Injury training

Felt pretty good today, the meds really took care of a lot of spasms which was great.  Worked this morning, basically walking around all day scanning shit.  Came home, had a wee nap, then went to the gym.  Was suppose to be a heavy bench night, but wasn't sure if I'd be able to hold my arch right to bench so I just used the hammer strength incline military press.  If you raise the seat all the way it's like a very high incline bench press.  This was way tougher than I thought it would be.  Usually I just use it for shoulders so the seat is all the way at the bottom.  Going to have to throw those into the rotation.  Followed that up with a new row machine we have to work my lats, I know rows and a bad back?  But, it has a chest pad you sit against so it's just straight up lat work.  Finished with some triceps press downs.  The new cable machine has way more weight on it than our old one did, but I still do the stack on those for sets of 12-15.  Left with a nice little pump.  I seem to be enjoying that more than I'd think. My weight today was 344, so that's 19 pounds over what I was at my last meet.  That thoroughly explains why deadlift suit was so tight.  I'm almost afraid to get into my bench shirt.  I'm going to drop back down to 325-330 for the meet.  Enough rambling for tonight.

Injury update No. 1

So, woke up this morning and straightening up was kinda tough, so I decided to go see the doc.  I had to go for some lab work this week anyway so that killed two birds with one stone.  Fortunately/unfortunately it isn't my first rodeo with a lower back pull, so my doc gave me "the usual" shot of Toradol in the office and some tramadol and cyclobenzaprine.  I love toradol, hurts to move, get a shot, two hours later you can move again.  Then the rest just kinda help hold off the spasms.  Back was well enough that I had no trouble working tonight even moving several air compressors.  My training will be a bit slower, won't do a heavy bench day like I had planned tomorrow but I'll see what I can do when it gets here.  I think since I'm currently in training for a meet I'm going to give TB500 a shot.  I've heard really good things about it, I'll post some updates on how that's going too.

Take 2.

So, Monday I went in after work for my heavy pulling day.  Was suppose to be deadlifts.  Had a few realizations.  One thing I like about the conjugate/Westside style is that you have flexibility in your primary lifts.  What I was doing, there was none.  I was suppose to deadlift so I deadlifted.  The other realization was that at my current weight, 342 I can't get down to get the bar in my deadlift suit, straps up or down does not matter.  So, I've got to drop about 12 pounds for it to fit right.  That'll be easy.  I didn't even feel like deadlifting, so after pulling 500 once very off balanced because of my suit I decided it wasn't meant to be and I'd try again tonight with something I'm more comfortable with.  So tonight I went in, did rack pulls from the bottom pin while standing on 3/4" plywood.  Pulled 500 really easy, went to 550, it wasn't easy.  A nice grind but I got it no problem.  Problem came when I was putting it back down and I felt a slight lower back pull.  It's not excruciating fortunately, but it came with nice timing since I'm going to the doc this week for a checkup anyway.  Been over a year since this happened so I should have been expecting it.  Anyway, so now I get to try to rehab this a bit while training for a meet, that should be even more interesting.

Shoulder Sunday Funday

Despite some pretty interesting forearm pain shoulders were pretty fun today.  Today is the last day of my training week, it's generally shoulder with some optional accessory work.  Generally triceps and if I'm feeling froggy some biceps, but I still feel I work them enough with rows.  Since I started in receiving at work with all the truck unloading and box opening I've been having some pretty bad forearm/wrist pain that flares up randomly.  Fortunately today began my, lets see, it's been called transfer/promotion/upgrade, however I like the term "graduation" that a dude I work with uses so that's what I'm going with.  Anyhoo, hopefully not having to unload 500+ boxes and open another 150 will cause some of those flareups to, uh... flare out!  Oscar Wylde like wordplay there.  Since I have heavy deadlifts and heavy bench this week my shoulders were mostly for the dreaded reps and mostly accessory moments to increase blood flow and what not.  Great video on it by Dave Tate that everyone should watch.  I'll link that down below but I assume anyone reading this has already seen it or heard me talk about it.  Today was some nice Hammer Strength incline/shoulder presses(as much as it pains me to say it, I love that machine), rear delt flies, then some straight bar triceps press downs and a move I've come to call Gerry Extensions, since a dude named Gerry was the first person I ever paid attention to doing them.  Felt good and as much as I don't really train for a pump I left with a pretty awesome pump today and it felt good.   That's enough for today I think.

 

Squats are evil fun...

So, it's been 10 weeks since I've been able to do squats.  Thanks to an old injury flaring up my ankle has been hurting so bad over those few weeks that walking was a bit of a pain but I just kinda sucked it up.  Deadlifting hasn't been too bad on it, but even a body weight squat made me want to scream.  I kept it kind of easy last night, just to 325 for singles.  First one made my ankle made a lovely popping sound that I could hear over the music.  That was a bit disturbing but I managed to finish.  Today it doesn't feel great but I haven't wanted to scream.  Fortunately all the deadlifting and deadlift accessory work I do always hits my hips/glutes/hamstrings so I'm pretty good as far as no soreness in those areas today.  I'm disappointed with the weight I used, but since I'm just getting back into the swing I'm trying not to dwell on it.  Plus only training for push/pull so it's not like I'd need to have it way up there.  However, personally I want to have it way up there.  But we'll see...

On an unrelated note, I noticed something at the gym the other night.  If your phone is bigger than your arm, don't get an armband to hold your phone for music while you train.  That's a fun tip.

Light bench day?

