Swoletron's Road to Swoledom

[Swoletron]

Arms Day

Yesterday was an epic leg day for me. My quads are totally butchered today too from the last few exercises I did after hitting some squat PRs. Since I’m not seeing Sam tomorrow and I’m going to be benching with him on Friday, I decided it was time for another arms day. Everyone loves arms day.

Like usual, I fired up the close grip bench to start loading up my triceps. I ramped with triples from 135 up to 190 today jumping to 175 by 20, then 185 and then 190. I went back down to 185 for the final set since 190 felt like I was pushing it a bit too much (just to move weight for the sake of moving weight). I was supersetting Fat Gripz straight bar curls in between. After close grip bench and some curls, my arms were getting fired up. I headed over to the dip rack and hit 50 reps over 4 sets, again supersetting with the straight bar and Fat Gripz.

Since all of the ropes were in use after, I went right into supersetting two hand cable pushdowns and pulldowns to really fry my triceps. I figured hitting the rope later would be fine since it’s a lighter weight used anyway. I moved into straight bar curls without the Fat Gripz supersetted with dumbbell hammer curls. As soon as I toss in the hammer curls, my arms usually start to get crazy pumped. Today was no different.

The last arms stations I set up for myself were rope pulldowns supersetted with Fat Gripz hammer curls for a few rounds, and then dumbbell spider curls supersetted with reverse EZ grip curls. My arms were absolutely toasted after all of that. Figured I should get a bit of core in too, so I did 60 reps of ab wheel rollouts over 3 sets.

[Swoletron]

Overhead Pressing

Didn’t post over the weekend but I had a solid upper body session with Sam on Friday, big squat session on Saturday, and yesterday I took the day off to catch up on sleep and visit my friends.I have training tomorrow, so tonight I wanted to focus on my overhead pressing and work on some of my mobility drills. Overall, I’d say it was a success.

I started off my overhead pressing workout by stretching out and warming up my upper body. I made sure to hit the band stretches hard to really open up my shoulders and make sure they were loose. Once I felt pretty good, I hit a few sets with just the bar. I didn’t feel like I was over-arching my back and the bar was snapping at the top, so I felt like things would go well today. Instead of aiming for a max single, I decided I wanted to hit some heavy triples and then follow that up with sets of eight at a lower weight. That should be a decent recipe to toast my shoulders… right?

Ramping at a decent pace today, I hit a couple sets at 95, 115, 125, and then made the jump up to 135. I ended up firing off three sets of three at 135, which is pretty solid for where my overhead pressing is at. Usually I could hit a single or a double, but the first set of three felt really good, and the second one wasn’t even bad at all. From there, I dropped back down to 105 and hit that for three sets of eight. I’d argue those last two sets of eight were harder than my last triple. The first set of eight was a breeze though, but I guess it had a big hit on my shoulders.

I was hitting some rear delt work mixed in with the overhead pressing, and I continued to do so as I transitioned into shrugs. I started with a couple sets of wide grip shrugs and then went into typical narrow grip at a heavier weight. I’m going to go ahead and say that these really did the trick since I’ve already had to stop to foam roll my traps while I was writing this. They’re so sore right now it’s incredible. I hit the pec deck too to do some rear delts one arm at a time.

The remainder of my workout was hip mobility drills and core. I was focusing on getting into my deadlift position that Sam was teaching me (i.e. a stance that should allow me to rip the bar off the ground and hopefully go into a high pull or snatch). I find just repeatedly getting in and out of this position is one of the best stretches for my hips and hamstrings. I also did some static stretching and some hip circles while on my hands and knees, then tried bodyweight squats in between to test how my mobility was improving. For core, I hit a couple rounds of planks and ab wheel rollouts.

My traps are still absurdly sore. Successful overhead pressing day.

[Swoletron]

Squat Training

Tonight was a bit rushed getting to the gym because I stayed a bit later than I meant to at work. On the bright side, I rushed from work to training so I actually got there a bit early for my squat workout. I had ample time to warmup and stretch, and Sam and I actually started a few minutes early which was nice. So it was definitely a squat day.

Sam let me know early on I could stick to my slightly wider foot placement, narrower grip, and slightly lower bar style of squat that we tried over the weekend. Basically hitting 6’s, 4’s, and singles I worked up to a new 1RM of 335… I think. If it wasn’t then it was 325-330. I was actually trying not to pay attention to the weight so that I wouldn’t psyche myself out, but now I legitimately can’t recall what I hit. My left shoulder was bothering me the whole time, which sucked since my narrower grip was putting a ton of strain on it. It made it so that I felt like I couldn’t squeeze the bar hard with my left side and I’m sure that had an effect on my squatting. Anyway, I was happy with it.

Of course, after working up to a squat 1RM, Sam likes to get crazy and make me do sets of 10 squats. The first set was at 225. Previously when attempting this, I had him right behind me to make sure I wouldn’t get stuck at any point. With this squat stance, I was actually able to get through all 10 reps completely on my own. I’m not saying it wasn’t hard, but it was definitely more comfortable to do than when I do straight up high-bar squat. Next set was 235 which was a brutal set of 10… and then finally a set of 240 for 10 reps which I believe is a PR. Saying that I was winded after that is an absurd understatement.
After the squats were wrapped up, we moved into lunges. I noticed that anything over 12 steps (6 per leg) makes my recovery shoot through the roof. I did 16 steps initially with a 45 and I was winded. At 70, 85, and 95 lbs and 12 steps my recovery time actually became less and less. Mind you, that could have been because I wasn’t hitting a set of 10 squats at 240 right before, but I honestly think it has a lot to do with how many steps I take when lunging.

I wrapped up the workout hitting glute ham raises and I know that I’ll be forced to foam roll tonight if I want to make it through tomorrow. I also hit some ab wheel variations that let me stretch out my hips while I was working on my core. Definitely an awesome workout, but I’m pumped for arms tomorrow.

