Strength in Interesting Places

[Bumbaclaat]

now i get it...girls with pizza

 

[toonie]

I'll help

 

[JauntyAngle]

Light conditioning/GPP day

Yoga: Sun Salutation A x5, Sun Salutation Bx5, Ashtanga standing sequence, some seated asanas
Superset dips and chins: x5, x5, x5
CS Rower: 5000m, 26m.45s (much harder than last time, dunno why)
Superset dips and chins: x5, x5
Abs: bicycle exercise 1 minute, raised leg crunches 1+2+3+4+5
Treadmill: had to use the faulty treadmill... true to form it stopped wprking after 3 mins

Soundtrack-

Not my favourite PVD album- it's a bit light/housey.

* * * *

I really like the rower, but I also need to do proper treadmill work, so I hope they get the good treadmill fixed. The plan is to spend a few weeks just building up my general cardio base and then start doing more stuff like burpees, barbell complexes, etc.

I was glad I did some yoga today, and it was way way better than Saturday's.

 

[JauntyAngle]

now i get it...girls with pizza

*Much* better!

 

[RedKryptonite]

now i get it...girls with pizza

Pizza AND red wine... my kind of lady.

 

[Bumbaclaat]

Pizza AND red wine... my kind of lady.

...and melons!

 

[MIDMOBOX]

When did this turn into my log

 

[JauntyAngle]

When did this turn into my log

Quite a few logs have been turning into your log. It's proven to be the best model for a log.

 

[MIDMOBOX]

At least let me be remembered as a trend setter

 

[JauntyAngle]

Kabul, Week One, Workout Two

Low Bar Squats

90kg: x5, x5, x5

Not too easy, not too difficult, especially after the first set.D umped the weight off my back after one of the warmup sets (40kg), again, pretty easy to do. Up the weight to 92kg next time.


Press

48kg: x5, x5, x8

Easy. Adding 1kg per time, it is only going to go up 3kg every 2 weeks, so even in 4 weeks time it's still going to be less than my 5RM (55kg). Still, I am sure that this is the right way.


Power Clean

50kg x2, 55kg x2, 60kgx2, 62.2kg x1
66kg: x3, x3, x3, x3, x3

Some of these were hard. Afterward I remembered reading someone saying that the upward motion is from the jump/hips, and from a shrug. I don't usually shrug. I tried a hang clean with a shrug, with the empty bar, and nearly chinned myself, it went up so fast. I need to find out if that is correct, and if so implement it. It will increase my clean quite a bit.


Bonus Exercises!!!!

Weighted dips (+5kg): x5, x5, x5
Plank: 1min 30secs

Put the weight on the dips down because these bars are a bit wider and I am not used to them. They were fine.


Active recovery

10 mins on the C2 rower. I found out today that there is a technique to this which makes it easy on your back (seperate the leg extension/contraction from the pull/lean back), so I was going slow practising that. It was only on 9 minutes that I figured out how to do that and still make it one continual motion.

* * * *

I've reset all my weights and I am adding the weight back slowly. But I am doing the exercises much better now, and I am sure that spending more time lifting decent weight and less time failing sets and resetting will be help me to build strength better. This is a marathon, not a sprint, baby!

 

[JauntyAngle]

Okay, on the shrug in the clean, power clean, from Starting Strength:

The pull stops during the racking phase. "Stops" means that the muscular force generated during the pull ceases being applied to the ground. As soon as the feet shift position out of the pulling stance and begin the stomp, you have stopped pushing the floor. If you hadn't, your feet could not move. When force stops being applied to the bar, it stops accelerating, and Mean Old Mr. Gravity causes its velocity to drop to zero and start back down almost instantly. It is during this reversal in acceleration that the racking position is assumed. The movement is a shrug of the shoulders instantly followed by jamming the elbows up and forward to catch the bar on the deltoids. The movement is fast, as it must be if the bar is to be caught before it falls too far.

This is going to help my power clean a lot.

 

[JauntyAngle]

Kabul, Week 1, Workout 3

Warmup

5x Sun Salutation A, 3x Sun Salutation B
3 mins on C2 rower


Low bar squats

Warmup: x a bunch
92kg: x5, x5, x5

These were all basically fine. Before I go down to squat I need to remind myself a few cues though. (1) Make back long and engage valsava, (2) Sit down into the hole without losing back straightness, pushing knees out, (3) Come out of the hole by pushing forward with hips and out with knees. If I remember those I'll do the squat as well as I know how.

Add weight next time.


Bench

Warmup: x a bunch
78kg: x5, x5, x8

Pretty easy. I am not sure about the bench in my gym, it is one of these adjustable ones you can use for incline, but the bit where my ass is resting is a bit raised. It makes it super easy and natural to get the weight on my traps and get my chest up, but I am worried this will make me lazy and I will lose my ability to keep it tight and get my chest up on a flat bench.


