Tried something else for sprints today…. ouch. 🙂

“Week 1”

• 5 reps – Deadlifts (working max: 295#)
  • 1x5x120 (warmup)
  • 1x5x150
  • 1x3x180
  • 1x5x195 (work)
  • 1x5x225
  • 1x8x255
• Asst. #1 – Good Mornings
  • 5 x 10 x 65
• Asst. #2 – Hanging Knee Raises
  • 5 x 6 x BW
• Metcon – Sprints
  • 1/2 a Tabata set, 20 seconds sprint, 10 seconds walk
• Grip
  • 2x10xS, 2 sec hold between each rep
  • 3x5xT, 2 sec hold between each rep
  • 1 10 sec hold, No. 1

Today was OK. Weight felt kinda heavy and looking back well, my deadlift PR was 1x8x275 so why I only cranked out 8 with 255 today I’m not sure. I did feel like I could do more but said “leave some in the tank”. So maybe it was just being conservative. I’m also a bit concerned about my rest levels… sleep has been an issue for me (some problems) and I just may not be recovering like I need to. Hrm. Still, they felt like strong reps, just like I didn’t want to do a whole lot.

I supersetted the good mornings and the knee raises. My knee raises are doing well, working to touch my knees to my shoulders on every rep, so I’m getting a good curl with my body, working more than just hip flexors. I did notice my left hand grip starting to slip on the last couple reps of the last couple sets, but I just hung on and kept going. The superset works things a little harder, but I’m good with that due to time and a little more intensity.

Sprints. First thing…. I bought myself a good pair of running shoes because Chucks just won’t cut it with all the impact involved, so that means more gear to haul to the gym: lift in Chucks, run in the New Balances. I then paced off 90 yards. The plan is to use the Tabata method: sprint 20 seconds, walk 10 seconds, that’s “1 rep”. If I can pull 1 good set of those (8 “reps”) that should be a good start. But of course, there’s no way I’m doing 8 right now. I only did 4 (so “half” a set). I want to get my body used to things: the running, the impact, the whole motion. 4 didn’t quite tax me today, I was sucking wind but didn’t feel exhausted or like I was going to throw up, but it was good enough. My lower legs are a bit tight and achy from the past couple sprint trials, just because it’s a new motion. Plus today’s deadlifting put a lot of work into my hamstrings and on the first sprint I guess I had a little too much stride and my right hamstring isn’t too happy with me right now. I don’t want to have this long gazelle stride where my heel lands way out in front of me and then my hams “pull” my body forward, rather I want to just keep having my body being “pushed forward” by my stride; so it won’t be this long stride, but knees high, arms pumping, and going as hard as I can. Again, kinda like tire running or well, what you’d do if you were pushing a Prowler. Of course, by round 3 I felt like I was sprinting for my life but I’m sure I looked like I was barely jogging. 🙂 All good. I’ll work my way up. At least this felt like a lot more work and intensity than rope jumping.

And grip, I bumped up to a 3×5 for the “work”. Left hand is of course a little weaker and I’ll keep things at a level until my left catches up with my right. My always think to involve the pinky: that’s so key

Speaking of grip stuff… I tried that “Liquid Chalk” stuff today. Seemed alright. Not sure how much it actually helped, but I don’t think it hurt.

I think I may take a nap today.

Starting cycle 4 of the Wendler 5/3/1 program.

“Week 1”

• 5 reps – Press (working max: 140#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x55
  • 1x5x70
  • 1x3x85
  • 1x5x90 (work)
  • 1x5x105
  • 1x7x120
• Asst. #1 – Press
  • 5 x 10 x 65
• Asst. #2 – Supinated, shoulder-width grip lat pulldowns
  • 5 x 10 x 120
• Metcon – sprints
  • 40 yards
  • walk twice
  • jog twice
  • 5 x 1 walk, 1 jog, 1 sprint
  • walk… I dunno… 100 yards, twice, cooldown

And so, starting cycle 4 on Wendler 5/3/1.