[Swoletron]

Arms Day

Well I had a heavy squat day with Sam yesterday, and I’ll be training with him tomorrow. It… Only made sense that I hit arms today. I’m noticing a tightness creeping in to some of my upper body so I’m going to make sure to foam roll tonight so that I should be good to go tomorrow for training with Sam.

Typical opener with triples on close grip bench. I worked up to 175 for triples and then hit two sets of 155 at five reps just to switch things up a bit. Supersetted all of that with straight bar curls. I moved over to dips where I worked on stretching out my chest, shoulders, and lats between sets and hit Fat Gripz straight bar curls as well. First set of dips is where I really noticed my upper body tightness, but the stretching between sets helped.

I moved on over to some rope pulldowns mixed in with Fat Gripz straight bar spider curls. That’s a mouthful… Wow. Had a couple twerp dipshits not clue in that I was doing some supersets (even though my stuff was set up on the preacher curl rack) so I had to abort the curls a bit early. Next was tricep cable pushdowns and standard dumbbell hammer curls. Again, the hammer curls I start to notice a crazzzzzy pump. Love it.

Last couple of exercises was high rep french press and Fat Gripz dumbbell hammer curls mixed together and then Fat Gripz dumbbell spider curls and EZ bar reverse curls. What did I do next? I legitimately had to foam roll my forearms because they were so beat up. Yeah. That happened. I also foam rolled my biceps in between sets of planks and ab wheel rollouts.

And now… time to foam roll the rest of my body.

[Swoletron]

Overhead Pressing

After a busy weekend and some heavy lifting, I decided to spend tonight on overhead pressing. I benched on Saturday with Sam getting up to 280 for a single and warmed up thoroughly so that I didn’t have any odd straining feelings as we were ramping up. Only once I hit 280 did my left side feel a bit strained. Yesterday I focused on pulling and really tried to practice my narrow-knees-flared stance. Tonight, I wanted to hit a 4 rep max for overhead pressing.

I spent the first little while in the gym warming up. When I’m not training with Sam, I still want to ensure I’m getting my mobility drills in, especially when I’m doing some bigger lifts (like benching, deadlifting, or overhead pressing). I made sure to get my shouldered warmed up and stretched out, and even focused on trying to warm up my upper back by doing some band pulls. Once I was feeling limber, I ramped with triples up to 115 over four sets or so. 125 I only hit a double so that I could get that small weight increment but not exhaust myself. 135 for four was actually easier than I thought. The first three reps were totally fluid. The final rep I paused to catch my breath, and still managed to accelerate the bar off my shoulder shelf. I decided I’d still try to go for a 1 RM for the day, and barely squeezed out 145 for a single. I did it though.

Atferwards, I decided to hit a set of 10 at 105, which was brutal. I cut it down to two sets of eight at 95 afterward and while that was challenging, I didn’t feel like I was sacrificing my form to get the second half of my target reps. After my overhead pressing was done, I wanted to hit some traps and rear delts. I did some shrugs with a wide grip from my flared knees stance and tried to pop the bar up into position. I followed that up with your typical narrow-grip shrug and held the reps at the top. I’ve never been a fan of half-assed mini shrug reps with way too much weight. It seems stupid to me.

I did some accessory work after to target my rear delts a bit more, including some cable rear delt raises, face pulls, and then reverse pec deck. As I right this, I can feel my traps and rear delts starting to get more sore. When finishing up my workout, I did some planks superset with foam rolling on my upper back/shoulders and band pulls to loosen up my back. Finally, I foam rolled my hamstrings since I’m positive I’ll be squatting tomorrow.

[Swoletron]

Bench Personal Training

I’ve been pretty quiet online the past couple of days just because I wanted to slack on the writing… not because I’m slacking on the gym. Quite the opposite. Training with Sam on Tuesday ended up frying my quads so badly that they still hurt TODAY. Yesterday I hit back pretty hard which felt awesome… And tonight was all about bench press. I got up pretty heavy and hit some burnout sets after too.

I got to training pretty early because I wanted to ensure I was properly warmed up. I got some pushups in alongside my hip, hamstring, and shoulder stretches. By the time I was setup to hit my first set of bench, I felt pretty good. We were going to tweak a variable today: my grip width. I usually bench pretty narrow… Like, super narrow compared to your typical commercial gym lifter. My triceps are proportionally a bit bigger too, so that’s probably why. Today for bench Sam had me move my hands out so my pinkies were on the next set of rings. Now of course all the bars around the world are slightly different, but for some perspective, I used to line up my hands based on the inner rings on the bar. The sets to follow were surprisingly awesome.

I started with just the bar, and that already felt more stable. Hard to tell if it was the new width or just because I warmed up well. As soon as we started ramping weight, I could tell the grip was having a big effect on my bench. I actually nailed 225 for a solid 4 completely on my own i.e. Sam wasn’t even ready to guide the bar for spotting. I worked up to 250 for 4, and then afterwards 270, 280, and 290 were all singles. Between 270 and 280 is where I find I lose a lot of the tension I want to keep in lowering the bar to my chest, so that’s obviously something I need to focus on. So, Sam clearly keeps the bar in an upward trend for me, but I’m definitely getting stronger than when I was training on my own. By forcing me to load up with weight I wouldn’t normally dare touch on my own, my body is being forced to adapt.

After the singles, I dropped back down to 225 for two sets of six. The last few reps on each of those needed some spotting, but again, the idea is just to put my body under some serious stress. I hit a few sets of pushups with my feet elevated pretty high, which definitely sapped the last bit of strength out of my body… But that’s not the end. I did a couple sets of dips (assisted so I could hit the ~20 rep range) which was also helped to fry my triceps and pecs.

I finished up with some core which was a nice shift from focusing on my upper body. A few rounds of bicycle/flutter kicks and some medicine ball throws made me feel like I ran a marathon. I guess my cardio and breathing isn’t great, but holy… I felt drained after that workout!

