Recent fun...

Training has been going very well except for sinuses, which creeps up this time of year for me.  Fortunately we've had some cold and rain which seems to have minimized some of the ragweed pollen.  Been doing a lot of work with chains on bench and squat.  Block pulls for deadlifts.  Still not where I want to be but it's getting close again.  Feels pretty nice.  Did 405+150(approx) of chain reverse band bench this morning and it went up like a champ.  Decided to end it there with a win instead of adding 30+ more and ending with a fail.  Was a little shaky with that much weight in my hand but it's getting better.  Just needed to do a quick update before I go partake in some Halloween fun.  More and more frequent updates soon.

It's been a while...

And with that title I now have a Stained song stuck in my head, and I'm not happy with that.

My training went to shit, plain and simple.  We were closing the store which sucks, might blog about that at some point, but I dunno.  But anyway, when you're working 60+ hours a week about all you have time for is sleep and it never was enough.  Since we've closed I've started training right again.  That's been pretty nice.  Fortunately my job always required a lot of lifting and moving stuff so I don't feel like I lost much off my deadlift, going to do heavy rack pulls tomorrow and see how that goes.  Today I was pretty please.  I have had a lot of issues with my shoulder, so much that I got a second gym membership to a place with a lot of machines so I could bench without as much of the stress on my shoulder.  It seems to have paid off a bit, it does take a while to get my shoulder warm in the mornings(yes I 'm doing AM training and I don't like it).  So today, started off on the the incline machine of course I warmed up without any weight, then went up plate, plate and a quarter, two plates, two plates and a quarter, and so on until I hit 4 plates on each side of it for a set of 6.  Then my plan was to flat bench, started out with 225, for a set of 6, nice and smooth, reps felt good, so went to 275, same as before.  For my third and final set went 315 for a set of 6 once again, all nice and smooth, felt good.  Then I was like "Eh, lets do 365 for a single and see how bad I fail"  Well, brought it down, paused waited for the mental press command, pressed it up.  Didn't go fast, but it did go nice and smooth.  Completed the rep.  Got up, no shoulder pain.  Felt pretty good about that considering I had done 10 sets before that.  Made me realize that I should still be able to knock out 405 raw if I was just going in and working up to a heavy single.  We'll see about that in another week or two.  Tomorrow will be heavy rack pulls.  This should be a fun journey, not really looking at any specific meets, just going to enjoy the journey.  Have a thought in my head that I'd like to try a Highland game.  Just gotta find a place to train for a caber.  We'll see how things go. 

Dual gym specialization!

Yay, now I only have -2/-2 to hit with my gyms!  Okay, if you got that joke, you're a fucking geek.  And for that I love you.  If you didn't, play D&D with me sometime.  Anyhoo, this commercial gym opened in my town at the first of the year.  I went by checked it out.  Decided it'd be a great place for accessory work.  So, I'll be doing most of my accessory work there, and my primary lifts at my usual place just because they're set up better for each.  I will say they do have some pretty nice eq and the staff is nice.  It was pretty sweet to see women getting to train without being hit on.  Also saw a couple of guys who had switched there which was nice to see.  Oh, I can bring someone with me so if anyone wants to train with me, give a shout.  Now, man, I have been excited to train and about training again.  It feels nice.  It's like I'm not going through the motions right now.  I hope it continues.  Like, today I tweaked my shoulder a bit, no biggie, but I was like "Oh man, I get to do a contrast shower tonight to help this!"  not my usual "Shit, I hurt so bad everywhere I have to do a contrast shower."  So... yeah... feels good man.

4/32/17

So, kinda let this thing die out with everything that was going on.  Finally getting the itch back.  Getting my mind a bit more right when it comes to training so I'll end up posting a bit more here.  We'll see how it goes.

A few days...

