The Come Up

11/25
DL 335x5x5

12/2
DL 345x5x5, 375x1, 415x1 (PR)
RDL 135x10, 225x10

Was supposed to drop down 10lbs from last week. Whoops. Instead I went up 10lbs and afterwards, on a complete whim, I decided to go for 415 which is a 20lbs PR.

RDLs are new and I know that I need to do them because the turnaround is really fucking slow. Need to consciously keep my lower back in extension or I feel a little something. Interesting to me that you can pull with a pretty rounded back from a dead stop but if you try an amortizing lift like an RDL or squat with a loose/rounded lower back it's going to end very badly -- at least that's how it seems to me.

Umm... I'm still feeling difference in contractions right vs left ass cheek. Been holding my lockouts a while and squeezing my ass to get some extra time under tension. Try not to think about it.

Bench
215x1, missed 225

Since my bench progression came to a halt (went 5,4,3 reps on my last session) I'm starting over with a less aggressive progression but before I do that I wanted to test my 1RM.

When I paused 215 I thought it was all over. Everything was loose, I was out of my grove, and I forgot to use my legs. I managed to muscle it up which really surprised me. I bet it took a lot out of me but I thought I'd try 225 because I messed up so badly with the technique or whatever. 225 came off my chest pretty fast but then stopped after a few inches and I no longer had any ability to grind the weight. THe muscles around my upper lumbar/lower thoracic 'cramped' after 215 though. Not injured or anything.

Scar tissue in my ass is bother me more. THink it's the muscle growing larger. This happened 2.5-3 months ago and it got more painful until it was actually kind of a sharp pain with the scar tissue crunched via interaction with muscle tension by just walking around. All of the sudden when I wasn't really noticing things it vanished. So that bit must have finally been broken down by the muscle. THinking this is what's happening now. Just looking forward to the day it's all gone

Will wrote:

Bench
215x1, missed 225

Since my bench progression came to a halt (went 5,4,3 reps on my last session) I'm starting over with a less aggressive progression but before I do that I wanted to test my 1RM.

When I paused 215 I thought it was all over. Everything was loose, I was out of my grove, and I forgot to use my legs. I managed to muscle it up which really surprised me. I bet it took a lot out of me but I thought I'd try 225 because I messed up so badly with the technique or whatever. 225 came off my chest pretty fast but then stopped after a few inches and I no longer had any ability to grind the weight. THe muscles around my upper lumbar/lower thoracic 'cramped' after 215 though. Not injured or anything.

Scar tissue in my ass is bother me more. THink it's the muscle growing larger. This happened 2.5-3 months ago and it got more painful until it was actually kind of a sharp pain with the scar tissue crunched via interaction with muscle tension by just walking around. All of the sudden when I wasn't really noticing things it vanished. So that bit must have finally been broken down by the muscle. THinking this is what's happening now. Just looking forward to the day it's all gone

You probably should have not taken the 225 attempt if the 215 felt that bad. You're not gaining much of anything by straining for a 1 rep max at this point. That being said, I take it 215 is a PR? Congratulations if so. Progress is progress.

As for the back cramp--that happens on bench sometimes. I get it fairly often when I'm arching hard during high intensity work. I've found static stretching (typical bend down, touch your toes kind of stuff) works fairly well for me. A bit of rolling of the back/glutes/upper hamstrings helps a bit as well.

You might have posted this before, but what happened with your glute anyway?

Chris Anderson wrote:

Will wrote:

THe muscles around my upper lumbar/lower thoracic 'cramped' after 215 though. Not injured or anything.

.
As for the back cramp--that happens on bench sometimes. I get it fairly often when I'm arching hard during high intensity work. I've found static stretching (typical bend down, touch your toes kind of stuff) works fairly well for me. A bit of rolling of the back/glutes/upper hamstrings helps a bit as well.

I have back cramps all the time; about once a week. I can usually tell if I will cramp while setting up. If you feel it coming or you are already cramping, just stop, rack the weight, take a minute or two to settle down, follow andersons advice, then do your bench set.