Deadlift

Warmup: x a bunch (I should either log warmups properly or go back to my normal thing of not bothering)
127kg: x5 (mixed grip), x1 (double overhand)

These were much easier than last time. I was next to a mirror, so I could see my finishing position, and it was okay- chest out, shoulders back but not excessively. After I did my workset I was curious to see if I could do that weight with double overhand. I could. But I doubt I could do more than 2-3 reps.

Experimented with using talcum powder as a chalk substitute. Don't know if it was effective- anyway, my grip isn't my limitation at the moment.

Add 2kg next time.


Weighted Chins

+5kg: x5, x5, x5

The width of the grip still makes it a wee bit hard to get my elbows right down to my ribs. Which is why I cut the weight right back. Will add 2kg next time.

Abs

One of my favourite ab exercises: a crunch with legs raised/shins parallel to the ground (which emphasizes the abs and de-emphasizes the hip flexors), done in staircase fashion (1, then 2, then 3, etc), but you're not allowed to lower your legs back down to the ground between reps. And you rest for as many breaths as you have just done reps. It doesn't sound easy but it is nasty- keeping the legs up means that you never actually rest. When I push myself with this (e.g. if I get up to 9) I usually roll over and groan in pain after it is done. I was going to call it 'Abs Hell', being inspired by STTD's 'triceps hell', but nothing I do is 'hell-level' difficulty. It probably isn't even 'purgatory-level' difficulty. But I'll go with that. 'Abs Purgatory' it is.

Abs Purgatory: Staircase to 7, Staircase to 7

Next time I try this I should get to 8.

* * *

Good workout. Weights are still pretty light, but I can see a long period of slow, steady progression. As I keep saying, I've lifted all these weights before, but with less good technique and smaller ROM. So it's progress.

 

[SlaveToTheDark]

why not simply switch to hook grip instead of forcing the double overhand?

 

[JauntyAngle]

why not simply switch to hook grip instead of forcing the double overhand?

I may do at some point.

I actually did all my warmups with hook grip, upto a double at 110kg (I think). They were okay, not painful at all just weird feeling, and I may try a couple of singles at the work set weight at some point. The double overhand was just an experiment, to see if I could do it.

The thing with hook grip is that doing mixed grip hasn't give me any pain or discomfort as yet. I have never had a tendency to engage the bicep in the arm that has the underhand grip, and in general both arms seem to stay straight and neutral. Maybe because I am pretty darn flexible after years and years or yoga. Or maybe not. So right now I am really just working on hook grip, without any sense of hurry, in case I need it.

Do you think I should just go for hook grip regardless?

 

[SlaveToTheDark]

Do you think I should just go for hook grip regardless?

yup!

not only will the ROM be a bit shorter, but you won't experience any problems you might with the over-under grip... (one side developing differently than the other one)

(just to be clear, you might never have problems with that sort of thing, but some people do, so better be safe than sorry...)

 

[JauntyAngle]

yup!

not only will the ROM be a bit shorter, but you won't experience any problems you might with the over-under grip... (one side developing differently than the other one)

(just to be clear, you might never have problems with that sort of thing, but some people do, so better be safe than sorry...)

You've sold me on the shorter ROM. I will practice the hook grip more, and work it to my deadlifting more agressively.

 

[SlaveToTheDark]

You've sold me on the shorter ROM. I will practice the hook grip more, and work it to my deadlifting more agressively.

there really aren't any down sides to the hook grip other than the painfull first few weeks of getting used to it..

 

[squatsquatsquat]

Nice progress man. You're getting a lot stronger, despite the fact that your job prevents you from having an ideal training consistency. I agree with STTD about hook grip. I started hook gripping a few weeks ago and it honestly didn't even hurt much at all. I definitely prefer it.

 

[JauntyAngle]

Nice progress man. You're getting a lot stronger, despite the fact that your job prevents you from having an ideal training consistency. I agree with STTD about hook grip. I started hook gripping a few weeks ago and it honestly didn't even hurt much at all. I definitely prefer it.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll definitely be implementing hook grip, and will report back in this log! With deadlifting once or twice a week, it won't take long. I use hook grip for my power cleans anyway, which I guess gives me some small headstart.

 

[JauntyAngle]

I've come up with a magnificent plan to make my programme even better. Without changing the lifts, sets or reps. I've noticed that a lot of the other programmes have cool and interesting-sounding things in them, like 'volume days', 'intensity days', 'dynamic effort days', 'AMRAP', 'deload', and so on. Starting Strength (or the programme I am doing) doesn't have that. It just has two pretty simple workouts, called A and B.

How lame is that?

So from now instead of workout A and workout B, I have


"Manliness Day"
Squat 3x5
Bench 3x5
Deadlift 1x5
Weighted chins 3x5
Ab work

"Awesomeness Day"
Squat 3x5
Press 3x5
Power Clean 5x3
Weighted dips 3x5
Ab work


The week with two manliness days (like this week) will be called "Manliness Week". Likewise, the week with two awesomeness days will be called "Awesomeness week".

I am expecting massive gains as a result of this much better set of names.