Lifting Thread;training for the tattooed warrior.

[Kev]

Dang @Cu-Bu , makes me wonder what my back x-ray would look like :confused:

[Kev]

Found this video this morning- madness!

[RoryQ]

Did a lower body today on Wednesday that included-

5x3 kneeling jump ups holding medicine ball (from kneeling jumping to your feet explosively, no using your hands or cheating etc. This can also be done with a bar on your back).

6x3/3 pistols

...Some bulgarians, plus SLRDLs. The bulgarians were largely redundant I think after the jump-ups and pistols.

Wow, I don't think my legs have felt this fried in a long time. This is a relatively low volume of pistols (I've always enjoyed them, but I'm not strong enough to do more than a shaky 2-3 per leg) but my legs are smoked.

I don't confuse DOMS with progress, but it's funny how your body reacts to something out of the ordinary.

[kylegrey]

German track cyclist Robert Forstemann , GVT perhaps ?

[Scott R]

wow gvt and possibly Charles Poliquin oh and a shitload of A S

[hogg]

That's gotta make his, um, bratwurst look really tiny in comparison.

[lving4today]

So after being a bum the past year other than skating, I gave crossfit a try the other day. They started me off with a small warm up and the baseline workout. I got my ass kicked. Very humbling. Apparently I didn't do too bad. 100 jump ropes after sprints got my calves crippled though.

[Petri Aspvik]

Killed deadlifting today! I was going in to do singles with 125kg. Last week I did 6 with 120kg, so, yeah... The guy who has been checking my form and stuff as I go along (thats the good thing about the place I train. Older and more experienced guys ask if you need help or you dont mind if I give you a few pointers?.) was again there at the same time. I warmed up and did a single with the 125. He said

That was easy. You are doing fives next.

OK... :eek:

Well, I did but couldnt keep my grip that good. He said try the mixed grip, and I did. Did 125x5, 125x5 & 125x4. My max single from like a month ago is 132.5kg... I think that will shatter like a bad egg sooooon! :)

They said I started to loose the strenght from my legs in the last set and was pulling too much with my back from the get go. True. Have to traing more legs! And I tend to sometimes go too much forward. Even if the bar goes up my legs as it should. I think it is because I sometimes (and even more as a child) walk up the stairs with my heels up in the air, for some reason. Have to unlearn it...

[RoryQ]

A few updates.

I've been implementing the DiFranco-inspired 3-day-a-week approach I talked about a couple of posts back, whereby I've got a pushing dominant upper body day, a lower body day and a pull dominant upper body day. Lots of hypertrophy work contained therein. Also been getting in the 10-15 minutes conditioning work prescribed for after each session. More less just resting the other 4 days. My escrima coach has been in the Phillipines competing, so that's been out while he's away (in an organised way, anyway).

Observations:-

The strength work is subtly different to what I was doing previous to this. I've been biasing towards high volume hypertrophy work for the past few months anyway, but with this programme I'm getting in a few sets per week of higher than usual reps - couple of days call for 20-25 rep sets, which has been interesting. Surprising how close to my 10 rep weight choices I've been able to go, which suggests I was sandbagging before. DiFranco also calls for some other bodybuilding type protocols which I'm going to use - 'run the rack' approaches, drop sets, pauses etc. Going to implement them and change them up every two weeks.

The strength work has left me pretty fried for the conditioning, particularly the short distance running (I've been trying to get in relatively fast 1-2 mile runs amongst other things). I'm not too fussed about this at the moment, I have plenty of days in the rest of the week to recover and as long as I am leaning out and seeing some hypertrophy I will be happy enough.

Dan John says 'everything works.... For a while' and as usual when I implement a new programme I feel great now, in the first few weeks. I feel the variety and freshness, mentally and physically, makes for good training in the short to medium term.

- - - Updated - - -

One other thing-

My mid and upper back has been pretty prone to stiffness and some spasming since I hurt my neck last year. I think it's a referral of problems associated with the tendency I still have sometimes to lift my shoulders to protect my neck. You do that for a while and your upper back will tell you all about it...

I've used foam rolling and trigger point release (using a lacrosse ball) to tackle this in the past, coupled with hot baths, but a week or two ago when it was irritating me I got a massage. The masseuse (sports background) gave me a bollocking about doing lots of joint mobility work but not actual old-school stretching.

Been stretching twice a day since, more out of frustration with feeling like someone has put rocks where my rhomboids should be than anything else, and .... Wow ... I think it's really made a difference.

Obvious now that I think about it, but for so long I've been ignoring static stretching. I think for maintaining tissue quality we still need to do it, even if it is boring.

[hogg]

@RoryQ, I've recently started doing mobility work (mostly hip stretching and the like) on a daily basis. It makes a difference, and it's lame that I neglected it for so long.

And man, the lacrosse ball is no joke! That thing is evil.

[RoryQ]

Training has been going pretty well since I last posted. I feel like I have injected that element of 'athleticism' back into my training which has been missing since I stopped doing BJJ.

I'm still following the template described above, with a pushing dominant day, a lower body day and a pulling dominant day. Each session is followed by about 10-20 minutes of conditioning.

For the conditioning I've been mainly doing-

-1 to 2 mile runs for time

-Interval type agility runs ie courses of cones in bursts of 45-60 seconds interspersed with rest periods of 30-45 seconds.

-Bodyweight circuits

Been ages since I ran or sprinted regularly and I attribute the sense of 'athleticism' and feeling of being pepped up to it. I'm trying to keep it anaerobic and hopefully anabolic rather than catabolic in nature.

