Chemical Warfare

A blog recommitment is a slow process.

SUN - Press Day

Military Press

45x10

65x5

85x5

100x3

110x5

125x5

140x5+(6)

Pullups

8 sets of 6, 1 set of 2

Ring Pushups

5 sets of 10

Bengals suck.

FRIDAY - DEADLIFT DAY

DL

135x5

185x5

225x3

235x5

275x5

310x5+ (10)

GM

185x8x5

Ab Wheel superset with Cable Crunches

BW x 15 / 70 x 15, 3 times through

I'm still getting used to the belt on the deadlifts. I feel like it really changes my form, and allows me to get away with my torso collapsing forward on my last few heavy reps. It may however be that my form has always broken down that way, and I'm only now noticing it, because I have a thick piece of leather wrapped around my midsection.

Sean is Dead

Well, at least I thought he was. Turns out, just sleeping. I trained alone today.

FRIDAY - "SQUAT" DAY

As I said before, my hip flexors have been hurting me when I squat, so the mission of today was to figure out what I can do without pain. I fucked around with a bunch of different stances etc. Every variation of back squats I could come up with hurt me, so I tried front squats. With just the bar, these felt ok. So I did

Front Squats

45x5

95x5

With this heavier weight, I could feel it starting to irritate my hip, so I quit doing that. I pretty much gave up on squatting, and decided to go heavy on the Good Mornings. If it's good enough for Louie Simmons, it's good enough for me. I didn't feel like figuring out what my "true" 5/3/1 weights would be, so I just took a stab at it:

Good Mornings

95x5

135x5

165x3

195x5

225x5

235x5

Last set is here:

Yeah, that's fucking right. I listen to All Things Considered stories about Of Montreal to get me fucking psyched.

I think my form was pretty good. Probably could have gone lower on the fourth one. However, this is heavier than I've ever gone on GMs, so I think it was pretty good for that. I'm glad I can find a way to put something heavy on my back every week.

Then I thought maybe this would be ok:

DB Goblet Squat

40 x 15

This started to irritate my hip as well, so that was it.

Ab Wheel

+2 chains x 10 x 3

DB Side Bends

60 x 12/side x 3

I made Teresa take these pictures of me:

Consider this post a BLOG RECOMMITMENT. Prepare for the onslaught of slow, methodical progressive overload AND HARD FUCKING WORK.

War on the Terraces

Updates have been lacking for a while. Nobody reads this, but I'm at least gonna start holding up my end of the bargain, and get it back together.

Pushed the prowler today. I felt like crap, and I got worn out a lot faster than I usually do. This was a bit of a wake up call for me. I need to get back to regularly including conditioning in my life, and I need to clean up my diet a lot. Also, I had to dookie, and I think that influenced how I felt a lot.

Lifting is probably going to get cut back to twice a week for the next couple weeks, with a mid-week prowler pushing day. This is because I need more time to study for my exam on Nov. 4, which I really want to pass, because I hear kids are expensive, and I really need a raise. I've also been feeling beat up lately, and think that maybe backing off a tad on the volume won't hurt anything. I'm going to make a conscious effort to keep up with the foam rolling and stretching at least a little bit everyday though. I say this a lot, but this time I mean it. My hip has been hurting me when I squat, to the point now that it's affecting my performance, so I think it's important I keep up with the shit like stretching that I hate.

Here's a video of some various stuff I've done in the gym lately. I've been taking more videos, cause Sean hasn't been around much lately, and I like to have some sort of feedback.

The things depicted below are, in order,

Squats 295 x 3+ (2) shoulda had this, but couldn't stand up out of the hole for some reason

Good Mornings 135 x 12 wanted to check my form, personally I think it's pretty good

Good Mornings 185 x 8

Deadlifts 340 x 1+ (5) happy with this

Sorry the good mornings are so boring, but fuck you.

Bad Romance

THURSDAY - BENCH DAY

Bench
45x10
85x5
105x5
125x3
135x5
155x5
175x5+ (5)
205x1
225xmissx2

So, I've never benched 225, which is some weak ass shit. I started 5/3/1 with a max of 205, and I thought that at this point, I would be able to bench 225. I purposely only hit the required reps on my 5+ set, then moved up to 205, which I got relatively easily, and then promptly got stapled by 225. I took a bit of a rest and missed it again. This was probably all an ill conceived plan anyway, and I should've just stuck with the program, but I really wanted it. The weight felt very heavy in my hands, so maybe some of it was just a mental thing, being scared of the weight. I don't know, but it sucks. My own fault.