Gonna condense a few days into this one.  Sunday did squats for the first time in about six weeks.  Four chains plus 245 on my last one.  That would have been right at 345 at the top.  Felt good, depth was good(had a friend judging me), my ankle wasn't too bad under it so going to keep at it, I'm thinking I'll go two weeks of squatting, one week of no squatting.  Monday had Maggy in to help train her.  The truck showing up to work two hours late helped to kick my ass since it was around 100 in that thing when we were unloading it.  Fortunately Monday is my optional accessory day, so mostly some biceps, nothing too exciting, was mostly a rep day.  Had a nice pump when I left and I did a little bit of shoulders, tried some Klokov presses with just the bar, wasn't too bad as far as my shoulder feeling wonky.  Today my back was pretty toasty so my day consisted of a lot of pullups and some lat pulldowns using the Magbar, holy hell that thing is awesome, ended with 8 sets of 3-6 reps of chinups, and 3 sets of 10 on the lat pull downs.  Worried with the way my lower back felt if I had done my speed pulls today it would have just been a fast way to pull my lower back.  So, didn't do those.  Anyway, tomorrow is heavy bench, so... that'll be a fun update hopefully.

As usual...

*started this last night, finishing it tonight.

I'm a day behind on these.  Monday I was kinda hurting, my back was tight and couldn't get loose.  Monday's truck wasn't bad, but for whatever reason I felt gimpy so Monday was some really simple/easy biceps work.  More importantly on Monday my friend Magdalena trained with me.  She decided she wants to give powerlifting a go so Monday was her first attempt.  Put her through the 3 main lifts to get some numbers to work some percentages with.  Honestly I thought I'd have to correct her a lot but I was really impressed.  Mostly just going to require a few form tweaks and I think she'll be amazing.  Squatted 170, benched 75, and deadlifted 205.  So those numbers are pretty awesome, after a bit of time working on form and explosiveness she'll be kicking even more ass.  Okay, that's more than I've ever praised anyone, so lets talk about me.  Tuesday was my speed bench day.  Shoulder felt okay, but I still kept it kinda easy.  Kept everything at sets of 2, 225, 245, 265, 285, 305, then 315 for 4 sets of 2. Felt good, ended with a burnout of reverse grip benchpress with 135, not sure how many reps it was in the 30 range before I knew I couldn't get another.  

Lets flash forward to tonight, tonight was ME deadlift day.  Damn tonight was good.  I'm about 16 weeks out from my next meet, so working at 90% of my 1rm, ended up doing block pulls for 5 singles with 510.  It felt pretty awesome.  Finished with chinups 4 sets of 5.  I'm working on keeping everything nice and simple right now.  Anyway, my sleep has kinda gone shitty after a week of really good deep sleep.  But eh, I'll live, it's what I do.  Other things are going pretty amazing so that's always a plus. 

Trying something different...

Today was pretty fantastic, lots of reasons.  But we'll just cover the gym reasons today.  Everyone was in a pretty good mood at the gym today, it was a fun day there.  So anyway, me and a friend were talking about reverse band chain benchpress yesterday and how Laura Phelps-Sweatt uses it, I had never tried it before just, so today I did.  Man, pretty sure I'm doing this as my primary heavy move leading up to when I begin my meet training.  So, anyway, don't care that much about the warm ups leading to my heaviest single tonight, but went to 365 + around 120-150 of chains, still need to get an exact weight on those.  So I'll need to take my scale into the gym to get an accurate weight on them.  Anyway, it moved really well, except when I went to break it I wasn't thinking that it was around upper 400s/low 500s, when I unracked it so I had to ask for a hand out.  Ended with weighted dips, 1 chain for 4 sets of 10.  I'm going to try to get one more day in this week just for triceps, maybe Friday after work or Saturday before.  We'll just have to see.  Not sure I need to hit my triceps as hard on heavy bench week, but we'll see.

Speed pulls...