Chris Anderson wrote:

You probably should have not taken the 225 attempt if the 215 felt that bad.

I think I shouldn't have attempted 215 if I really wanted 225 but I don't regret it or anything.

Chris Anderson wrote:

You're not gaining much of anything by straining for a 1 rep max at this point.

Except access to higher threshold muscle fibers and possibly a higher PR

Chris Anderson wrote:

As for the back cramp--that happens on bench sometimes. I get it fairly often when I'm arching hard during high intensity work. I've found static stretching (typical bend down, touch your toes kind of stuff) works fairly well for me. A bit of rolling of the back/glutes/upper hamstrings helps a bit as well.

I donno if I described it properly. If a cramp is just prolonged involuntary muscle contraction then it wasn't a cramp. I guess it just felt overexerted in a vague way -- as you say from the hard arching. But it was in the muscles not the spine. I do think bending over and touching your toes isn't a great stretch by the way.

Chris Anderson wrote:

You might have posted this before, but what happened with your glute anyway?

Completely herniated L5/S1 and ruptured the posterior longitudinal ligament in my spine. So my gluteus maximus and calf muscles were paralyzed for a while. The muscle atrophied very quickly there and my body replaced the muscle mass with scar tissue. I've been trying to regain that strength ever since.[/quote][/quote]

Thanks for the congrats tho Chris. It's my first ever 1RM attempt and it ended on a missed lift so I'm just not feeling great about it. And I remember doing 185x3 (prolly no pause tho) messing around years ago when I didn't do any upper body lifts so I'm not sure I'm even any stronger than that.

Will wrote:

I donno if I described it properly. If a cramp is just prolonged involuntary muscle contraction then it wasn't a cramp. I guess it just felt overexerted in a vague way -- as you say from the hard arching. But it was in the muscles not the spine. I do think bending over and touching your toes isn't a great stretch by the way.

Completely herniated L5/S1 and ruptured the posterior longitudinal ligament in my spine. So my gluteus maximus and calf muscles were paralyzed for a while. The muscle atrophied very quickly there and my body replaced the muscle mass with scar tissue. I've been trying to regain that strength ever since.]

I'm guessing it felt like it was "grabbing" in a weird way? That's how I would kind of describe it when it happens to me.

The toe touch being a "great stretch" is irrelevant as it works better than just about anything else for me. It's just about getting the muscle to not feel like shit as I bench.

Can I ask how you got the injury? Pure curiosity on my part.

IDK about "grabbing" it was more like a weird pump that I've never felt but not exactly a pump.

I used to tweak my back all of the time before I knew how to use my body properly. So, I hurt it pretty badly but after a month it was doing mostly better so I got back into the squatting and jumping. I did some dunks on Christmas day 2011 and my back got very stiff throughout the session. I did some stretching like you're talking about. It was painful but I tried to fight through the pain. Within an hour I noticed that my toe was feeling a little numb. The next day I went to warm up and I couldn't extend my right leg when running around. I hobbled around for 20 minutes and drove home (which was hard because I had trouble depressing the accelerator on the drive back) It was really weird and I had no idea what was happening to me.

Anyway, Stu McGill doesn't like that stretch at all and he's the only person I really trust about spinal issues. If you're not familiar with his stuff I'd recommend checking him out!

12/5

Pause squats 225x5x3

. . .

Press 155x1

Nice to have these 1RMs tested. I've got about a month of bench & pressing under my belt now. Very happy to be squatting again. My body forget the movement a little and the last two sets were way better. At first I was feeling a stretch in my adductor but in the last sets I was feeling the stretch in my gluteus maximus when sitting in the hole. Seemed like I was better able to use my ass. Seemed like I was favoring my left side at first. Kinda weird how I continue perceive that but it seems to lessen with more squatting and worsen with less squatting.

Pause squat 315 WL shoes & belt
Calves and Achilles

Fairly happy with this since 325 is my current amortizing squat. Did favor my left side as I can through the sticking point tho. Trying to split training sessions with and without the WL shoes but damn they seem I help a lot when I compare how this felt to yesterday.