[Swoletron]

Squat Training

Wanted to save this log for today instead of writing two separate squat training logs in a row. Sam gave me a little heads up yesterday that even though we were going to squat, we were going to squat again today. After two grueling sessions… the numbers are in. My squat is stronger. I’ll describe yesterday’s workout and then what I focused on today.

Yesterday was all about trying to find a true 1RM with my most comfortable squatting stance. This meant a bit wider than normal for my foot placement, and the bar a bit lower than usual (with a narrower hand placement to keep tight). We ramped up taking relatively small steps once we hit 250 territory, but since the number of reps dropped off too, I wasn’t taking that much of a beating. For my top sets, I nailed 310, 325, and 335. 335 would be the new PR for me! On the last few sets of singles, Sam and I both noticed that I wasn’t coming up as vertical as we both would have liked. This is likely because my legs are significantly stronger than my core and back.

With that said, Sam didn’t want to hit volume sets for squatting right after. We had a big squat day planned for the following day (er… so, that’s today) so he wanted to focus on some back movements. Because… well… we just proved my back isn’t up to snuff with my legs. This part of the workout was insane. I hit big supersets of pullups, rows, T-Bar rows, and some crazy TRX row/pull variations. By the end of all of it, my rear delts and upper back were absolutely fried, and I couldn’t even hold the barbell with 135 on it to row it. When I woke up today, my hands were actually sore from trying to grip things when pulling yesterday. Holy…

Going in today I knew we were going to be hitting a ton of squat volume. I made sure to get there well in advance so I could adequately warmup my hips and hamstrings. I made sure to do a whole pile of bodyweight walking lunges to open up my hips. I started my actual training session too by doing a ton of squats in different stances with just the bar. Once it was time to start loading up weight, Sam got the bands set up on the squat rack (such that the bottom of the squat would be lighter) so that I could focus on accelerating out of the hole. Long story short, I worked up to a single at 350. So of course this is actually not as heavy as normal because the bands are on it to help in the hole, but it’s still a new PR for me for bands (and to be fair, anything with bands setup this way would be a PR for me).

Once I hit 350 for a squat single, we came back down so that I could hit a couple sets of six at 285. Again, I know the bands are helping me here… that’s the whole point! After squats, I got to do my favourite… Walking lunges followed by bulgarian split squats. I’m sure my quads will be torched tomorrow from those. I ended the workout on my own by doing a few rounds of ab wheel rollouts and foam rolling my left arm which has been causing me some grief over the past few workouts.

[Swoletron]

Overhead Pressing

After a big weekend of squatting and a little insider tip that I’ll be pulling or benching tomorrow, I took the opportunity to get some overhead pressing in tonight. I figured I’d get that out of the way, hit some rear delts, and then work some back since that’s something I need to bring up. Oh boy did the overhead pressing go well tonight.

I’ve been trying to take a tip from Sam and apply it to training in general. Essentially, unless you’re doing the exact same workout (i.e. same sets, reps, and weight to warmup, you can potentially be hitting different PRs every day. I don’t mean a new one rep max… It could be a three rep max. It could be a new record for how many sets of triples you could do at a certain weight. There’s a ton of different ways to look at it. With that said, one of my goals is to hit singles for overhead pressing in at least the 160 range (i.e. break past bodyweight) or to get back to my old five rep max at 135. Instead of just trying to add 5 lbs every week or add one more rep every week, I’ve been playing around with targeting different PRs to get me to where I want to be. It’s been working.

Tonight, I decided I’d try to hit a new three rep max at 140. I figured this should be totally attainable. I hit 135 for four and 145 for two previously, so 140 for two should be doable. To start off the overhead pressing, I hit a couple sets with just the bar to really ensure I was engaging my glutes and hamstrings when driving the bar up. I didn’t waste too much energy ramping, so an easy set at 65, then 95, 115, and then down to just a single at 130. I wanted to get that extra set to ramp, but I didn’t want to waste energy on it. 130 flew up easily, so that was probably good for my nervous system and my confidence. I loaded up 140 to go for my triple, but I didn’t hit it. Instead, I hit it for four reps because I magically had one more in me. So instead of setting a new three rep max, I set a new four rep max. I’ll take the five pound jump. Next time I’m definitely going for five at 135. I know I have it in me. I finished up all of the overhead pressing my hitting a few rounds of doubles at 135 which all felt super comfortable.

Next, I did some pullups with various grips. As I wrote last time, we’ve identified that my back strength isn’t up to par with my leg strength. I didn’t want to do anything super heavy for my back tonight since I might be pulling tomorrow, so pullups superset with some dumbbell curl variations worked out nicely. I started to notice my left brachioradialis is definitely getting strained. I’ve been noticing this the last few training sessions with Sam when I talk about “getting tight” in my left side. It’s actually screwing up my bench (because I can’t lower the bar properly) and my squat (because I can’t brace the bar comfortably) so I need to take some extra care. I decided to can the minimal bicep work early.

I finished up the workout by doing some TRX variations for my rear delts. I feel so silly saying this because I never thought I’d use a TRX… But honestly, it’s destroying my rear delts. I got in some TBar rows for sets of 10 working up to only two plates so I could practice keeping my posture properly. And finally, I rolled the hell out of my forearms and biceps, did some ab wheel rollouts, and then a few rounds of planks. Here’s hoping that my arm is good for tomorrow. Icing it as I type!

[Swoletron]

Bench Personal Training

I haven’t been writing the past few days, but I’ve still been going hard at the gym. I’ve been trying to clean my eating a bit more by incorporating more vegetables (stick 'em in the rice cooker and call it done). Annnd I also figured I’d get a back progress shot up, although I have no idea how to flex my biceps in this pose and take a picture at the same time. Since I squatted with Sam yesterday, we hit the bench hard today.