Pressing went nicely. Felt good. Weights are feeling heavier, but that’s ok…. just keep pressing! Went up only 5# but remember, last cycle I goofed and went up due to mis-reading my charts and so I’m just continuing up, so it’s a bit of a big jump, but I know I’ll be alright.

On the assistance pressing, a 5# jump but boy it felt harder. I normally take 1 min of rest between sets but I needed a little more here (90 to 120 seconds, never let myself do more than 2 minutes but mostly it was as “ok, do I feel rested enough?” feeling). So my goal during the cycle will be to get my rest periods down.

Pulldowns went well, feeling hard those last few reps of the last few sets. I have wondered if I might want to go up another 5# and let my rest periods here increase too. I’ve been (re)reading more Wendler stuff, including his 5/3/1 Powerlifting book and well… the reason I kept my rest periods during assistance work to 1 minute was to get and keep my heart rate up to add to conditioning. But, if I’m moving into doing prowler and sprints? Do I really want/need that? Better to perhaps lift a big heavier, a bit more intensive on the assistance work, go for 1-2 minutes of rest. Let it be a bit more for mass building, y’know?

Went outside and sprinted. I have those 40-50 yards measured off. I walked it twice, jogged it twice, then did 5 “reps” of walk it, then jog it, then sprint it. That felt enough for today. I also timed it. Now remember, when I jog and sprint I’m doing it with high knees, kinda like I’m tire running but moving forward faster than a tire run would allow. In timing it, it took about 30 seconds to walk it, 20-ish to jog, and 10 to sprint. Hrm. Not exactly the work intervals you want; HIIT wants about a 2:1 ratio of work to rest, but for now, this is alright to help my body adapt and get used to things. But still… I think that perhaps I’ll go with a Tabata format and measure of maybe 90 yards or so, figuring that 80 yards of that sort of sprinting would be about 20 seconds of work, and 10 yards of walking would be about 10 seconds or rest. So, 90 yards, I can go up and back at least 4 and up to 8 times. On Wednesday I may measure that out and see how it goes.

I also thought, again after reading more Wendler yesterday, that I might back off my squat numbers and repeat the same squat numbers from last cycle. Why? Because I’m adding in some intensive leg work and my body needs time to adapt… could take 3-4 weeks for my body to get there, and my squat will suffer for it. But like Wendler says, it’s about long term goals, years, not weeks or even months. You’ll never get weaker by going lighter. I’ll see how I feel tho come next week since the first squat won’t be for another week.

With today’s workout I finished my 3rd cycle of the Wendler 5/3/1 method, following a general “boring but big” template 3x a week with a little metcon/GPP. Started to also experiment with working on grip, and changing around my metcon/GPP.

I’m still very pleased with this workout program. It’s slow progress, but there’s progress and my body generally feels happy for it. This is all good. I’m happy with the direction, the results, and where things are going. I see little reason to change the basic program, but I do see some tweaks coming.

First, as has been mentioned in my logs, I’m changing up my GPP. Jumping rope just isn’t going to cut it any more. When the guy with the Prowler shows up, I’m going to do that because it r00l3z. But since it may not always happen, I’m going to sprint instead. I need to come up with a reasonable routine for the sprinting, but my hope is that will work. My desired goal here isn’t just to increase my conditioning, but also to see about accelerating some fat loss. I don’t want to do some sort of “cutting” cycle where I cut back on calories, cut back on the strength work, all in an effort to just drop fat… because as far as I can see, you can do things wisely and drop some fat, maybe slowly, but that’s fine. For this 4th cycle I’m not going to directly change much other than what I do for GPP, but I have thought that perhaps during the 5th cycle I might try changing the diet up for the 6 weeks of the cycle, leaving my strength weights alone (i.e. do 4th cycle weights again), and see if I can drop 10# of fat. But we’ll see… I’ll figure that out in about 6 weeks.