Wrist/elbow pain wasn't bad, should be good to go now after some toradol.  Anyway, today was pretty simple.  Good day at the gym, once again I think the people around in that time are what's helping make a difference at keeping my head right in there.  Speed pulls from a 2" deficit, 8 sets of 2.  All moved very quick and smooth, was pretty happy with them.  Well, one wasn't smooth got a little off balance, but I survived.  Anyway... after I did chinups 5 sets of 5.  Like I said nice and simple today.  Tomorrow will be a bit more complex.  I'm really digging this no hair thing.  More on that later.

Fun biceps work...

Lets see, I'll try to be short and to the point.  Work just seemed to piss me off today so I was glad to get into the gym.  Sadly, my left arm is pretty banged up right now, wrist and elbow, so been wearing a brace on both parts the past few days.  Of course being the person I am, take them off go lift.  The elbow was only mildly discomforted which was nice.  The wrist, holy fuck, lets just say I should have wrapped it for more than the barbell curls.  Most important numbers were barbell curls 225 for a set of 4 which was felt better than I thought it would, although realizing I might have used a bit more shoulder than I thought.  Anyway, followed up with some machine curls, 50 for 3 sets of 12, then I did this crazy thing a friend at the gym had told me about for just a nice simple set of 7 each arm.  Dunno what the exact name of it is, but... you put a 45 pound bar on the preacher bench.  Grab it single arm in the middle.  Buddy lifts you through the concentric phase, then you do about a 4 second eccentric phase.  Really could have used a bit more weight on the bar or to have done more reps/sets, but first time and feeling how bad my biceps are cramping right now I'm glad I didn't because damn, they're tore up.  After that, the stupidity I'm known for I did static bar holds, 3 sets, first for 1:15, second for :50, third for 1:05.  That might explain some of the cramping.

What a difference a day makes...

So, we'll start this one off different, I'm going to talk about some stuff that's completely not gym related.  Well, that being in a good place mentally just got completely blown out of the water.  I went from being in the most amazing place I think I'd ever been mentally to well...(oh and I know you read this, if you are reading this one, please stop you have enough to worry about).  So, I don't talk about it a lot, generally nothing more than saying "I'm crazy" but that statement has a lot more truth to it than most realize.  Sometimes when I'm down and those downs can get pretty low my behaviour gets a bit more self destructive because well... crazy.  It's took a long assed time for me to even admit it to myself, let alone a few select others.  So just firing it seems insane not to mention extremely difficult to me.  Sometimes, I'll do something crazy like if I have an impressively long soul patch I'll just completely shave, or if I have a goatee, I'll shave it, dunno just something for a change, well... lets put it like this... still have the goatee, lets see if you can figure that one out. Anyway when I say self destructive I mean things along the lines of alcohol, from time to time pills, and this is the hardest one to admit but self harm.  Yeah, told ya crazy. So anyway... I thought about just ignoring Facebook and Twitter completely for a few days, was even going to not use this.  And yes, I know it post to Facebook/Twitter automatically, but I think I need to keep updating this, sometimes with shit like this.  Anyway, back to that other part... I think it's easier to understand/deal with physical pain than it is with mental pain, that's why sometimes and I do stress rarely, it leads to that.  Sometimes I use the gym as therapy sometimes it works... sometimes it doesn't... today I went in and murdered my triceps in an effort to not do what I was wanting to do.  It'll just be easier of that part of me is known and not seen should things work out...

So, the gym... lets pop some numbers shall we?

Started out warming up with Tate presses 30lbs for a set of 15, 40 for a set of 12, 60 for a set of 10, 70 for a set of 8, then 80s for 3 sets of 8.  Followed that up with weighted dips, 1 chain for a set of 8, 2 chains for a set of 8, 3 chains for a set of 8, at the end I went back and tried 4 chains, that would have been about an extra 100 pounds, couldn't get it but was okay with it.  Straight bar press downs 120 for 3 sets of 12, floor skull crushers for 3 sets of 8.  So, that was a pretty good session, won't say it completely did what it needed, but it helped.