I warmed up pretty well today getting both my lower body and upper body primed before even toughing a weight. Some body weight lunges and some pushups to get the blood flowing, and then band stretches to get things loose. I started benching with sets of 10 and 8 at 135 and 185. I figured I’d be going into a high volume day with Sam, but from that point on we switched to singles. The goal is to get me away from making small 5/10 lbs jumps as I ramp my singles. It ends up wasting too much energy. So tonight I worked up from 225 to 285 for singles. 275 was definitely comfortable to lower the bar down, but I think 285 is still that number where I can’t comfortably lower the bar (i.e. my left side wants to give out as a natural reaction to keep from putting too much tension on the left side of my body). Anyway, I was still pretty psyched about ramping that high.

Instead of hitting high volume sets on the way back down, we switched things up today. I did some sets with bands at around 185-205 for doubles. These felt really comfortable and really made me strain to lock out. It felt great to try and throw the weight off my chest as the band loosened up too. After banded benching, we switched over to floor press. This was actually a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. The fact that I couldn’t leverage a throw from the bottom position made it a lot trickier. Sam was right though. It definitely helped me focus on squeezing my shoulder blades back.

After all of the pressing, we finished up with core. I did three rounds of weighted planks superset with medicine ball throws. We switched form the lighter ball to the heavier ball on the middle set, and it totally killed me. It’s only a few pounds more, but when you’re chucking it overhead it really makes a big difference.

[Swoletron]

Squat Training

After benching yesterday, I knew I’d be right back at squatting today. That one’s pretty obvious with Sam. Getting to the gym early on squat day is key for ensuring I’m totally warmed up. Sam let me know we’d be hitting some heavy squats today, so that meant aiming for singles.

I got under the bar for triples ramping from 135 all the way up to around 275ish. Kind of lost track where we stopped the triples, but due to lower bar placement, I was starting to tip forward. We decided we’d keep upping the weight, focus on standing upright with the bar a bit higher, and go right to singles. It took a couple attempts to get it right, but I knocked down 315 (not a PR) for a single with the bar in a pretty comfortable position. My biggest struggle is that I feel very balanced and structurally secure when the bar is low, but it causes me to lean forward and places stress on my left arm. When the bar is high, I feel like I’m not stable, but it lets me squat straight up and down. Balancing those two styles of squat is tricky, so I need to pay attention to which is working better. It looks like the bar just below a high bar squat was the winner after tonight.

After squatting singles, we dropped to 240 to start hitting sets of 5. I kept track of the bar placement, so I squatted 240, 250, and 260 for sets of 5. Each set actually got better and better as I was getting in the groove of bar placement. I asked Sam to cue me for when I should start to engage my legs to turn the bar around as well. At heavier weights, I have a problem with trying to get really low but trying to turn the bar around too late. When it’s lighter weight, it’s not such a big deal. As it gets heavier, if I’m too late to try and turn the bar around then I end up getting pinned. Regardless, 260 is my new 5RM PR!

After squatting, it was some lighter lunges with kettle bells, but I knew that meant I was hitting Bulgarian split squats after. I absolutely hate these. Seriously. Even with 25 pound dumbbells, a set of these leaves me sweating like crazy, both quads cramped right up, and completely our of breath. It’s insane and I have no idea why I find it so challenging. After a few rounds of that, I went into planks superset with medicine ball throws. The second set of planks was insanely hard because my shoulders were too sore to hold any of my weight. Let’s just say that Sam knows how to order my lifts in my workout.

[Swoletron]

Tightness and Mobility Issues

For anyone that’s followed any of my posts, you’ll know that I’ve been trying to really work on mobility and flexibility with my trainer, Sam. Over the last month or so, we weren’t really noticing improvements in my lifts although I was still hitting right around the same mark pretty consistently. The past few sessions we’ve been dialing back a bit and making some pretty cool discoveries about where I’m lacking flexibility or where I’m too tight in various parts of my movements.

If you kept the same mindset as I had for the majority of my lifting career, stretching and mobility work is for pansies. You’re big and strong (or you want to be) and the only people that stretch are girls doing Yoga or guys that are wimps. Right? That was the school of thought I followed for way too long until I realized I wasn’t progressing simply because I was lacking mobility and flexibility.

Even training with Sam I’ve managed to get my hips and hamstrings more limber, but there’s way more too it. I’ll discuss some of the things we’ve noticed in my various main lifts and our plan for trying to correct them.

Rolling Ankles

A few sessions ago, I was squatting with Sam and felt pretty good. I was hitting solid depth and everything felt great. It was going to be one of those awesome squatting sessions where I hit some high numbers. I worked up to right around 295 for singles, but that’s where my form started to break down pretty badly. If you imagine looking at my body from the front/back, my ankles were rolling inward towards each other and I was losing all of my structure as a result of it. We decided to can the squatting at that point and try some mobility things out.

Sam set me up on one of those step-up boxes that’s a couple of inches off the ground. With one foot on the box and the other foot beside it (but floating about two inches off the ground), Sam wanted me to lower my foot until it was flat on the ground. It’s kind of like 1/10th of a body weight squat on one leg, so… Pretty easy, right? I did about three to four reps of that and my entire body was pouring sweat. Looks like we found an interesting problem. We played around more trying out different ankle mobility drills, but it really came down to the fact that my ankles aren’t flexible enough. They only move a few degrees and in order to hit my depth, my feet end up rolling in and being stupid.

I’m now set up to do a ton of ankle mobility stuff on my own time so that I can try to repair this. Things as simple as rocking back and forth on one leg or using a lacrosse ball to massage the ankle go a long way. I’ve also found that wrapping a band on my ankle and doing the same rocking motions can hit some pretty cool angles and really loosen things up.

