiko for deadlifting (which it is for as well, apparently) and i let it phase me and gave him the platform where there was this whole OTHER platform and bar he could have use but he wanted my space to hang out with his brofriends.
i know now to ask WHY people think they need my bar / my space. and if i don’t like their answer i’ll tell them to bug off, so there.
and i know now that nobody else is going to be looking out for what is in my best learning interests, either. people will happily take your money and not give a shit whether you turn up or not (they will actually hope you don’t turn up) and so on. tech, oh i mean uni, is so much like a cheap gym that hopes you pay your dues and never rock up to use the gear.
anti-intellectual.
how is it that i seem to be stuck with it over these last few years?
and why is it that people look at me like i’m the retarded one when i ask what part of silent study only' people fail to grasp when they talk right in front of the silent study only’ sign. i mean really? is this one of the `the road rules don’t apply to me’ things?
Ew, using an oly bar for deadlifting, that’s sure some way to get it to stop spinning properly, unless he was doing some little girly dl’s. The thing is once your assertive with them once, they’ll leave you alone next time, unless they are really dick heads.
Fractional plates are important to me for adding just a little bit more weight to the bar, though. In particular… Adding weight without it feeling any heavier. [/quote]
I’ve just discovered that you can hang a couple of 0.5 kg plates (the cheap “home gym” ones with 1" diameter holes) off of the spring Olympic collars!
It means you can add 2.2 lbs to the bar instead of the smallest 2 x 1.25 kg (5.5 lb) jump with Olympic plates. It works really well. Just make sure the “handle” of the spring collar they are on points downwards and they wont fall off. In fact I don’t think they could come off.
AND they cost next to nothing. Important to me, I am a tight arse.
I wouldn’t try them with the Olympic lifts though, they might fly off and injure someone!
I have (of course!) been gym-ing but more feel good running myself into the ground, rather than working a proper program / making proper progress. I dropped the physiotherapy course because… It turned out to be more like personal training or massage therapy than I was expecting… The plan is for me to finish my thesis by the end of this year and do pre-med for next year. Orthopedics, here I come. Or neurosurgery… Or… Something…
The plan…
High bar back squat. 5x5 progressive overload. Haven’t done squats for a while, so I do what I always do when that applies: Go back to Starting Strength. When I get injured / stall… I expect I’ll switch to 5/3/1.
Chin-ups. I was doing a Harry Selkow prescribed program but bailed around the time I started to stall. I’ve learned that I should have just told him that I couldn’t do all the reps rather than running away… But, whatever. I will build back up to where I was at before (being able to do a couple of doubles with a reasonably strict plank position from a dead hang) and grovel back.
I’ll do them about every third day. Squats one day. Chin-ups the next. Then have a mobility / abs day. I need to work my crunches to counter my anterior pelvic tilt. I’m trying to hold a front tuck position on the roman chair… I would like to work up to (posterior tilted) leg raises from the chin-up bar… Front levers… Stuff like that.
Anyway… Last session I got:
High Bar Back Squat
20kg 1x5
25kg 1x5
32.5kg 1x5
37.5kg 1x5
42.5kg 5x5
Felt like honest work. Actually, felt like I couldn’t possibly do anymore… But I remember, that is squats for you. Kind of embarrassed… I used to front squat these weights…
Chins
10x1. Starting from a high step rather than a dead hang. Needing quite a bit of a leg kick forward to get up for the last couple reps.
Well since Jupiter with Mars/Saturn with Neptune are aligning in the next couple of days, it only makes sense that you would start logging again ;-p As well as the earthquake the other day.
I actually thought I saw you lurking on a live spill the other day, glad you are back.
So no physio stuff, eh? Orthopedics might be better suited for you anyway, more stuff to analyse/study for you.
They cancelled my uni gym membership since I withdrew from the physio course. So I’ve lost access to that gym. Which was driving me a bit bonkers, anyway, with all the young kids who didn’t know about line of sight etc and the hall of mirrors. I’m back at the globo-gym chain that I’ve been following all around the country. I have a power rack (hence the back squats) and some space for deadlifts (though I’m wary since my lower back tends to get injured and I really want to see what I can do with these back squats), but no platform or bumpers, unfortunately.
I’ll do a little overhead squatting / snatching / cleaning and jerking with the bar to keep up my mobility / movement patterns. But I can’t really train Olympic Lifting there. None of the bars have particularly solid grip and I don’t have any chalk yet, either. My grip strength is absolutely crap. Need to sort that out for chin-ups, even.
I really miss the women’s bar I used to train with in Aussie. The 1kg plates. The guys. I haven’t managed to find anything like that here… Just a lot of people who are all noise and no focus… Only it took me a while to figure they were all noise, since I thought they were meant to be the experts… Yeah, right. I learn more from you guys on T nation than I do any IRL course…
