4/30/16 - Biceps are trashed from stones, so I went as slow and light as I could with everything. Definitely got quality back work in.
Bent Over Row (super slow and 2 sec pause at top)
95x12
95x12
95x12
145x12 trying not to use biceps is tough by the later reps.
145x12 could not pause nay longer. Biceps are definitely stricken with a abnormal soreness. Definitely not very good lol. It totally interferes with my training. They feel so broken down there’s not enough supporting tissue to take the work load and the tendon is at risk for damage.
Yates Row
95x12
95x12 just stopped here because my back was fatiguing and my biceps started to feel like shit
Horizontal Band Row (band around elbow)
x20
x20
x20
x20
x20 long ass pause at the end at the apex of row
Quick workout, didnt even do any mobility work, just went in and finished up with an awesome back pump. Gotta let my biceps rest and I’m looking forward to the week.
Well done on the front squats. Why are you blacking out so often? Is it your vision going dark/your vision becomes full of eye floaters, or are you actually losing consciousness? I don’t think I have ever blacked out, just vision going dark, eye floaters, and dizziness after tough sets or maxes.
I think it’s nerves man. It’s essentially just the same feeling you would get after perhaps squatting down and hyperventilating then standing up abruptly and doing a valsalva. I recommend and don’t recommend trying that if you want to know how it feels LOL.
Also, I don’t actually fall over and shit. I’ve done that ONCE in the 7 years I’ve been lifting, but 99% of the time I’m pretty much losing sense of where I am in a brief 1-3 second interval and feeling tingles all over then I’m back to normal. If it occurs early in the lift, I’ll bomb and not be able to finish. A lot of the time it happens at the top of a successful front squat (thankfully) and so all I have to do is rerack it in a half-conscious stupor.
5/2/16 - Felt like I needed to get some heavy benching in. Was humid as HELL today, just how I like it.
Bench Press
45x8,8
135x3
185x3
225x3
275x1
315x1
355x2
355x2 my mind was not on the matter at hand here…I was for some reason at an impasse about why my bar looked so silly on the descent. I was like, this is kinda dumb.
355x2 much better
355x2
Z Press w/ band suspended weights (25lbs on each side suspended)
95x8
145x6
185x3
185x4 almost dfell back and died, but got it
165x3
115x8
Close Grip Incline (axle)
135x8
185x8
245x6 gah wanted 8, too gassed
5/4/16 - goal for this day was just to take it easy and not worry about squatting anything heavy or for too many reps. I just wanted to see how long I could hold form with 405 and a shit ton of sets. Was a lot of work by the end. I like stuff like this.
Back Squat (high bar-ish, loose belt)
135x6,6
185x3,3
225x3
275x1
365x1
405x3
405x3
405x3
405x3
405x3
405x3
405x3
405x3 ugly 3, could have been better.
Beltless Pause Front Squat (+200bs roughly of band tension on all sets)
95x5
145x5
185x5
185x5 holy crap my fingers/wrists were screaming.
185x5
185x7-10 i dont even know (on video)
Wind Mills
x15
x15
x15
Front Plank
x60s
x45s
x45s
x45s
x45s
The beltless pause fronts with a shit ton of band tension. Doesn’t look like a lot of band tension but the 100’s that were anchoring them down were wobbling and rising up off the ground from the unracking of the bar. I think I need to work on my core again with fronts as not having training them enough recently has made me too foreign to the stress it puts on the mid-section, so there’s no excuse not to overload the top of the lift when I get the chance to do it. Upper back is shot from these.
5/6/16 - Got to train early today but my lower body was trashed so I didn’t expect anything and since I had no plan other than the fact that I wanted to try regular stance sumo deads, I just kind of kept adding weight.
Sumo Deads (all sets hook grip)
135x8,5
225x3
315x3
405x1
500x1
585x1 this came up so fast I almost pulled it AMRAP. Definitely had a solid 5 reps here at least.