I'm not going to say tonight was a good night but it certainly wasn't a bad night.  It feels awkward doing my light days to a failure set, this will take some getting used to, fortunately, there's 5 more light bench days between now and Jan 30th.  315 close grip to failure on my top set.  After I was done the guy I asked to spot me said something along the lines of "You were going close on that."  So I said "Yeah, the way I'm programmed right now my light days I'll do close grip."  Another guy said "That's a light day?"  That made me feel good, I only managed 7 reps and that 7th one was a pretty massive struggle but I got it.  Did some incline dumbbell presses for the first time in maybe a year as an accessory.  It was odd, I had forgotten how much I loved them.  Decided to play it safe on those and use the 80s since they're far less bent than the 90s and 100s, but did 3 sets of 15, control was nice and smooth, changed hand position on each set.  Normal first, turned in slightly for second, then palms facing for the third.  That palms facing on incline felt pretty amazing, so the fact I only got the got the 315 for 7 wasn't as disheartening.  Ended with some banded triceps pressdowns and some one armed rows.  

Only slightly unrelated, I've been ravenous lately.  Just some rough numbers about 1200 calories more than normal.  Need to attempt to slow that down on non-training days.  

Begins anew...

So, I'm going to knock the dust off this thing.  A friend has started logging her training and inspired me to start doing it again, while I probably won't be that dedicated to updating daily, I'll try to hit the highlights.  So, I'm 13 weeks out from my next meet.  I have the numbers in my head I think I can hit.  I have the numbers in my head I want to hit.  The goal is to get the can closer to the want.  I start 13 weeks out, that way I have a 1 week deload before the meet.  Once again, I plan on doing push/pull. I'm doing this training cycle a bit different, alternating weeks between heavy/light.  Heavy days will be doing singles, light days will be using between 55-65% of my current one rep max on deadlift days and 62-72%.  And I'll probably talk about any random thing that pops in my head.


Tonight worked out pretty well, nice and simple primary lift was deficit deadlifts, 315 for 3 sets of 5.  No belt since it was a light night, fortunately I didn't have to unload a truck today so I went in pretty fresh.  The deficit block I use is about 3" so the pulls felt pretty long but good.  Unfortunately it was far too muggy for a November, about 70 and rainy so it felt kind of oppressive in the gym.  Because of that probably took longer between sets than I should have, but at least I had good company.  All the pulls went nice and smooth, didn't feel horribly taxed so that means 325 2 weeks from tonight.  Standing band situps, stiff legged deadlifts, and I did a couple of chinups just to see how hard they were at the moment.  The answer to that is very, but I was able to get my 337.2lb ass off the ground, so I'm calling that a mini-victory.

Tomorrow will be light bench day.  We'll see how that goes.

03/12/2014

  Last week was all wonky thanks to having to move around days and times. So nothing too great to report from last week.  Thanks to weather going from spring to winter my sinuses have gone to shit but that's not as irritating as it will be when it's full blown spring.  Attempted a new PR on stiff legged deadlifts last night, went for 550, it turned into a nice 550 pound negative.  Was one of those where it hit the knees and I was like "Well, at least I can set it down slowly."  Yeah, nothing else really to say at the moment.

03/04/2014

  Long time, nothing to bitch about.  Past two weeks have been pretty interesting.  Week before last, did the normal Westside template, however for our accessory work we did super slow high reps.  Wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad had it not been for the crippling agony the next day.  Was fun though, going to try incorporating that every 6-8 weeks.  Then last week was a high rep/deload weight week.  135 is easy to bench/squat/deadlift, but once you hit your 50-80th rep it gets to be a bit of a bitch.  Fun for a week, but no way I'd wanna do that more than once every 3-4 months.

  Tonight was ME squat/dl night.  Managed to do a 680lb rackpull.  That was a new PR.  Felt really fucking good.   Followed up with heavy leg curls, then some barshrugs 315 for a few sets of 6, ended with suitcase deadlift out of the Smith machine(not what I call myself), and finally standing situps with blue bands.  Wanted to do more but our lower backs were kinda crispy at that point.

  Only part of the Arnold I watched this year was the strongman events.  Those announcers were fucking terrible.  My favorite lines were the one guy saying that  Hafthor Bjornsson doesn't look like he weighs over 400 pounds and then later when refering to the dumbbell they were using for the single arm overhead dumbbell press "For those of you who don't know what 275 pounds looks like, imagine an olympic bar with two 45s and a 25 on each end."  My guess is that anyone who was watching and didn't know what 275 pounds looks like sure as hell doesn't know what it looks like now.  How about "For those of you who don't understand how much this weights, it's the weight of a pony."  Zydrunas Savickas kicked ass again.  Enjoy this video.  Later peeps.

02/11/2014

  I don't update enough, haven't had a lot to say lately other than being randomly pissed off.  The gym is thinning out in the evening so that's better.  Hit a 470lb Zercher squat last night which felt fucking amazing until I realized how much pain my forearm was in.  At least this time there wasn't weird knotting in the forearm, just general tenderization.  I've been doing a lot more front squats despite how much they hurt my shoulders.  I can't find a single way to get the bar comfortable while doing them with any weight that actually feels like I'm training instead of going through the motions. Basically the bar sits right where the collarbone connects to the shoulder for me to do it where it feels right and I can use weight.  If I try to hold it lower down on my upper chest it tends to slide down the arms so it's like I'm attempting to do a Zercher from my biceps.  I'm just gonna push through the pain and keep doing them.  Might look into getting a front squat/Zercher harness.