DB Rows
90x8x5

DB Bench
80x5x4
80x4

Went to XU to lift today, 'cause my membership is up soon, and I wanted to do some heavier DB pressing than I can do at home currently.

BB Shrugs
225x12x3

Hammer Curls
50x5

Nailed to the X

So I started volunteering as a wrestling coach at the school I'm student teaching at because:

• As a social studies teacher I'm basically required to coach a sport
• I miss wrestling
• I regret never committing to it when I was in high school
• I should not have quit my senior year
• Wrestling is the manliest high school sport

I started showing up to pre-season conditioning last Friday, and I'm pretty psyched for this. My biggest current problem, as I've already bitched about to Clayton, is that for pre-season work they do some light jogging, then P90X, three times a week.

I guess I should start by giving P90X a fair appraisal: to train a lot of guys in a relatively small gym, it's not bad. The tempo is alright to build up some stamina (as long as you work to keep up), and a lot of the guys are untrained enough that they'll benefit from just about any program. There's a good variety of exercises, so I guess you get different movements in.

But it's pretty dumb.

First of all, the host says dumb shit like "This isn't Ab Ripper 100, or 200, this is AB RIPPER THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY NINE" and it's this for an hour:

So dumb

Man I hate this guy

We did chest and back today, and it was about 5 different variations of push-ups, each supersetted with either a chin-up variation or a DB row variation. Then you do the whole circuit over again. Target is about 25-30 push-ups in a minute-ish. For kids who need to build mass or strength (which is pretty much every single kid there) there's not much, just some endurance training and gut check.

Leg day was even worse, just a bunch of different DB lunge variations (again shooting for 15-20 reps) and the occasional wall-sit supersetted with chin-up variations (Chin-ups on leg day? makes perfect sense). No posterior chain work, and lunges were going in every direction so it'd be difficult to add serious weight to them (most kids held 10-25 lb DBs).

We've done the 10ish minute ab workout after every day, it's just a bunch of dumb crunch variations, no core stabilization or anti-rotation.

The program is basically a laundry list of every dumb thing a crappy trainer would make their clients do in a crappy gym. TO THE POWER OF THE X.

I talked to the head coach and pitched him the idea of a strongman day, where we'll do farmer's walks, prowler/car pushes, sandbag loading, tire flips, etc. which will be pretty awesome. Starting that next friday.

I've got that 80 pound sandbag , so I'm thinking I'll take them out to the parking lot and have them do a 50 yard carry for time, lapping and shouldering the bag every parking space line they cross. Should be tough and get some explosive posterior chain work in.

I'm also thinking a medley, something like 20m prowler push, 30m farmers walk, 40m sandbag carry, 50m run. Have them compete against each other for best time.

I'm open to other ideas, I just want some more strength-oriented stuff to cycle in to give these guys something more interesting.

Truly Stupid Paid (C5 - Deload)

SATURDAY - SQUAT DAY

Squat

45 x 5

135 x 5 x 2

160 x 5 x 2

190 x 5 x 4

190 is about 55% of my 1RM, I spent some time working at that weight to try to improve on my form. I think it looks a lot better.

Bulgarian Split Squats

BW x 10/side

BW x 15/side x 3

That was it. I had other stuff to do.

Ride Big (C5-W3-D4)

Push Weight

THURSDAY - BENCH DAY

Bench

45 x 10

80 x 5

100 x 5

120 x 3

150 x 5

170 x 3

190 x 1+ (7)

This is one more than I got last cycle with the same weight. Progress.

DB Bench, WG Cable Rows

60 x 12, 135 x 10

60 x 12, 135 x 10

60 x 11, 135 x 10

60 x 11, 135 x 10

60 x 11, 135 x 11

Farmer's Walks

155/hand, about 40 yards, 7 trips

It's ~20 yds to one end of my yard, then turn, and go back. The turn is the worst part, because the weight keeps turning even when you stop and tries to rip itself out of your hands.