Atlas Stones!

I did not plan on training today. Apparently, molding an Atlas Stone is equivalent to a DE Lower/cardio training session. 1.5 hours of stirring 200lbs of concrete, dragging the container around, and filling the mold... holy freaking crap. I feel the need to track this for posterity.

Also I went to the ER for possible cement burn on my left hand. Irony would be the stone setting and me having second to third degree burns on my hand. We'll find out in the next 48 hours.

Pics!

Before:

1.5 hours later:

I've Been A Lazy Boy

Man, I don't know why but my heart just hasn't been into training lately. I'm hoping the new Atlas Stone I am molding tomorrow will snap me out of it (there will be an entertaining making-of picture sequence I am sure). But for now, Deadlifts. With Video! Vino makes an appearance, sort of, as a coach!

A1. Hip/Shoulders Mobility/Prehab

B1. Deadlift

8 x 45#
2 x 8 x 135#
5 x 225#
2 x 275#
1 x 315#
2 x 335#
2 x 360#
2 x 390#
1.5 x 415#

That 415# was supposed to be a double but it was glued to the floor. It's the first rep I missed during the entire program, but with the volume I've been doing with deadlifts, I consider it a victory to have even made it this far. Next session is the deload session, and I'll move on to squats!

C1. SSB 12" Box Squat

8 x 85#
5 x 175#
6 x 2 x 265#

Aggravated my IT Band tendinitis during the last double. Booo. Ice and the foam roller are my friend.

C2. 2" Grip BB Row

8 x 45#
5 x 95#
4 x 6 x 135#

D1. Farmer Holds

2 x 15s x 225#/hand
2 x 20s x 225#/hand

Camera battery died after the first set. These were hard, but felt good.


Overall a decent session. Jessica is a beast and tried deadlifting with a 2nd degree burn on her hand. She got to 335# before needing to stop. She crazy.

on a mission from

         Every rep, every set.  Great way to close out the cycle and kick off my trip.  Something about eating before training, i'm not 100% on that but whatever.  Now comes that nebulous time of about 2 weeks where i'm a bit unsure of what my training and eating schedules are going to be like so i have to be completely paranoid and unfocused because i'm worried about getting fat and weak (which is totally going to happen).  Man, sometimes i wish i were a bear.  Then i could eat fish for months then hibernate, rinse repeat.  Yeah, mother fuckin bears!


        I'm not sure if i'm more excited to start Juggernaut, keep going on 5/3/1, or figure out a cutting program.  This is my eternal dilemna, i bitch about being fat until i go and throw a good set, then all of a sudden it's like "Fuck yeah, man i love being strong! (even though i'm not really yet)"  Ah well.  Guess i have two weeks to think about it!

• Deadlift: 245/275/300x8
• A1. Good Morning: 5x5 225
• A2. Chinup: 5x5
• B1. GHR: 4x8
• B2. Seated Row: 4x8 150
• Uni Shldr: 3x12 40
• DB Row: 3x12 75
• BB Inc: 3x12 115
• CG Bench: 3x12 135

        Hopefully next time i can super set the shoulder press and row, i think that'd be an interesting combination.  Otherwise, some strength gains overall, the bench sets at the end felt way more solid.  Not sure if i'm ready to move up yet, but yeah...everything worked pretty well tonight.

        Mmm...gonna go play more Dragon Nest.  Skippy.  One of these days i'd like to get inside the mind of a hardcore WoW player and figure out what it is that makes them say "yeah you know, i was ok with the walrus people, but fucking pandas?  No Fuckin Way, Not In MY AZEROTH!!"  Ah well.

Today's TrainingTune: Not A Love Song (Studio-X Remix) - Freakangel

survive tonight

        Ok so i'll totally admit that this upper body split is complete and utter...



        Altho i suppose i should be happy that i somewhat recovered from last week's fairly pathetic bench attempt.  I'm actually glad i didn't deadlift today, i feel like i can save that for tomorrow and get in some good pulls.  Going to hit 300 at the top end, here's hoping for 6 or more reps.  I'm fairly confident i can hit 6, just need to make sure i eat decently tonight and get in some good sleep.  This can happen i think.