635x2 PR, obviously, and i’m super happy to have hit this…
BUUUT, i didn’t actually lock anything out lol, at least as it appears on camera. I didn’t do it on purpose, It just felt like the lift was completed. The 2nd rep I purposely hitched it because I don’t have the hip flexibilty to just glide my pelvis into the bar. Oh, and another excuse, I’m a shitty deadlifter who had a 500lb conventional max whilst concurrently sporting a 340lb overhead press not but 3 years ago. This is fucking progress to me and in a vehement rage I continue on. I originally wanted to switch back to conventional when I pulled about 600-635 sumo, but now I just want more. I’d love to be a pseudo-675 deadlifter. We’ll see about conventional pulling. I have to go back to it at some point, no choice. It’s a mix of being worried I’ll be weak as shit still on conventional, and that I will have crippling pain from it again. Both will probably happen though, truthfully. Part of what made my conventional so shit was piss poor planning and structure in how I pulled. It lead to a track record of failing, taking impromptu weeks off because “deadlifting 500 for max reps last week then trying to do it again this week really fucked my shit up.” Since I have a GOOD track record with sumo, well over a year of training it, it’s boosted my confidence in picking anything up off the floor. Stones feel lighter, bent over rows with over 300lbs feel light. My knowledge of my body has increased obviously so I just need to keep doing what I’m doing. Abort rant.
Hello! I believe this is my first time commenting on your training log, dropped by a couple of times but didn’t really have much to say. That being said…
How the heck does that work out haha? I’ll have what this guy is having. Jokes aside, awesome job on that PR and I can’t wait for more to come. On a side note, how did you get such a strong overhead press and how much do you weigh?
@Benanything Hahaha, well thanks for stopping by. I get REALLY sore adductors/inner thighs from back squats and back squats only. It was so bad that it just hurt to sit in a sumo position but it didn’t seem to impede strength on the actual pull.
I trained my overhead a lot as a kid because I was fascinated with the idea of the movement. I was a big fan of WWF and worlds strongest man (awesome combo, right?) and was enthralled at guys who could lift another man over their head, and when I saw strongmen doing it on TV with implements that weighed as much as the big guys in WWF who were lifting small guys over their head, I was fucking in love with strength ever since. Any chance I’d get I’d lift some shit over my head I’d take it. For a few years I trained it almost every day haphazardly. Fortunately I didn’t give two shits for deadlifts or squats so my overhead just became absurd.
In that past few years, though, I’ve employed a shit ton of drop sets with push jerks/press/strict press after a heavy pyramid. Seemed to have helped but I had a strongman pursuit feeding that style of training. And I’m about 225-231 near a contest and 235-240 currently, varies since I don’t weigh myself but once per 2 weeks or so.
Yeah sick pr man. Apologies if i missed it, but are you looking to compete sometime in the near future? And I wondered for years of i was doing squats wrong since half the time the only thing sore was my inner thighs.
@Benanything more than happy to help man, and likewise!
@TX_iron No worries, and I’d love to compete within the next 12 months. I’m itching for it for sure. Tbh, I think we’re both squatting wrong but oh well hahaha.
Log
110x5,3
160x3,1 felt kinda funky doing push jerks again
200x1 this felt great, felt like I got my form back perfectly
belt on
250x1
290x1
320x0…ish…EXPLODED over my head super fast but I pushed it too far back and i did not stick the lockout.
340x1 PR! Wanted this weight for a while!
Floor Press
135x5
185x3
225x3
280x13 reps…again. I paused a bunch of these and TnG’d a lot as well, dont remember what I did the last time I worked with this weight. Either way, can’t seem to get 14 with this weight.
One Arm DB Press (strict, reps per arm)
100x6
100x6
100x5
100x5
That 340 looked ridiculously easy!
Congrats on that PR man!
One question: I follow your log for quite some time and whenever you are log pressing you seem to be pressing out of the rack. Don’t you worry about your clean lagging behind your press or is your clean naturally stronger? For me for example I can press more than I can clean (irregardless of the implement).
Thanks man. I’m aware and expecting my log clean and press to be lower than my out of the rack press. I’m currently just finishing up a lot of static training, so when these next couple of months finish I’ll start cleaning the log more often. I did hammer the crap out of the clean portion around this time last year for about 3-4 months. Paid off. I think the static strength I’ve gleaned recently will carry over to a good clean and press. Shooting for 320-330. Good question though, I’m sure a lot of people are wondering the same thing lol.
