Haha this is true! Got a Holliday booked up after my exam with the Mrs so that should sort that out!
Sorry for the short response I was shattered yesterday!
I thought the photo made me look a bit like I had a paunch maybe it’s just mee being silly.
Strangely I’m normally the guy who tans well but with exams etc I’m a little milk bottle! That was after 2 days working outside too! Should have taken my shirt off!
Don fancy faking it though so it’ll just have to wait.
Also past my driving test yesterday.
Forgot my belt and straps today, wasn’t bothered about the lack of straps but would really have liked my belt
10th june 2011
Deadlifts
60x5
100x5
140x5
150x3
140x3x2
Rack pulls (3inch bellow knee)
140x5x3
140x2
Front squats (3 reps)
60
70
75
77.5 (PR)
DB rows
45x5
45x7 (PR)
Low cable row
Stack x 17 (PR)
Stack x 12
Stack x 8
Went to the gym yesterday for the sake of getting out the house, I was going stir crazy.
Did what I think w my first ever arms day!
EZ bar curls (I have no idea what it weighed so I’ll out the weight excluding the bar.
10kg a side 6 reps
12.5kg a side 6 reps
15 kg a side 6 reps
16.25 a side 6 reps
15kg a side 5 reps
12.5 a side 6 reps
10 kg a side 12 reps
EZ JM press on the floor
15 side 6 reps
20 a side 6 reps
25 a side 6 reps
27.5 a side 6 reps
25 a side 5 reps
20 a side 7 reps
15 a side 12 reps
DB curls superseted with rope push downs (12 reps push downs, the weights have all been rubbed of the stack by now)
25 s x10
22x5 x 16
22.5 x 14
22.5 x 12
Machine preacher curls one arm
20 reps of the bottom quarter then 8 full reps
One set of 21’s (7 reps the bottom half, 7 reps the top half, then 7 full reps)
actually got a pump in my bi’s which was pretty cool as I never really do arm work appart from the occasional set of CGBP and power curls.
Drove to the nearby quarry to do some sprints today found a pile of abandoned tires and had a play with them too. before doing hill sprints up the slag heap
12th June
Tire throws for max distance
5 throws each arm.
1 shuttle run max shuttle 25 m
5 hill sprints
2 sprints up the Hyyyyyooooggggeeee hill (literally collapsed when I got the the top both times!)
I can’t do rest days lol.
13 th June
All weight in KG
Front squats (3 reps)
50
60
70
75
77.6
80
Still legged Deadlifts, rarely do these but I felt it WAY more in my my back than my hammys which I think iswron do I ditched it pretty quick
6 reps
60
80
100
Standing hammy curl
Some x3x6
Seated 30’s (10 reps first half of the movement 10 reps last half 10 reps all the way. One set, ouch!
Front squat holds @ 100 kg 10 second hold, 20 second rest for 3 holds.
Standing cable crunches 3x12
Isn’t it right, tho? Stiff legged deadlifts work the back the hardest, while romanian deadlifts work hamstrings harder?
TBH I always get confused so I could have done one or the other lol!
I lifted it from the rack, held lock out for a second, then with an athletic bend in my knees drove my arse back till I couldn’t anymore, then exploded back up.
Which one did I do? Coz I barley felt shit in my hamstrings. But my back felt dominated, and by such a low weight too.
Hence the aggressive leg curling after lol! After my dirty thirty on the hammy curl I was worried weather I could drive home!
Also if I don’t pull a new 1RM tomorrow I will be very annoyed and have to eat an innocent child.
Hm, from your description it sounds like you did a romanian deadlift, but from my experience with them, if I don’t bend my knees enough my hamstrings don’t feel much. I guess it’s about finding that sweetspot where you’re not bending enough to just make it a regular deadlift from the top, to still bending so much that you feel it in the hamstrings rather than the back 
I wouldn’t want to meet you in an alley at night. TKOin’ a guy with how many kilos on you?
Are you following any particular split or program?
Btw, I bet if you were to look extremely jacked, your opponents would just throw in the towel. Thus allowing you to use the time it takes to fight, to lift weights instead 
It was around 14 and a half kilos difference, one of my prouder moments if I’m honest (the night out after was NOT one of my prouder moments)
I’m not following a particular program but a rough template, I always planned on doing 531 in the off season but want to have a much better squat and a better Deadlift before starting.
To be honest I need more flexibility during the season, a decent example was in prepping for this fight I was sparring a lad and my coach looked very pissed off, afterwards he told me “he makes you look weak, you need to be a lot stronger” so I spent time and effort getting a lot stronger (new PR on all major movements etc) only for the coach to say “no, you look slow stop getting stronger start getting faster”. From there my training revolved around dynamic speed work, Olympic varriations and plyo.
My rough template is
Day 1 squat
Vertical press
Vertical pull
Accesory
Day 2 Deadlift
Accesory
Whatever else I feel like often some DB work
Day 3. Squat
Horizontal press
Horizontal pull
Accesory
My warm up usually involves some plyo stuff, a few sprints and a complex or 2
Ofcorse this is all good and well but I’ve exams etc at the moment so I just try and get to the gym and get something done between revision.
Todays training
15th June
Weights In KG
Deadlifts
70x5
120x5
150x3 added chalk here
170x1 added belt here
200x0 fuuuuuuuuu wanted 200 so bad but it wasn’t shifting
190x0 could have should have but didn’t, was a bit down hearted after the 200 fail.
170x1
170x1
120x10 touch n go
Front squat
50x3
60x3
70x3
80x3 PR
60 x 10
Chins
BWx10
15 x6
10 x5
BW x10
Pissed about the 200 but hit a PR on the front squat so i suppose I’m making progress which is all that counts.