12/8
Some one leg take offs with 2 approach steps. These felt alright. I figured out at the end that I should go up with two hands (even if I fniished with 1) because it's much quicker and I can probably use my arms more which theoretically would get me higher. Otherwise I put the ball up there as I'm already coming down and I just can't reach too well with my hand under the ball. Upon landing I almost fell over so I think these are getting more forceful. The rims are kind of brutal and I almost cut my hand.

Squated 135 for two sets of like 8-10 (guessing) with a nice pause at the bottom of course. Trying to think of these as jumping from the hole except not using any ankle extension.

Calves just a little.

Messing around with the ball again. Not so much in-the-air stuff

Notes: my right calf is REALLY sore.  So sore that it often hurts when I'm resting. When I first get up from seated I have to limp around for a minute or two until blood gets flowing and walking around stretches it out a little. Achilles feels great doe. Was feeling kind of creaky last week. So, I've just decided to do all my squatting at the Field House so I can use their seated calf raise. So I think field house days = calf days. There's really no way I can claim 'forget' by doing this

12/9
DL 355x3x5,4,3

Notes: video coming up later today. pretty shitty performance. didn't have anything to eat and felt a little sick. Im down roughly 10lbs in the last week too. . . I'm working on keeping my hips a little lower. Trying to think about pulling the bar backwards helps. If I go straight up my shoulders come too far forward while my knees straighten and it turns into a straight leg DL about 3 inches off the ground. Was was too gassed to do RDLs. Time to drop the weight next week!

This didn't go very well. Definitely need to eat before I lift. Definitely can't drop 10lbs in a week. Definitely need some new straps that don't throw me off setting up. Probably need to lower my hips more too. . . and I could probably do a better job editing this video but it took like half a dozen tried to finally get it online.

Straps throw me off too. Just try to pull bare handed as much as you can before adding straps. Chalk is your friend

Will wrote:

Calves and Achilles

esplain plz?

I know people feel strongly about using straps one way or the other. I'm not that close to competing so I don't see the need to ditch them. I didn't have chalk at first (although I can't keep using that as an excuse) and I'm not seeing a big difference between the two except that the straps can be a pain in the ass and the chalk can get a little messy but you use more grip strength. I used to have a pair of oly speed straps but an employee at the CRWC took them from the lost and found and sheepishly denied it when I confronted him (I am 99% sure these are mine because I removed the brand logo with a seam ripper and I noticed a familiar stain on the cuff. I'm not upset that he took them from the lost and found because they had probably been sitting there for a while, but he should have fessed up when I saw him using them in the gym.) Anyway, I like that kind a lot better because there's less fussing around. I thought those were just a little short though (I had some trouble wrapping them around the bar) so I'm not too sorry to find a new pair. Might as well buy some chalk while I'm at it :-)

Chris, I'm scared of tearing an Achilles because I have a history of degeneration in those tendons. I also have fairly weak calves. So, I do seated calf raises, standing calf raises in the smith machine off a step, and unilateral standing calf raises, static stretching, and light dynamic stretching. When I do the calf raises I'll use a full ROM and put different parts of my foot on the surface/support/step (whatever you want to call it) to incorporate more or less of the musculature of the bottom of my feet and toes. I don't think tendons get much blood flow but there's something about getting a nice pump that refreshes my Achilles tendons several days later. I'm haven't been very consistent until recently but so far doing this really seems to make a difference.

I want to do more intensive work on my Achilles but i need to build a base first. I would definitely make them a lot worse if I started doing those exercises too soon. I have in mind 100m-150m sprints and pogo jumps (multiple jumps with minimal ground contact time). I think I will train this kind of reactivity before I get into very specific reactivity for jumping off one leg.

The pulls looked pretty solid, even if the performance wasn't up to par (you've identified reasons outside of training for this that, as you know, will be corrected).