Pressing Lockout

Another interesting one is my pressing lockout. We’ve been struggling to figure our why my bench is pretty hurting lately, but it took a session of overhead pressing to figure it out. Sam had me do some military pressing, and as soon as I get tired, my lockout position doesn’t really involve my triceps being locked out. Instead, I’m pulling my head so far forward and rotating my shoulders that I have everything braced above my head with my traps holding it all together.

Since today was the second session of investigating this, we tweaked my overhead pressing to really emphasize my shoulder, elbow, and wrist placement in the bottom position. From there, I knew to focus on pressing straight up without leaning my entire body into the lift. My triceps were definitely taking a beating, but even the bottom position made the lift so much more sturdy.

Right after we ended up benching but didn’t go to heavy. Using some cues from Brandon Lilly YouTube videos and some mental notes form Sam’s military pressing positioning, I was able to get my bench setup properly so that when the bar came down I was actually loading up my lats and pressing up with my triceps until lockout. Now I just need to practice the cues.

Other Misc Notes

The day Sam and I were working on my ankle mobility, he basically taught me how to walk again. I’m 25, so it felt a bit ridiculous to be going through it. For anyone who has seen me walk in person, they say I waddle like a penguin. I don’t deny it either. My feet are pretty turned out, my legs don’t go straight forward every step, and I constantly have comments like “oh, bad leg day?” or “you hurt your leg?” even if I haven’t trained my legs. Focusing on my step pattern and improving my ankle mobility are a couple things to make me walk like a human again. Looking forward to that.

And finally, I just wanted to touch on my deadlift. Based on my proportions, I should be able to have a stupidly big deadlift. My arms are long, and I’m not all that tall. However, every time I go to pull with Sam it ends up seeming kind of embarrassing. Based on our last session, I think the big thing we learned is that any time I felt tension on my back, I thought my back was rounding. Thus, when deadlifting alone, I’d make minor tweaks to ensure I was avoiding that feeling (i.e. arching too far). After Sam called me out on it, we basically discovered that my lower back is incredibly weak because I’ve been avoiding targeting it. So there’s something else for me to work on to try and get my pulling numbers up.

[Swoletron]

Deadlifting

Haven’t written a lifting log in a while, so it’s time to get back in the habit of typing them up. I’ve been making a ton of progress with Sam identifying pain points in my lifts, so I’m doing my best to try and work through them when I’m not training with him directly. Tonight, I wanted to work on my setup for deadlifting. This was a weak point that we identified last time we were pulling, so I had a bunch of things to practice.

Like almost every session now, I started off by stretching. I wanted to get some quad stretches in tonight since I usually do a lot of hamstring and hip stretching anyway. I’ve identified a few quad stretches that I’m absolutely horrible at, so they’re a perfect candidate for working on. I also made sure to get some ankle mobility drills in so that I can improve that for all of my leg work. Again, another pain point in my training is my lack of ankle flexibility.

Once I was feeling loosened up, I started my pulls with sets of 5 at just one plate. I think my old setup for conventional pulling when I was training on my own was actually pretty close to where I want to be, but I want to re-teach myself the setup steps so that I can really focus on a few things. So for now my setup is as follows… Walk up to the bar about 3 inches away from my shins. Bend over and grab the bar so that my shins are touching, but ensure that the bar is lined up around mid way with my lats. From here, I take the slack out of my arms not by rounding my shoulders forward, but by flexing my lats and traps. This was one mistake in my previous training sessions that was causing back rounding at heavier weights. Once my back is braced, I keep the tension in my lats and traps, and straighten my legs. I then sit back and load my hamstrings while still keeping the tension in my lats and traps. Tonight, this proved to work pretty well.

I worked at pretty low weights today, but eventually got to 335 for a single. I felt like my form was starting to slip from where I wanted it right at that weight, so I decided I’d come back down and pull 135 for triples for several sets. Out of all the reps across all the sets, I had a few at various weights between 135 and 335 that actually felt like everything just clicked. What I mean is that my setup lead into a rep that seemed to pop off the ground so the rest of the pull was basically trivial. I’ll obviously continue to focus on that until I can master the little details that lead up to it.

The rest of my workout was pretty simple stuff. I hit some bent over rows to get a bit more back work in. I followed it up with tricep rope pulldowns and really focused on holding the lockout position. Why? Because my triceps appear to be stupidly week at lockout. I did the same with some dips right after. I followed that up with some dumbbell curl + hammer curl supersets just to get some blood back in my biceps. I finished the workout off with single leg kettle bell deadlifts (since I’m horrible at them) and some ab wheel rollouts.

[Swoletron]

Deadlifting

No, you’re not seeing double. I didn’t write about my leg training session with Sam yesterday, but my last workout on my own was deadlifting. And a little insider tip I got tonight also told me I’ll be deadlifting tomorrow. I was even told it was totally cool for me to deadlift today to practice… So that’s exactly what I did.

For my stretching and warmups today, I focused on my hips and my ankles. Hips are a necessity and I’m trying to ensure I get adequate ankle mobility time now. Afterward, I gave my lats a good stretching so that when I focused on squeezing them when pulling I wouldn’t have any surprises. Alright, good to go!

Like usual, I started my pulls with 135. I did one rep and said “Nope. Nope. Nope”. Guess what? This genius didn’t stretch his glutes/hamstrings. I guess I’m actually trying to use them in my setup now since I couldn’t even setup to do a SINGLE rep properly. So while warming up with a few sets of 135, I did some vigorous stretching of my hamstrings and glutes by posting up on a box with my leg across it. It only took about 3 rounds of doing this between sets before I noticed an insane improvement.