        Man, i feel like a total boner, but i should freak out in meetings before workouts more often.  Or at least find something that gets my heart rate up a bit, that definitely helped push me through my bench, but you know, that's neither my preferred warmup technique or managerial style.  Ah well.  Maybe i'll just take to tasing myself or swallowing some hot sauce before lifting in the future.  My left arm is so tight from curls right now that it's hard to type.  Bad sign:

• Bench: 185/205/230x6
• A1. DB Bench: 5x5 85
• A2. Bent Lateral: 5x5 60
• Neutral Pull: 2x8x140/2x8x150
• B1. Cable Curl: 3x12 140
• B2. RopeX: 3x12 150
• C1. Pushdown: 3x12 150
• C2. Cable Hammer: 3x12 100

        I'm so totally torn.  I don't really want to spend 60 bucks on a watered down sp campaign, but goddammit i wanna look at BF3s sweet sweet lighting candy:(  You know it always gets me when game websites write editorials about why sp campaigns are going away, then pan a game's sp but give it a 9.0 anyway because it has good multiplayer and good graphics.  Whatev.

Today's TrainingTune: Afterlife - Sin D.N.A

I'm currently tracking my workouts on my own site, as well as playing with fitocracy and runkeeper. Instead of spamming everyone here with daily short nonsense, I thought I might start posting a weekly summary that is an aggregation of the week's activities. That will also encourage me to contribute regularly. So here's my first shot at that schedule. The week in review...

OCT 19 2011:MORE BJJ

Today I was working all day. I managed to make the advanced gi BJJ class at night though. There were only 4 of us and Matt Arroyo teaching. Since we were so few, Matt did a QA for the first half hour and we drilled from that. He showed us a nice control using the double-wrist lock grip (or kimura grip). After that we rolled for half an hour. I was the only white belt, but felt pretty good. I was able to work on my control and passing. Got some good tips on head pressure from Troy R(one of our purple belts). Not a bad night. Got caught by Peyton twice in the same ^%&^% triangle. That means that I’m over-reaching. I need to work on that.

OCT 21 2011:FIRST SUB-8-MINUTE 4 MILER

Good run tonight. Cool. Ran from gym down Bayshore along the water. 4 miles in 31:22. Getting there slowly. Focused on breathing and moving forward consciously with each stride. Bad cotton mouth. Could have used some water.

OCT 23 2011: BACK TO LIFTING AND A RUN

Still a bit tender from restarting BJJ this week. After a couple days off, back at it today and added in a quick weight workout. The gym was only open for about 45 minutes, so I took two basic exercises that worked most the big muscle groups and then went for a run with Erica.

• Squats
• 135×8
• 155×8
• 175×4
• 175×4
• Clean and Press
• 4x(135×4)

Was really feeling some odd torque in my right knee tonight. Didn't want to push it. Ended the workout with a 3 mile run with Erica. Ran with her until the last quarter mile and worked with her on managing her breath and tension while pushing her pace a bit. Goal was 9 minute pace for her. She came in just over that. The last quarter mile I ran harder to make up the slow time and came in at 27:08.

OCT 24 2011: MORNING BOXING

Coach changed things up this week a bit. We’re doing mornings instead of evenings for at least the beginning of the week. This morning we had boxing at 7:00 am. That was followed up by MMA striking at 8:00. In boxing we de-briefed post this weekend’s fights and did bag drills. In MMA, we worked on the flow, low-kick, and shooting drills in continuous flowing fashion. Good morning workout.

Came back at night to run 2.5 miles with team.

OCT 25 2011: HALF A PRIVATE

Was feeling pretty rough this morning. Had my private lesson at 9. Coach suggested that we do half an hour hard today and the other half later in the week. Worked out well. Felt like I could go hard as I could till my legs started giving out.

OCT 26 2011: THE OTHER HALF AND SOME PACE INTERVALS

This afternoon I did the other half hour of my private with Coach. Worked on my combinations, counter punching, set-ups, etc. Time to start utilizing my range. Afterwards, went for a run with Erica. We were doing 1/4 mile intervals with one minute rests. The goal was to run at a reasonable near target 5k pace. Not bad. Not great, but I already see improvement sent I started training running consciously. The modified Hal Higdon workout and my Garmin ForeRunner 305 have helped a lot. So has logging. I’m logging here now, as well as on RunKeeper and Fitocracy. It’s definitely helping with consistency and performance drive.

OCT 27 2011: FIRST DAY OF BODYWEIGHT ROUTINE

I’ve been wanting to start one of those 100 Pushups type routines. I even downloaded an app for my phone, until I realized that all of them are ok and none make me happy. Basically, what I wanted is the algorithm for getting my current max to my target max in X time. That was not forthcoming easily (and may not even exist in some of those apps). So I ran across a guy talking about his method which I liked a lot. I can’t even remember where I found it (or I’d give that fellow deserved credit).

