Torn Between Scylla and Charybdis

Training Training Logs
421

I have been doing my stretches off and on when I get time. I am eliminating piriformis stretching as that seems to be hard on my knee. I am going to continue to do as much of the work as I can without pain though.

I will respond to all posts tomorrow. I am jammed for time and tired as hell at the moment. Sorry for not getting to them as quickly as normal. I may take tomorrow off to recover a bit. I have some nagging aches that I may not want to squat with. My elbows are a good example of this. I think an extra day may be in order. Or not. I’ll know tomorrow.

Goodnight everyone. Thanks for reading.

422

[quote]csulli wrote:
You’re getting strong as shit dude.[/quote]

Thanks man. I’ve been giving it my all for a while now. I am starting to feel a bit beat up though. I have some small nagging injuries.

423

[quote]young n wrote:
Seems like you have gotten a lot of good information regarding your knee issues.
I have a question, I did not see any single leg work in your log e.i. lunges, single leg squats, single leg deadlift variations, (I did see leg curls, machine based? which may or may not be performed bilaterally).
Maybe I missed something?

But as I was reading your log and then came to the knee issue, single leg work was the first thing to come to my mind.
Again I’m not pissing on you for not doing single leg work, just curious. Single leg work is just another tool, maybe it isn’t the time and place for it your your current cycle/ block.

I’m sure you know what your doing and your doctor and/or PT team are well ahead of the curve than me.

And about your knee, I went over the injuries and rehab to read up on the “injury” and again the first thing that came to my mind was maybe you need some ART done. (it sounds very similar to something I dealt with) Of course you would need the go ahead from your doc. or whoever is treating you, but you get my drift. Maybe the hit that you took on the lateral aspect of the knee “freed” up some “stuff” and might have shifted some things in there and over the course of squatting, pulling, walking and hell even talking your knee was figuring out how to get back to homeostasis in the most pain free way without additional loading forcing it to preform in this new position (this kind of ties into what 56x11 said earlier, or at least in mind it does .)

Then again I’m not an expert. Just offering some advice about the ART.
Good luck bro.[/quote]

I don’t do any unilateral work for my legs. Usually after my first two lifts of leg day I am just fried.

I’ve got a noob question for you. What is ART?

As someone with a medical background to their education, I do not think that your hypothesis sounds impossible.

My doc said that if it still hurts in 3 to 6 months, to come back in for re-evaluation.

I vow that…NEVER AGAIN WILL I DO ANYTHING ON HYPEREXTENDED ANYTHING OR TAKE STUPID RISKS PLAYING GAMES (EX BACK YARD TACKLE FOOTBALL, ARM WRESTLING, ETC…) Lesson learned.

Thanks for the post man. I am sorry I didn’t get to it sooner.

424

[quote]BHOLL wrote:

[quote]trivium wrote:
Yesterday I had a productive day. I went to my appointment with the ortho/sports medicine doc. He said that the MRI showed no real damage that should prevent me from lifting at the moment and to just ease up or stop if I feel pain. He said to come back in 3-6 months if the pain doesn’t go away and he will re-evaluate it. He was actually really supportive of my PL goals, and interested my schooling. I am very happy with this.

He did say that my PCL looked “odd but not injured” and that the radiologist read the MRI as having a low grade ACL injury with slight fluid accumulation surrounding it. He however disagreed and said that it looked absolutely fine. He also said that my exam was completely normal, and not to worry about going heavy. Again, he said to just watch out for pain. As for the stiffness, he said to continue to stretch out/warm up well/work it through the range of motion, and to take something like Aleve.

He also said that it was likely my stretching routine was also more advanced than anything he could give me and to continue with that. This was what the other docs said as well.

I will continue to update.[/quote]

SHOCKER!!!

Wheres 59 at now?

Good job with your PL goals man, your one strong mother huncher.
[/quote]

Thanks for the support and advice. It is much appreciated.

425

Today’s lift (2/19/14).

5 min on exercise bike. Light work.

Squat
10xbw
5xbw
5x45
5x95
5x135
5x185
3x225
3x275 (Form felt off. Really tried to push knees out on these.)
3x315 (Form felt off. Really tried to push knees out on these. Felt heavy.)
5?x350 (Ill explain below.)
3x350 (Second and third reps were paused. Failed 4.)
3x315 (Paused.)
3x275 (Feet were too close for pushing knees out. Form felt odd. This felt heavy.)
(***I think that my spotter counted a rep that I didn’t do. He had me at 6 failing 7. I had myself at 5 failing 6 after thinking about it. I know that I got 4 for sure. My hips and everything just feel beat up.)