Most of my sets were done at 225 and 275 tonight. I did a few sets at each weight for triples. Towards the end, I noticed my initial pull was far better than every subsequent pull (which means I probably need to work on setting back up between reps). In the spirit of practicing something good, I stuck to singles for a bit more weight. 315 I pulled for a single pretty easily… as I would hope. 335 was also pretty decent (which is where I stopped on Monday). I decided to give it a little bit more and shot for 355. While I pulled 355 off the ground (without killing myself), I actually noticed that right before pulling off the ground I actually lost some of the tension in my hamstrings. Obviously not what I wanted, but it was pretty interesting to actually notice. I’d likely attribute it to a bit of hesitation right when I tried to get the bar moving off the ground (or maybe I hesitated because I lost hamstring tension?!)

The rest of my workout was very similar to what I did on Monday night. Bent over rows to hit some back, tricep cable work, dumbbell curls/hammers for biceps, and some rollouts for core work. I also did a few rounds of single leg kettlebell deadlifts superset with my ankle mobility drills on one of the short step-up platforms.

[Swoletron]

Bench Personal Training

This is a bit of a double whammy since Friday night and today were both training for bench press. Yesterday I was on my own going over some deadlift technique, but nothing special… So Friday was spec’d to be heavy 5x5 benching and today was all about reps and speed. let’s just say that Sam and I both agreed we’ll take some time off benching to recover from this one.

Let’s start with Friday. I got going with some routine stretches… made sure to get my lats really stretched and leaned into the bands to get my shoulders nice and loose. After 15-20 minutes of stretching and a few sets of pushups I was feeling nice and warmed up. Right with the first few reps of the bar things felt pretty good. I had my traps and shoulders dug right into the bench and I was able to lower the bar straight down without any strange bar path business going on. We decided to capitalize on this, so we we got ramping up relatively heavy. Once we hit 265, I hit that for two sets of singles. The best part is that the bar speed for the first couple of inches off my chest at 265 was still quick. I needed a bit of guidance with the bar but the speed off my chest was still impressive.

After singles it was time for 5x5. It’s been a couple of days so I can’t recall exactly what the weights were at, but I do recall doing a set of 205… I just can’t remember the varying weights that were used. I think I ended up down at 185 by the end of all of it. Regardless, I was feeling pretty awesome and maintaining both good technique and bar speed off my chest.

Today started off close to the same way. I made sure to stretch out well and got some mobility drills in for my shoulders. There’s a few things I’ve been practicing to be able to press my hands above my (getting my bicep right beside my ear) without my entire body tweaking/twisting to accomplish it. My right side is definitely better at it, but my left side is catching up. It’s really noticeable when I try to overhead press with solid form.

When I got to the bench, Sam said we’d be ramping by 10s. Kind of scary to hear considering my muscles get fatigued super fast, but we need to work on my weaknesses. I have to suck it up. We started pretty low, so 95, 135, 155, 175, 195, 205. and then 205 again. I wasn’t really keeping track of the weight as we ramped, but I thought 205 was 195. I did it for 7 reps. That’s some sort of PR for me I’m pretty sure. Again, through all of these sets I was actually bringing the bar down straight with no strange travel and then getting great speed from the bottom. Things seemed to be clicking the past few sessions.

Once we were done with that, we did 5x5 around 145-160 with bands on the bar (anchored to the bottom to add tension at the top of the ROM). Every set at least the first three reps were rock solid with a good amount of speed. The last two were trickier but I still kept the form and pushed into the bench.

The accessory work was some standing Arnold presses superset with pushups, and then dips superset with super wide grip pushups. My delts were so fried when doing the normal pushups that I couldn’t even do 10 reps with Sam helping me on my third set. It was crazy. Once he said we were going to do dips I thought I was going to die. Anyway, it was painful as hell but I can’t be upset about not hitting a ton of pushups after all the volume that preceeded. We finished up with some band resistance situps… and then my core was torched just as well as my chest, delts, and triceps.

Solid weekend of lifting.

[Swoletron]

Deadlifting

I’ll be squatting tomorrow with Sam, and he wanted me to take some time off from pushing, so I figured I’d capitalize on taking some time to practice deadlifting. And I mean it… Not just pulling to try and make some numbers go up, but really practice making every rep feel the exact same. I was expecting my pecs and delts to be rocked today based on yesterday’s workout, but I managed to survive.

I started my warmups by focusing on my ankle mobility. Since I’ll be squatting tomorrow, I wanted to pay this special attention. I got my quads stretched out by elevating my foot on a box and getting into a lunge-like stance with my back knee on the ground. To limber up my hamstrings, I did some single leg kettlebell deadlifts with some light weight, but it really helps me to engage my glutes at the top of the ROM.

I started off nice and light with quarter plates on the bar for 95. While I’m working on my setup, I’m also trying to introduce hook grip into my arsenal. Lighter weights are a perfect candidate for trying it out since it really rocks my hands. I’m getting blisters in places I never have after only a couple of workouts. I also decided I’d setup some 2.5 lbs plates on the ground to mark where the bar started so that I could ensure it was ending up in the same spot for every rep. Spoiler alert: I didn’t have a single rep the entire workout that traveled far enough to hit the plates when going back to the starting position.

I took my time ramping up hitting sets of five and three . My intention was to get to 315 for a nice single and keep good form, then quit. However, 315 came up nice and quickly and since I was perfectly setup for a second rep, I pulled that up nice and quick too. I decided to go a bit further today and hit 335 and 355 for singles. Again, pretty good speed (355 started to slow down), but each time the bar was placed right back in the starting position. I was impressed with the consistency.

I finished up my workout by doing some pullups and a few bicep/hammer curls. Just a little something to get my back a bit pumped, and some biceps since I’m a big fan of doing more frequent but lower volume bicep work. Overall, solid workout and I’m really happy with how it went.

[Swoletron]

Deadlifting

Yeah… another deadlifting log. I haven’t been doing military press on my own because Sam has actually been starting to incorporate that into our sessions together. As a result, I’m focusing on one of the major movements we don’t spend a ton of time on. I’m determined to get my deadlift well into the 400s. And there’s nothing that’s going to stop me. I’ll be pushing with Sam tomorrow, so this all worked out pretty well.