I see, makes sense this way. Do you have any tips in particular to better your clean and your press (separated or together)? For example what kind of assistance exercises would you recommend for each of the two? Right now I am preparing for a contest where I only have to clean the log up once and the weight is not that heavy for me, so conditioning and efficiency will be the key aspects. But if you have any secrets to share in general, that would be great!
Conditioning is probably the largest playing factor in a clean and press event, especially if it’s clean and press on every rep. I would say you’ve got the right idea. Best way to get your clean stronger is to work on things like stone shoulders (preferably pretty heavy, 4-8 rep range) and stuff like just doing sets of similar rep ranges with log cleans. Ofc front squats, zerchers, etc. are fantastic carry over. That aside, and like you said, it will likely boil down to who can stay efficient with their form and production of power in the face of fatigue and being unable to breathe. Drop sets with AMRAP on an overhead press is pretty invaluable, so give those a try if you aren’t already doing them. You might also try circuiting something like a stone shoulder with a log clean and press. Maybe like stone shoulder x 3 (light stone) then clean and press away to like whatever number of reps on a log depending on the weight you use.
Thanks for your answer, all good recommendations! Would sandbag shouldering be a good replacement for stone shoulders? I don’t have access to atlas stones unfortunately.
5/10/16 - Heavy fronts. Gotta put my best foot forward in regard to this movement and get it stronger. It is feeling awful at the moment (still) and I just have to suck it up.
Front Squat
45x5,5
135x3,3
185x3
225x2
275x1
365x1
390x3 meh
390x3 supa easy
390x3 smooth
390x3
390x3 almost lost the bar on the last rep due to my bent ass bar. I tried to readjust it on the 2nd rep to no avail.
Really Fucking Annoying Stone Shoulders (RFASS): Lost my shit doing these. #1 I had bad stone rash (still), #2 I opted to not lap more than once so I’d have to bring it down to my lap in an awkward fashion, #3 I tried to use wrist wraps in the place of tape or stone sleeves. This did not work with the 250 stone.
175x3,3,3
250x3 sticking to triples although i could have done more, limited cause of the whole forearm thing
250x3
250x3
250x3
put shitty wrist wraps on over forearm rash
250x1 stone fell out of grasp on the way down, too awkward with thick wraps on
250x0 could not lap, no friction to grab
250x1 lapped it then just dropped it cause sometihng pulled in my lower back. Awesome
175x15 or something
Fuck stones. I’d rather do backwards yoke walks with a 1.5 inch thick crossbeam. FUCK stones.
Steps up to 15 inches w/ front rack position (makes it so hard, holy shit) reps per leg
65x20
65x20
65x20
65x20
4 round ab circuit: lying leg raise+butt lift x15, Front Plank x 45s, DB side bend x15.
Feeling pretty trashed and injured from this session but of course I fucked myself at the best time, a week I don’t have to deadlift.
5/12/16 - OH MAN, biceps were still really sore so I just hammered volume and light stuff. Got some seriously dreadful conditoning work done that shredded up my hands. All worth it!
Bent Over Row
45x20
95x20
135x15
135x15
135x20
185x15
185x15
185x15
185x15
Banded Horizontal Row (band around elbow)
x50
x50
x50
x50 did all these nonstop and no rest, the feeling in the lat was unlike anything i’ve felt. Normally a lat pump/soreness is felt by the tie in to the arm pit, but I just felt this all over, even to the bottom of my serratus/lower back. Crazy good!
Tire Strikes (dont have a hammer just a heavy ass piece of a car axle, weighs around 15lbs)
x50
x30
x30
x30
My messed up mind figured it’d be a good idea to do a countdown complex where I start with 20 strikes PER arm, then rest as many seconds of reps I did, then go to 19 per arm, 18, etc. I totally misjudged how much my body would overheat as it was about 90f this evening. I wasn’t necessarily out of breath, I was just so fucking hot! My hands were not having a good time by the end, but I’m glad to have finished something so stupid but awesome.
I also drank 3 gallons of water during the entire workout and another finished while typing this but haven’t been peeing frequently at all. Wtf?