Diet-wise I'm not as clean as I could be, probably need to get my carb intake down.

I've been reading a lot of Pavel T. lately and for my lower body day I can report that I'm able to bang out an increasing amount of pistols. Initially I was doing shaky low-rep sets to parallel but I've seen progress and now I'm upping the reps and going rock bottom with a good deal of control. Been holding a KB or set of DBs out front for balance. In addition to the pistols been doing single leg RDLs, weighted lunges etc. Some high rep sets of air squats as part of conditioning workouts.

Overall so far so good, although my pull-up numbers are still lagging. A few years ago my max was 15 strict dead hang, now I'm not sure what it is but I suspect it's closer to 10. No excuses, I need to fix that.

[Kev]

Our four week run on a HST program (similar to this ended badly Sunday for my training partner. We were finishing our last workout of the week, getting ready for maxes this week, when he hurt his lower back dead lifting. He thinks he'll be out for at least a month, so I'm going to have to figure something out for myself regarding spots. Also, time to buy a belt :eek:

[kylegrey]

@Kev What belts are you looking at ?

[slayer9019]

Well after being desk bound since Highschool I've lost all strength I worked hard to get and ballooned from 180 to 265 when I went to college. Back down to 219 now and continuing to work my ass off. Hardest part is getting my ass moving and need to quit smoking.

My future rib tattoo is my serious motivation!

[Kev]

@Kev What belts are you looking at ?

I have not been up to the local sporting goods to see what they carry. I'm not sure if I should go cloth like this: Valeo Performance Low-Profile Weight Lifting Belt

or traditional leather like this: Valeo 4" Wide Padded Black Leather Weightlifting Belt - Unique Fitness Concepts

What would you advise? There seems to be a lot of "no belt" advocates, but there's a lot of bikey "no helmet" advocates who end up like scrambled eggs on the motorway.

[kylegrey]

What would you advise? There seems to be a lot of "no belt" advocates, but there's a lot of bikey "no helmet" advocates who end up like scrambled eggs on the motorway.

Personally I like a belt but I wear it only on my very top sets of deadlifts and squats , for that reason I go for a power-lifting style belt . As you want a belt as snug as possible those very popular padded models are worthless ,I feel if you're going to wear one it should be a decent one and a good belt will last you a lifetime .The top companies are Cardillo inc and INZER ADVANCE DESIGNS or something similar , being in Texas I know theres other companies in your area as it seems the powerlifting bad-lands .

[Kev]

New maxes for this cycle (at 155 body weight):

bench 255

dead 345

military 155 ( my body weight seems to be the sticking point here)

Overall, I'm happy that I'm back to March numbers being 5 pounds leaner. I'm also happy with my form, as I felt some of my old numbers were "cheated" by bad form. Squats tomorrow :D

I also ended up with the 4' Harbinger belt- the support felt amazing while lifting yesterday and I'm looking forward to using it tomorrow.

[Scott R]

nice kev keep at it 375 dl before new year

[hogg]

Damn nice numbers, @Kev! I'm trying to get down to around 155 now myself, after getting up to 168. I'm at about 161 now, so all my pants fit fine again. :) This is the point where I usually decide I'm lean enough for a married/straight man who doesn't really undress in public.

In other news, I got some new equipment for my basement: better rack (still no room for a cage), better bench, a second universal bar and some new sawhorses. Now I can superset stuff like deadlift and bench with two bars, and I can still do dips by using both bars across the sawhorses.

[Scott R]

just did workout

5x5 false grip crosbar pull ups + 90 lbs

5x5 db bench 120s with 5 second eccentric

3x10 120 lb db rows

5x5 iso plate loaded chest press 370 lbs

followed by YOGA!

[RoryQ]

OK, I'm now ready to acknowledge that the 3-day a week strength-then-conditioning model isn't working out. I felt great for the first few weeks, but now it's just frustrating.

-It's taking two long (45 minutes or so strengthwork, then another 2--25 minutes to get in the conditioning element, leaving me tight for time if I'm doing a lunchtime session

and perhaps more importantly

-After the strengthwork it feels like I'm only paying lip-servie to the sprints etc.

So I'm going to keep the 3 days a week strength, same programming, but do my sprints / conditioning on two seperate days. The difference being that I'm roughly going to double the volume. I'll warm-up, do maybe 10-15 minutes of sprints / shuttle runs and then, after a short break, do some bodyweight conditioning or bag work.

Oh well, glad I tried it, believe it or not.

[Kev]

So new squat max is 255- I think I could have got 260-65 if my back was fresh. The new belt worked wonders though. My old "max" was 30 pounds more, but my form was terrible. Now I'm hitting below parallel because of the advice I've gotten here =)

[kylegrey]

I've changed things up a bit on my leg day using GVT 10X 10 for the last six weeks , also introduced some HIT cardio sessions 1 min max iintervals for 9 is my best on a spinning bike .

[ChrisvK]

deadlifted 102 kg yesterday 2 times in a row. Felt great! Been gaining strenght like there's no tomorrow since i stopped drinking during weekdays. Never realized how much of an impact alcohol has on overal strenght

[Colored Guy]

deadlifted 102 kg yesterday 2 times in a row. Felt great! Been gaining strenght like there's no tomorrow since i stopped drinking during weekdays. Never realized how much of an impact alcohol has on overal strenght

Good advice, I almost never drink during the week when I have my MWF routine going. It does make a difference.

Rob