I started by warming up and stretching my hips, hamstrings, ankles, and quads for about 25 minutes. I went in a little bit earlier than usual because I had some time to kill, but I felt pretty awesome by the time I even picked up a bar. Like the past few times I’ve been pulling, I really wanted to focus on my hook grip. The other day I made it to 275 for singles doing hook grip, which is the most I have ever pulled without using an alternating grip. The feeling I had in my thumbs once I put the bar down was like they were about to burst. I was determined to get a bit higher than 275 today for hook grip.

Starting with 95 lbs (using bumper plates for bar height), I did a few sets of 5 to get the pattern down. I managed to scrape a scab on my leg on one set without even lifting the bar, so I did the rest of me session bleeding all over my leg from a stupid little scab. Ridiculous, but… lesson learned about my bad form. I ramped using hook grip past two plates and right up to 275 where I started with my singles., and started incorporating some pullups between all of my sets. I probably ended up doing a total of 40-50 pullups by the end of the workout. After four or five sets at 275, I moved up to 295 for a couple of sets and kept the hook grip. There’s a new hook grip PR! I actually had the same thumb-bursting sensation at 295 that I had last time at 275, so I guess that’s a good sign. I decided that was good for hook grip and went to alternating grip to go into the 300s. I pulled singles from 315 up to 355 and stopped after 355. I didn’t feel like I’d keep great form past there, so I dropped back down to two plates and stuck to pulling only up to right below my knees.

One thing I had worked on with Sam was focusing on back strength while deadlifting. My lower back… is terrible because I’ve been avoiding the feeling I get when my lower back actually has to work (in fear that my back was rounding). I did my two plates for five or six sets at three reps holding the below-the-knee position for three-five seconds. Great way to fry your back. I finished up my workout with a couple of sets of dumbbell curls and hammer curls, just because I want to be beautiful.

[Swoletron]

Leg Day

Today I blasted some legs with Sam to finish off the weekend and the second last training session of the year together. I’m still not squatting, and likely won’t squat at all until the first week back training with Sam in the new year. My ankles are still rolling in when back squatting (not front squatting, at all) so while my legs are strong enough to take the load, as soon as it gets heavier things don’t flow as nice. Doesn’t mean we can’t still crush some legs though.

I’ll keep this pretty short so I can touch on what’s likely changing up int he new year along with some of my goals. I has about 25 minutes of warming up my legs consisting of some banded hip and ankle stretches, walking body-weight lunges, single leg kettle bell deadlifts, and some kettle bell front squats. We didn’t hit too many exercises today, and as I mentioned, I’m still not squatting, but we went pretty heavy on my other lifts today. Walking lunges I worked up to 125 lbs with 8 steps per side, which was an interesting challenge considering I’m usually just out of breath whereas today I was actually working hard to actually stand up. I did weighted step-ups today with (I think?) 105 lbs on my back in contrast to the body-weight ones I’m used to doing. We went light on the Bulgarian split squats but only because today I figured out how to balance my back leg on my toes the entire time; it was a huge technique improvement. And we finished up with some single-leg yoga ball hamstring curls, situps, and planks. My hamstrings are torched as I type this.

In the new year, I have a few goals. Do I need to wait until the new year? No. But now that I have some time off work I’m leveraging it to reflect on a few things.

• Get cardio in three times per week. I’ll be starting with pretty short sessions (like, 8-12 minutes) and working up to 20 minute sessions where I change the intensity up. I’d like to be doing intervals and two-at-a-time steps in the same 20 minute session within a few months.

• Get back to being consistent with all my supplements. I’m good for fish oil, vitamins, and ZMA, but my protein/creatine intake has gone awry. Since I started personal training, I have been absolutely abysmal about getting my peri-workout nutrition in. I’m going to correct this ASAP.

• Lean protein + carbs, fatty protein + veggies. I’m really going to shoot to try and keep my fat intake separate from my carb intake. I’ll probably have my routine “cheat” meals that might have a healthy dosage of both at once, but I’ll be sure to work extra hard that day.

• Mobility. I’ve made dramatic changes in my hamstring and hip mobility, but I’m not done yet. I also want to increase my mobility in my ankles and shoulders, and I’d like to loosen up my quads since they’re absurdly tight. It’s going to take some focus and determination, but I know it’ll be worth it in the end.

• Get strong. Within the first few months of this year, I want to pull over 400 conventional, bench 265 (without any assistance), and squat 300 (without my ankles rolling at all). I need to get the other pieces together, but with determination, I can make it happen.

[Swoletron]

Deadlifting

Go figure… More deadlifting! I had a pretty long workout tonight, but since I ran into Sam after his last client, I lucked out and got to pick his brain on a few things. I really wanted to focus on proper technique, hook grip, and glute engagement for the entire workout.

I started off my taking a page out of Kelly Starrett’s YouTube videos… He has a video up on ankle mobility, and the kid in the video seems to have the exact same sort of ankle issues going on that I have when I squat. I got set up with a band when I got into the gym and tried holding myself in the hole of a squat and moving around. I could definitely feel some strain when trying to lean over either foot, so I think I’ll keep trying this out to watch for improvement. I started my lift by pulling some pretty low numbers and focusing on a handful of things. The first was keeping the bar off my shins when pulling. As soon as I start dragging it up my shins I know I’m doing something stupid. The next was that my hook grip felt comfortable. At lighter weights, taping my thumbs is kind of pointless, but I’m getting in the habit of leveraging hook grip at least. The third thing I was focusing on with my lighter deadlifting sets was doing static holds right below my knees for 5 seconds. I was able to do this all the way up to 225, but not past that. Finally, I was really ensuring that I could squeeze my glutes at the top of the ROM on each and every pull.