Leg Press
10x400
10x400 (Odd feeling in my right knee. Not pain, but not good either.)
10x490
10x600
3x690 (Regressed on this lift. Not happy with this. I couldn’t tell if my knee was acting up or not during the set. I just called it a day at 3.)

Walked out of the gym with no pain. Jumped up and down a bit. No pain. Some pain with hyperextension. I don’t know. Squatting felt ok. I might ditch the leg press though. There is no sense in putting that much stress on my knee for nothing. Besides, I hate leg press. I literally cannot stand it.

I may just start doing Boring But Big on squat day.

426

I am going to have to take a deload week pretty soon. I have a lot of little nagging injuries that aren’t wort mentioning here. A few days of light stuff and form work may not be the death of me.

If I do deload, it will be for a very short period of time compared to my 12 day training week. It will be for 5 to 6 days.

If I do the deload, I will run a mock meet at the end of the 5 or 6 days. I will then take 2 or 3 days off, and use 90% of those numbers to calculate the start of my next waves of 5/3/1.

If I do the mock meet, would there be anyone interested in doing a mock meet with me? No weight classes. I have to come up with something for the winner though.

Anyone interested?

427

[quote]trivium wrote:

[quote]young n wrote:
Seems like you have gotten a lot of good information regarding your knee issues.
I have a question, I did not see any single leg work in your log e.i. lunges, single leg squats, single leg deadlift variations, (I did see leg curls, machine based? which may or may not be performed bilaterally).
Maybe I missed something?

But as I was reading your log and then came to the knee issue, single leg work was the first thing to come to my mind.
Again I’m not pissing on you for not doing single leg work, just curious. Single leg work is just another tool, maybe it isn’t the time and place for it your your current cycle/ block.

I’m sure you know what your doing and your doctor and/or PT team are well ahead of the curve than me.

And about your knee, I went over the injuries and rehab to read up on the “injury” and again the first thing that came to my mind was maybe you need some ART done. (it sounds very similar to something I dealt with) Of course you would need the go ahead from your doc. or whoever is treating you, but you get my drift. Maybe the hit that you took on the lateral aspect of the knee “freed” up some “stuff” and might have shifted some things in there and over the course of squatting, pulling, walking and hell even talking your knee was figuring out how to get back to homeostasis in the most pain free way without additional loading forcing it to preform in this new position (this kind of ties into what 56x11 said earlier, or at least in mind it does .)

Then again I’m not an expert. Just offering some advice about the ART.
Good luck bro.[/quote]

I don’t do any unilateral work for my legs. Usually after my first two lifts of leg day I am just fried.

I’ve got a noob question for you. What is ART?

As someone with a medical background to their education, I do not think that your hypothesis sounds impossible.

My doc said that if it still hurts in 3 to 6 months, to come back in for re-evaluation.

I vow that…NEVER AGAIN WILL I DO ANYTHING ON HYPEREXTENDED ANYTHING OR TAKE STUPID RISKS PLAYING GAMES (EX BACK YARD TACKLE FOOTBALL, ARM WRESTLING, ETC…) Lesson learned.

Thanks for the post man. I am sorry I didn’t get to it sooner.[/quote]

ART is active release therapy, it seems to be the new flavor of the day, replacing foam rolling as the new flavor.

If your knee pain is intra-articular and you sustained the injury traumatically, in my opinion you are not a good candidate for ART. I see more benefits of its use with chronic tendinopathy and/or flexibility/ROM issues.

If your getting pain with hyperextension of the knee I still stand by my original hypothesis of a meniscal injury, you may have some subtle inflammation in the joint. You may want to look into ways to combat inflammation during your deload week. If your not on fish oil id consider some just for the deload week

428

I was thinking about doing a mock meet after next cycle to just get some accuracy on my TM’s

429

Just banged out the limber 11 minus the seated piriformis stretch and the piriformis stretch portion of the LAX ball.

I don’t normally log this, but I will because this is my first rep without doing the piriformis work, and I suspect that it was responsible for some knee stiffness.