Basically, the approach is, choose your target rep max. Then break that up into a manageable number of reps that you can accomplish per minute for enough minutes to reach that max number. For instance, I want to do 100 push-ups, so I did 10 push-ups per minute for 10 minutes. The blurb I read by this guy simply stated to shorten your rests. I refined that a bit for my algorithm. Sometimes it takes 2 sets in one minute to complete. For instance, on my pull-ups tonight, around set 6 I had to start doing 3 reps, resting for 15-20 seconds, then knock out the other 2. The key was to complete the target number (5 per minute in this case) for the alloted time (10 minutes in this case). What I’m doing is repeating the workout 3 times a week and shortening it by a prescribed number of seconds each week.

So, this the current algorithm:

1. Choose your exercise
• I’m doing Pull-Ups, Bodyweight Squats, and Push-Ups
2. Choose your target max number of reps for this cycle
• For me, that is:
• 100 Push-Ups
• 100 Squats
• 50 Pull-Ups
3. Choose a number of reps that you can complete in one minute for as long as it takes to reach the target max number
• For 100 rep max, that could be 20 per minute for 5 minutes, or 10 per minute for 10 minutes, or 5 per minute for 20 minutes (for instance)
• I’m starting with:
• 5 Pull-Ups per minute for 10 minutes
• 10 Push-Ups per minute for 10 minutes
• 10 Squats per minute for 10 minutes
4. Do this routine 3 times for the week
5. For the next week, subtract 10 seconds and do same routine. So the same number of reps, but per 50 seconds instead of per minute.
6. Do this each week until you are doing your target max as one continuous set (due to the time mashing the sets together as the rests become shorter)
7. Set new goals
8. Repeat

I did my first night tonight. This will be done 3x/week regardless of what else is on the training schedule. I also created a Google Spreadsheet to track the workouts. It is drive by a form that looks like this. I made it public so anyone can copy it to their own Google Docs and use it and edit as needed (if it seems useful to others).

formless beasts

        Man, this whole autumn in socal thing i gotta say is bummin me out just a little bit.  All of a sudden I'm back in Seattle with the gray and the nasty and the kinda cold and stuff:(  The funny thing too is it changed like in a day, how bizarre, how bizarre!  Maybe i can blame my recent stiffness on the change in the weather?  Nah i'm going to instead blame it on my lack of stretching and prehab/mobility work.  I figure i'd be getting more of that from martial arts classes but it's looking like i need to get a bit more serious about working it into everyday training.  That means i'm going to have to start getting up even earlier, sweet jeebus.

        I was thinking about deloads again the other day and i the concept of rest days vs rest periods and all taht, i didn't actually come up with anything other than that life makes you take deloads and rest periods anyway, i think.  I'm still wondering what the gym situation is going to be like in china, i suppose maybe i'll be doing dumbbell and machine work for a week?  If i'm lucky?

        I think my body is trying to kill me.  I felt really shitty when i woke up, felt great by the time i got to the gym, felt crushed into the floor by the time i left.  Like a pancake.  With syrup.



        I can see 405 from here.  It's funny, i remember when i was a young lad i used to be scared of numbers, altho that may have had to do more with my hate of math (at the time, i don't really hate math anymore) than my fear of not being able to move a certain weight.  Case in point, i'm deadlifting 300 this week, but you know, i don't really even consider that a big number (cuz it's not), a milestone, or anything, it's just another stop along the way.  That's probably a good sign:

• Squat: 235/265/295x7
• Front Squat: 5x5 195
• RDL: 5x5 205
• BB Split: 4x8 105
• Back Raise: 4x8 65
• Wide Curl: 3x12 65
• Reverse Curl: 3x12 45
• Hi Cable Curl: 3x12 50
• DB Floor: 3x12 55

        Gah those squats were a pain, you know, overall this is a really fun lower body split in general.  If you can get through the first 5 stations, you're pretty much gold, but man...getting through those first 5 stations some mornings is like walking through molasses (or syrup i guess) in winter.  You know when you have to tell your self "It's cool, this is the hardest thing you're doing today" after EVERY station, you're probably in trouble :D

        PC Developers...once again, WINDOWED MODE!  DO IT.  Sheesh.

Today's TrainingTune: Blasphemie - Incubite

Level up

In the words of the WoW community, "Ding!"



I did a TON of these, and shot my back to hell. After this week is my light week though, so I'm just going to try to push through the discomfort. I will be a machine when all my ligaments heal.