I’m starting this thread for all of us who may not be posting on the HT’s What the Hell Am I doing thread. A thread for us to post our daily logs, jokes, insults insights or whatever. All are welcome, I would hope. Posting here would save checking a bunch of separate threads (though that is enjoyable) and save us a bit of time in our busy days.
Just becasuse I’m not feeling serious today.
Friendship among Women:
A woman didn’t come home one night. The next morning She told her husband that she had slept over at a friend’s house. The man called his wife’s 10 best friends. None of them knew anything about it.
Friendship among Men:
A man didn’t come home one night. The next morning he told his wife that he had slept over at a friend’s House. The woman called her husband’s 10 best friends, eight of which confirmed that he had slept over, and
Two said that he was still there.
I guess I should have set the tone with a more serious toned post…
Okay - I guess I was a little overconfident about maybe doing deads today. I feel like I’ve been beaten by pygmies with heavy sticks - my legs and back are pretty well worked from yesterday. Maybe I’ll dodder out to the garage and do abs and grip tonight.
I like it.
My back is feeling a little tweaked and I’m supposed to do deads in the morning. We’ll see I guess.
Opps
Thank you for the information, but this isn’t really the place for this sort of stuff. This thread is/was intended for over 35 lifters to post their training logs and share experiences. This belongs in the Politics forum. Please take it there if you will.
[quote]skidmark wrote:
Okay - I guess I was a little overconfident about maybe doing deads today. I feel like I’ve been beaten by pygmies with heavy sticks - my legs and back are pretty well worked from yesterday. Maybe I’ll dodder out to the garage and do abs and grip tonight.[/quote]
I feel like the deadlifts got the best of me this week as well.
Hey…a training question for you guys. I’m really feeling the need for a week off, I don’t see much around here about guys taking a break. I read about deloading but I haven’t a clue what that is. Do you all take time off when the body scream at you for a break?
When the aches and pains start piling up (like after 3 weeks or so or even if not) take a lighter week - either less volume, keeping the intensity near the same. Or scale back on intensity or both, depending on how beat up you feel.
With my program, I can usually just take an extra day of rest between sessions if I’m feeling overdone, but westside-type programs need to have a deload week every 3-4 weeks.
Eric Cressey (http://www.ericcressey.com) has a great booklet called The Art of the Deload. very helpful little e-book. Worth reading.
I just recently took 2 weeks off because of my bossy bad back. First week back there was a slight drop off. Second week was right back to normal. The 3rd week every lift was up. Bench has gone up 30 lbs. since April. Not sure what’s going on, but I am liking it.
[quote]daddyzombie wrote:
Hey…a training question for you guys. I’m really feeling the need for a week off, I don’t see much around here about guys taking a break. I read about deloading but I haven’t a clue what that is. Do you all take time off when the body scream at you for a break?[/quote]
I haven’t been training often enough to reach that point - the rest of life has been continually enforcing interruptions to my lifting. LOL
But it seems to be working for me, as I continue to make progress…
Good tip from a lifter, Chris Drummond at http://www.staleytraining.com re: squats. I’ve been trying it out and it seems to help.
Keep the elbows as far forward as possible. At the bottom of the squat force the elbows forward and it seems to make it easier to get up. It makes you push your chest out and get a better arch, puts the center of gravity back onto the hips which makes for a stronger push.
[quote]daddyzombie wrote:
Hey…a training question for you guys. I’m really feeling the need for a week off, I don’t see much around here about guys taking a break. I read about deloading but I haven’t a clue what that is. Do you all take time off when the body scream at you for a break?[/quote]
My body screams at me all the time. If I really listened to it, I’d never lift.
I schedule a week off every 4 months or so. I know if I don’t plan for it I’ll just keep on lifting. Years ago I used to take about a week off a year, if that. That was nuts.
Cappy
So despite the tweaked lower back I did my DLs today and pulled a PR @ 375. I know it’s sad but I’ll take it. I lowered the weight after that and went light with the rest of the sets. Soemthing is not right but if I can PR DL I should be able to work through it.
I have to travel a few times a year for work, anywhere from 1 day to a week and use that time for rest/recovery. I may double up the week before but won’t do anything (except maybe swim in the hotel pool) the whole time I’m away. I have hit a PR the following week several times.
Ok, kind of line with DZ’s question. Has/does anyone ever drastically change their routine to emphasize their weak points and rest their strong points? EG, my front delts are far more develop than my side and rear. I’ve been playing with the idea of going on some kind of cycle where all I work are weak points. Course I’ll have to resist the call of the big lifts for a while. Not really a deload but just a change up. Thoughts?