Your hips are a bit high here, but to be honest, with how the angles of your body work together, it doesn't look bad to me. I think what might be happening is you're not sitting back on your pulls enough. With your setup (when you take your hips out and bring them forward quickly before starting), you can see that you're occasionally knocking the bar off your shins as you initiate the pull. Freeze at 2:11 for an example. When you're keeping that bar right up against your body, you're pulling much faster. You have a tendency to let it get in front of you as you fatigue.

The other thing I noticed are your heels. Watch just your feet as you lock out your reps--you're going to see the heels of your feet move very slightly. It's barely perceptible, but it's there. Your heels aren't always lifting, but I can tell that your weight is being redistributed forward at lockout. Thinking about throwing your shoulders back as you lock out--without hyper-extending--is going to help with this.

This isn't a bad set; these are all very, very minor mistakes. Watch your set starting at 1:41; the second rep is clearly faster than the first and the third, and that tells you that you're just a bit inconsistent in your pulling. Time and volume will help breed consistency.

Thanks Kyle. I think that stuff with my heel (unless you see both feet moving) may be my conscience effort to 'feel' my right ass cheek at lockout. I can feel the tension on the left side but not on the right side.

Missed logging some stuff. Just trying to have fun with squatting for now. Paused 315 no belt in basketball shoes this morning. Stayed in the hole a little too long. Favored my left side when I got stuck. BSS afterwards same deal with my glutei: feeling one and not the other. Fucking sucks.

Failed 445 twice. Best lift today is 415.

My DL training is wrapping up since I failed those reps last week and my body is just giving me this sense. So I need to drop the weight and push another progression. In between these mesocycles seems like a reasonable time to test a heavy single just for fun. Wasn't expecting anything great as I haven't had anything to eat since last night. I thought about taking a week off either entirely or cutting down substantially but on a whim I decided to go for a heavy single with suboptimal preparation. Sounds a little irrational but I just woke up and got it into my head that I would do this. It's almost a defense mechanism or something -- so I don't set my self up for being even more disappointing for missing a more important PR attempt further down the line. Rather have smaller PR jumps knowing I set a PR under less than ideal circumstances. This must be what I'm doing because I'm realizing now that my last two PR attempts were done under some of the worst circumstances and they were entirely impromptu like I was seizing these opportunities of unusual weakness.

Anyway I think I'm going to hit 445 pretty soon down the line. I guess this is what I have my sights set on right now. One thing that I have realized that will help is that I can't DL once a week. Maybe I can/should when I get the motor pattern engrained further but it's not working for me and I can tell when I go to set up each week. I'm getting stronger at a pretty fast rate I think and as this happens, and on top of everything else I'm learning, there's actually going to be a different muscle synergy with heavy vs light weights.

Focus on getting 420 before you go after 455. Don't count on making 10% jumps in your 1RM.

Aint got time for that hardgainer shit

315x3x5 no straps no belt
185 top set IDK how many pause squats

Really quick workout. My grip is reallly shitty. 385 actually slipped out of my hands during one of the sessions I failed to log. The bar was moving kinda fast at that time though. I'm not doing any weird stuff with my body before the instant of separation like I have been. Just trying to just get into position. I thought about pulling the slack out but IDK if I really continued doing that in the second or third set. Trying out different techniques/starting positions I guess. . . I think I might actually deadlift in my Do-Wins because my heels almost start to come off the ground.I want them for the purpose of the joint angles created. Setting up like this felt good but I'd need something under my heels. Trying to get as close as I could to this was kind of throwing me out of position. It might be better if i had more flexible ankles because I'm thinking the quick fix (WL shoes) is just the same except you're adding in a bit of a deficit and the ankle isn't stretched as much so I guess the role of the calves is a little different but that seems almost negligible

Here's a video from two days ago (I think). Just trying out the do-wins.



This is all the weight I have at home so I think I did 300x9. The plates are also too small in diameter so this is effectively from a deficit. I think the shoes help but I don't feel solid making a comparison yet. My car broke last week so I've been walking everywhere and I haven't been training too much.