430

Lift from today (2/22/14).

Today was supposed to be Ragnarok apparently.

Bench Press
20x45
10x95
5x135
3x155
3x190
3x215
9x245 (No fail. All paused. My partners hand touched the bar on the 9th rep, but he swore he didn’t help any. PR?)
1x245 (Video for form check.)
3x215
3x190

Dumbbell Incline Bench Press
80 lb dumbbells for sets of 10/10/10/5

(Normally I would have done 4x10, but my left shoulder felt odd and I already set a pressing PR for the day, so I only did 3x10. No big deal…right?)

Kroc Row
120 lb dumbbell for sets of 10/10/10/10/5

(Left side got a way better pump than the right. I got confused in between sets on whether or not I did the same amount of set on my left as my right. I for some reason thought that I did one more set on my left than my right, but I then I was able to think back and figure out that I worked evenly. Still my left felt better than my right for some reason. I also changed my setup a bit. Instead of using a bench, I used the dumbbell rack. I will be doing them like this from now on. It is less of a hassle to set up, and my first sets felt better than usual.)

Tomorrow I will add Kroc Rows as the first lift of the day. I will do 4x10 then transition to T bar rows. I will finish with triceps of some sort.

431

My log is acting weird lately. I have been having a bit of trouble posting in it.

Oh well.

As stated, tomorrow’s workout will be Kroc rows, T-bar rows, and triceps rope pushdowns.

Thanks for reading everyone.

432

Oh, and I forgot to mention that since I seem to be having a bit of difficulty with my leg assistance, I am going to swap leg press for front squats. I hate leg press anyway.

What is a good front squat relative to another lift?

I have heard people say that you should front squat your bench press numbers. Is this true for powerlifters? If so, I will just do 5/3/1 BBB with fronts after I do my typical low bar stuff.

Any thoughts on that or other creative ideas?

Other things are that since compound lifts like good-mornings and stiff legs are out, is there anything else I can do to work those groups as a compound lift?

I was looking at possibly doing the most recent Paul Carter squat cycle that he posted to recover and change it up a bit.

433

[quote]trivium wrote:

What is a good front squat relative to another lift?

[/quote]
85% of your low bar preferred stance squat is a good front squat.

434

I consider my legs to be way below average in strength and my front squat is about 20 pounds better than my bench

435

Anyone else get massive lichenifications on their back from squatting?

436

Today’s lift (2/23/14).

Kroc Row
5x80

YTWL (Oops…forgot to warm up a bit. Shame on me.)

Kroc Row
5x100
10x120
10x120
10x120
5x120
10x100 (This set was just easy as hell.)

I really tried to focus on form the whole time. Overall, I am happy with this lift. There weren’t too many bad reps, and I was able to stay focused for most of the lift.

I had to leave the gym early. Something else came up.

I will do the res of the work tomorrow and skip my off day in between my assistance day and DL day.

437

There’s a good chance I go to the Arnold Classic.

Dan Green is going to lift there. Hopefully I can catch that, and maybe like Efferding, Byrd, Richard Hawthorne or the Lillebridge family.

Maybe I am getting a bit too excited, but I have never been to the Arnold before.

438

(2/24/14) Limber 11 and wall sits.

439

My lift from earlier today (2/24/14).

YTWL (Asymmetrical warm up feeling.)

YTWL (Some popping in R shoulder.)

Shoulder dislocations x 5

External rotations x 5.

Lateral raises various light weights and reps.

T-Bar Row
10x25
10x50
10x75
10x100
10x125
10x150
10x175 (Bad form.)
4x200 (Started to use unacceptable form. No good.)

Pendlay Row
10x130
5x150
5x170
5x180
5x200 (Acceptable form. Very happy about this. New PR?)
5x170 (Took a video of this set.)
5x170
5x170

I decided that I have stalled on T-Bar rows. I am going to replace a lot of my typical T-bar row work with Pendlay rows. I haven’t touched Pendlay rows in months. I got a lot stronger with them than the last time I did them if I remember correctly. Maybe I can make some progress with this lift.

This day may start looking like 1) Pendlay row 2) T bar row volume and pump work 3)Triceps.

Happy with this lift.

I will do triceps later tonight.

440

I also got in a sauna for about 20 minutes. Forgot to add that part.