At around 335 lbs, Sam came over to talk shop on my deadlifting. Things were looking decent for what he had observed. I was only pulling singles once I hit 335, so I was still feeling surprisingly fresh. Sam suggested I try something that I had actually noticed I was doing in earlier sets: When I take out the slack in my arms and go to load up my hamstrings, don’t waste any time in “the hole” before my pull. It’s a perfect opportunity to put slack back into my arms legs. On my 355 pull I tried taking Sam’s advice and he said that now I was jerking the bar. When I watched how he demonstrated, it made sense… He was able to take out the slack, load his hamstrings, and then the very first part of the pull was just the bar bending. When I had tried, I was accidentally re-introducing some slack into my body before trying to get aggressive and rip the bar from the ground. I tried deadlifting 370 to hit a new PR for this better-technique deadlift I’ve been learning and really focused on making my setup one fluid motion. Better. I didn’t have as much acceleration off the ground, but the bar came up smoothly. I went for 375 after that and managed to pull that well too. Boom!

The rest of my workout was a back circuit including T-bar rows, pullups, and deadlifting triples at 225. I actually had some little weiner come up in the middle of my circuit and take the handle for T-bar rows, so that ended that. I guess it was his first time in a public gym or he suffers from some sort of mental disability. Either way, I carried on with my workout and did some isometric holds on the back extension machine squeezing my glutes for around 45 seconds for two sets (and a 10 lbs weight on my back… light). I superset that with a couple sets of curls and switched up the isometrics to sets of 15 back extensions. I finished up by using the ab wheel for some core and 10 minutes on the stair master doing 2 minute intervals of two-steps-at-a-time. I’m sure my glutes will be fried tomorrow.

[Swoletron]

Bench Personal Training

Last personal training session of the year! Tonight I focused on benching with Sam but not really focusing on high numbers tonight. Technique and safety above all, like usual, but otherwise the goal of the night was speed. And apparently we’re trying to make me hate doing pushups.

I warmed up like usual before starting my session with Sam. We got set up to bench where I opened up with benching two sets of 10 at 135. Couldn’t seem to get my footing right (i.e. my eyes were way below the bar on both sets). From there, we were going to ramp with doubles, so 185 (footing off… now my eyes were above the bar), 230 (eyes still above the bar), and then 250. We stopped at 250 since it looked like I had slowed down once we hit that weight (but finally my eyes were lining up in the right spot!). I did three doubles at 250 before we called it quits on the bench to move to other movements.

The rest of the workout was primarily pushup variations. We did plyometric pushups where I’d get some air time on a box to swap which hand that I’d keep elevated. I did pushups with my feet suspended in a TRX. I did pushups with my elbows tucked keeping one hand on a ball. By the end of the workout, my arm was trembling just by placing my hand on the ground. I got in a few rounds of dips and literally went to failure on my last set of dips. I couldn’t lock out my triceps anymore.

The one new movement that was kind of cool today was catching a medicine ball above my chest, and in one continuous movement trying to bring it down and explode up to throw the ball back up to Sam. The idea obviously being to generate speed and focus on an aggressive turn-around once the weight touches my chest. The first ball drop resulted in the medicine ball touching my hands and having my arms completely collapse. I was completely burnt out. By the second set I was actually throwing the ball back up without being too ridiculous. Still, I’ll admit that it was far more complicated than it seemed.

[Swoletron]

Pulling Training

For my first personal training session of the year, Sam had me pulling. It wasn’t all about deadlifting like before, but instead we were going over parts of the motion required to perform a clean properly. Specifically, the middle of the movement once the bar has already been off the ground. It was an awesome session that left me pretty beat up.

I got stretched out with the bands like usual and hit up some kettle bell front squats and walking lunges to get some blood flowing in my legs. I figured we’d be doing some sort of legs today, so if we were finally going to be squatting I wanted to be ready for it. Sam said we’d be doing some pulling once he had walked over to the training section, and explained how it would be a bit different than usual. We got started on part of the technique for cleaning, and it seemed pretty simple once he broke it down. What I wasn’t ready for was having my lower back set on fire after only working with the bar for a few sets.

Sam is awesome for calling out any slacking on technique, so he let me know my back was stacking straight through the movement. After 20 or so reps with just the bar, I could feel my lower back getting incredibly tight. Just goes to show that I still need to build up some lower back strength… As long as my spine is neutral! I wasn’t counting how many reps we got through, but as I tired out, Sam let me switch to doing triples with really short breaks in between. It was exactly what I needed to push through my lower-back tightness. I had only worked up to 105 lbs for a rack-pull-into-shrug-on-my-toes movement, but it wasn’t about the weight… Just the rhythm. I got to work on my hook grip the whole time, (which was great since the weight was light) and finished up feeling like I had a good idea where the full body extension was supposed to be executed. The next step? Switch to snatch grip.

Snatch grip was really throwing me off because I couldn’t figure out how to line up at the bar. I mean, I was going crazy over it. Sam said to forget it for now and we’d go back to pulling conventional off the stands. After I finished a set of conventional again. I slid my hands out to snatch-grip position and said “So, if I pull right from this position, am I good to go?”… Sam laughed and said that was exactly the position he was after, so I figured out right there that I could approach the bar just like I was doing it conventional and simply move my hands out wide. For some reason, the wide grip was throwing me off for how far away my shins needed to be from the bar and how I’d need to bend down to pick up the bar. So, essentially I’m stupid and over-analyzed it until I was paralyzed by it! Now that I had the snatch-grip figured out, I was forced into a few more rounds of pulling.

I finished off the workout by doing some hopping. Seriously. I had to get down into a squat position and flick my feet and ankles to do 10 short hops one way, turn around, and do 10 hops back. Easy, right? I had to do this once before with Sam, and I knew it was going to be hell. My hips were on fire from holding the squat position and my lungs were burning from gasping for air. It turns out I’m really bad at jumping. Like… terrible. I guess I know what I need to work on.