[quote]hel320 wrote:
Ok, kind of line with DZ’s question. Has/does anyone ever drastically change their routine to emphasize their weak points and rest their strong points?[/quote]
Yeah, but I don’t exactly “rest” the stronger points…
Well what’s your primary interest? Strength? Function? Aesthetics? For me, it’s all about overall strength and function and as long as everything is working in concert then I’m not going to mess with a good thing. Now if, say, I had some glaring strength imbalance that was holding things back then I’d certainly want to specialize a little and bring that weaker area up. But otherwise I’m probably not going to nit-pick myself to death.
Sometimes I decrease my focus on certain things from time to time, but I never drop the major compound movements. I might swap variations every now and then, but the big 6 are always in there. Always.
I mean, I see a lot of guys doing routines with bench, dips, decline, incline and every kind of press under the sun in one workout. Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone does that or why they’d even want to? You put all that in one workout and what are you gonna switch to four or five months down the line when your brain is mush from doing the same old things over and over?
Furthermore, if I’m giving my all to dips then what the heck have I got left to put into bench? Or incline presses, etc., etc.? I dunno. Each cycle I pick one compound variation per major muscle group. When I’ve worked that into the ground, then I start another cycle and switch to another variation … and so on and so forth. I add ISO exercises when or if needed. YMMV.
Cappy
[quote]soldog wrote:
daddyzombie wrote:
Hey…a training question for you guys. I’m really feeling the need for a week off, I don’t see much around here about guys taking a break. I read about deloading but I haven’t a clue what that is. Do you all take time off when the body scream at you for a break?
I haven’t been training often enough to reach that point - the rest of life has been continually enforcing interruptions to my lifting. LOL
But it seems to be working for me, as I continue to make progress…[/quote]
I take a week off when life really, really interferes (like I’m on vacation and I can’t find weights or something).
Happens just often enough.
[quote]hel320 wrote:
Ok, kind of line with DZ’s question. Has/does anyone ever drastically change their routine to emphasize their weak points and rest their strong points? EG, my front delts are far more develop than my side and rear. I’ve been playing with the idea of going on some kind of cycle where all I work are weak points. Course I’ll have to resist the call of the big lifts for a while. Not really a deload but just a change up. Thoughts? [/quote]
I don’t know enough yet to do that …
[quote]hel320 wrote:
Ok, kind of line with DZ’s question. Has/does anyone ever drastically change their routine to emphasize their weak points and rest their strong points? EG, my front delts are far more develop than my side and rear. I’ve been playing with the idea of going on some kind of cycle where all I work are weak points. Course I’ll have to resist the call of the big lifts for a while. Not really a deload but just a change up. Thoughts? [/quote]
I try and keep compound lifts in the picture, but make up for weaknesses by exercise choice or in the assistance work I do. For instance - as Capacity does, I rotate bench types over 3 weeks. and have secondary exercises that complement the main movement to strengthen the weak part of the movement.
A weakness in upper back is holding back my bench so I’m doing exercises that get the muscles across the shoulder blades in order.
Stuff like that.
Sometimes I have to drop weight and go back to working form really hard so that things will develop evenly as the poundages go back up. I may have to do that after the competition, in fact.
2008-7-15
Assistance
Seated Press (pin 7 - nose height)
135x8
165x8
185x4
195x2
185x3
Seated Speed Press (full ROM)
115x17,13
Pendlay Rows (Bench width grip to chest - basically a reverse bench))
185 3x10 (Me hates theses long time)
1-Arm Right Angle Barbell row
70x12
95x12+3
120x12
140x8
Seated DB curls
55x8,6
Tate Presses
55’sx7,8
Blew my wad on the warmups in seated presses. - D’Oh! Upped the reps on back work.
Pendlay rows to chest with a bench width grip is. not. easy. They really force scap stabilization though so I’m going to keep doing them. Tried to keep the down portion slower than the up portion.
The right-angle-rows are weirdly right. I stand perpendicular to the barbell at its end, loaded on that end, grab the sleeve and row from in to out. Had to use straps but my forearms still got pumped. The leverage is really good, so you have to load a buncha weight. Nice variation and it hits the area I want to strengthen.
Threw in Tate presses just to see what I could do when my tris are fresh.
I’m a sweaty mess, but not fried from the workout.
[quote]hel320 wrote:
Ok, kind of line with DZ’s question. Has/does anyone ever drastically change their routine to emphasize their weak points and rest their strong points? EG, my front delts are far more develop than my side and rear. I’ve been playing with the idea of going on some kind of cycle where all I work are weak points. Course I’ll have to resist the call of the big lifts for a while. Not really a deload but just a change up. Thoughts? [/quote]
I just finished a bit of what your asking about. You commented on my " deadlift P.R." thread (thanks for that), I had just come off a 30-day cutting diet and training plan which had me doing supersets and many corrective type moves ( weak point work ect.) To be fair, the workouts sucked! But I was working on parts that are weak for me, or I’m just not great at ( single-leg bench squats anyone!) Now, back into a heavier rotation, I’m feeling stronger and more stable than before. This wasn’t taking time off as some had mentioned, but the dramatic change was in fact refreshing, motivating, and very productive.