In other news i’ve a mate who works with scaffolding get me a 8 foot bar, and I’m going to start making an axle complete with car wheel weights to play with in prep for the UK strength and power series that I’m competing in on august 20th.
yo steve, what type of fighting are you training for? (sorry if I missed it?) an axle huh? that’ll be awesome.
Congrats on the front squat PR
Boxing. fought under EBF rules a couple of weeks ago and starting my ABA career next season.
I also do shukokai karate and got up to regional level in that but it’s kinda on the back burner at the min.
Cheers for the props. Still not happy with it, I want at least 2 plates on the bar in the next month or two!
I’ll try and document the start to finish with the axle incase anyone wants to try, cool thing is, it’s not costing me a penny, got the bar for free, the local scrapyard are donating the wheels and the plates have been in my garage for years. Even the welding rods have been donated by a mate who’s just got a new welder and doesn’t need them! Onlything costing is the petrol to pick up the wheels 2 mile round journey at the most) and the electricity for the welder!
UPDATE ON STRENGTH AN POWER SERIES
Those of you that are following will know I am competing in the strength and power series, which is basically a strongman for non strongman competitors.
I’ve managed to hit up one of the organisers on Facebook and have squeezed som info out of him, the weight classes are 75 and bellow 76-90 and 90+
I can drop to 88 8-9 for a fight or 86 for a weigh in so I fancy trying to get in the middle weights however I’ll be walking on with much more muscle than I would for fighting so its going to be a fine balancing act.
He also let slip that 2 of the events will be single handed Deadlift and circus dumbbells so I’m trying to fit that into my training somehow. But in a picture of him and another organiser I’ve noticed a log and some kegs so I don’t know how I’m going to make this work.
My plan is to keep my regular strength training in but in the mornings and in the PM play with the axle, push and pull the car, get some carries in and whatever else I can think off. I’m also really chilling out with the conditioning so I can recover. And doing 1 arm Deadlifts at the end of Monday and Fridays workout, one for max reps the other for max weight.
Also a few people have advised me to strat training direct arm work or I’m asking for an injury from the very nature of the SM moves.
I’m thinking something like this
Monday: am
Front squat
Tbar row
Power clean
1 arm Deadlift
Pm
Circus DB
car push
Wednesday
Deadlift
Lower body movement
Bench press
Pm
Axle c+p
Arm over arm car pull
Friday
Squat
OHP
weighted chins
1 arm Deadlift
Pm
Carry variations
Any throwing event I can come up with
To be honest I haven’t got a clue how to set this up. So I’m open to any ideas.
Friday 17th June
Warm up
Lots of skipping
DTC complex till I hit max weight
More skipping
Shoulder prehab stuff
Squats
60 x5
70 x5
80 x5
90 x5
100x4
90x1
105x1
110x1
120x1
125x1
Wanted to try and workup to 150 ish but realised the gym closed soon
Seated BB press suppersetted with high low row with 45kg a hand
40x5/10
45x5/7
50x5/10
Bloody gym shut and I got askd to leave! The weight felt super light and I wanted 60 kg x5 grrrr
20 th June
Started my training for the SPS meet today i’ve written up a program hitting the gym 4 days a week and doing what events I could bodge the equipment together for. I’ve used the 531 progression for squat and deads and just playing the rest by ear, trying to add weight to the bar every week.
Squats day all weights in KG
Squats
Warm up sets: bar, 50,60 5 reps
531 sets: 75x5 85x5 95x6 didn’t go mad as I wanted to see how tough this program is going to be on recovery.
Bulgarian split squats* 20kg dumbbell in each hand x 3 reps, 20’s x 5, 22.5s x 5
Stiff leg dead lift: 50x5, 70x5, 80x5,90x5 100x5
Super thirty leg curls (ten reps the first half, ten reps the bottom half then ten reps full ROM)
Pump arm work: alt hammer curls with 22.5s 16 reps,
Sim hammer curls 16s for 12 reps, 14s 12 reps
Preacher curl machine 21’s
Fell knackered after this, the arm work wouldn’t normally be there but was waiting for my mate to finish.
- got a good set up here, used a small aerobics step and a high bench, the strength wasn’t an issue at all but my stability sucked pretty bad.
Good session, glad the program worked out.
21st June
‘performance pressing, mechanical ramp’
For those that don’t know this is an overhead movement ramped up till you can’t make all the reps or the bar slows down too much, then using the last weight from the OHP to the first weight on an incline bench and ramping up again, then using the last weight from the incline on flat bench and on from there.
Warm up,
Skipping
External rotations
OHP
Barx5
30x5
35x5
40x5
45x5
50x5
55x1 and a half ish.
Incline bench
55x5
60x5
65x5
70x3
70x5
72.5x2
Flat bench
72.5x5
77.5x3
80x4
Cable skull’s some x some
1 arm push downs 1x10
- next time I’m going to add some dumbbell floor presses here I think.
Good fun session next time I’ll do the rotations after as I feel my performance was slightly hindered.
Obviously my bench wasn’t as strong but it wasn’t as week as I expected which is cool, and coach thibs says it will catch up pretty soon.
Enjoyed this training though and although at the time I thought it ought to have some isolation work in there (ha never thought I’d say that!) now I’m home my shoulders feel dog tired and I think the floor presses will be a perfect amount of volume for my chest.
My hammies and glutes felt sore today too.
Nice pressing session. I especially enjoy these types of pressing workouts 
That seems like a pretty tough pressing session Steve… how do you feel that your incline benching strength fairs after hitting OHP for that many sets?
Were you giving yourself a decent amount of rest time?