I think I’m going to need to invest in a good pair of running shoes. The Chucks are great for most of my working out, but the running? It’s going to hurt.

I’ve also had some thoughts about adding a little more work to my workout sessions. Yes, a little more “bodybuilding” type stuff (see Wender on a bb template), because yes I’d like to put on a little more muscle mass in some areas. But I don’t know yet. I think I’d rather focus on some of the fat shedding, but we’ll see. Much to think about. Won’t be happening this 4th cycle.

Another thing is working on my grip, and for now that’s just going to be those CoC grippers as I outlined in some past workout logs. We’ll see how it pans out.

So as for the 4th cycle itself, I think what I’m most excited about is hitting some milestones. I’ll be using 135# for my pressing, which is cool to move into the 45# plates.  Bench press is going to break 200#. Deadlift is nearing 300. And my squats are going to go into true PR territory finally. So it’s going to be a rather cool cycle. I need to ensure I get a lot of rest. 🙂  I’ve wondered about how these work-weights translate into a 1RM, just because one gets curious. I’m not going to sweat it too much. But I do think about it… I’m human.

Wife comments on how my body is looking, is improving. So hey… life’s good. 🙂

Tried something different today.

“Week 4”

• Deload – Squats (working max: 240#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 2x5x95
  • 2x5x120
  • 2x5x145
• Asst. #1 – Squats
  • 5 x 10 x 95
• Asst. #2 – Leg curls
  • 5 x 10 x 60
• Metcon
  • Sprints – read below
• Grip
  • 3x10xS – 2 second hold for each rep

Deloading, so nothing to write home about… but a few things of note.

With squats, I really worked to keep my torso tight, pushing outward with my abdominals. Boy that makes such a difference… not to just be tight, but to explicitly push out. Keeps the torso more upright, causes the posterior chain to be more involved, even felt it more in my adductors, and you just get more push overall. I dug it. I have been working on this, and today was very productive in this area.

The other big change? I opted to sprint.

Jumping rope isn’t bad, and it was a good way to start, but I feel I’ve adapted and plateaued… it’s not pushing me any more. So to increase it, I wanted to do the “running in place” and while that’s helping, I can’t keep it up — either coordination gives, or the muscles are too tired already to keep going, and thus I trip up on the rope and so what’s the point? I can’t get enough jumps to make the effort work out.

But that Prowler? Boy that works. The trouble there is the equipment belongs to someone else, and so it requires him to be there and to be there when I’m there. Generally possible, but not always (e.g. he was out of town the past week).

So looking at all of this, plus that a general suggestion for things like this is hill sprints well…. there aren’t any hills around, but I can at least sprint. There’s a long driveway right next to my gym, more than enough distance. So, if I can Prowler, I’ll do that. If I can’t, I’m going to sprint.

I only just considered it this morning before I left for the gym, so I only got a little bit of reading done. I want it to be HIIT style. But what would that be? Well, I’ll work on it. Here’s what I came up with for today:

• Found two markers on the ground, paced off the distance at about 45 paces (so somewhere between 40 and 50 yards)
• Walk from one end to the other.
• Turn around. Jog back.
• Turn around. Sprint back.
• That constitutes “1 rep”.
• When jogging or sprinting, it isn’t about trying to cover the distance as quickly as possible, but rather trying to put as much effort in as possible. I’m working to pull my knees up at least so my thighs are parallel to the ground, my impact is on the balls of my feet (not trying to heel-toe it), arms pumping through a full range of motion, and sure I’m still trying to get from here to there, but it’s more about effort. Perhaps more akin to running tires than pure distance sprinting.
• Today, I did 4 “reps”. I’ll work my way up in reps, probably landing at 10 or 12 reps. We’ll see where things go from there. In fact, as I do more reading about good sprint HIIT programs, I may change things entirely.

So I’ll see what comes of this. I am wanting to not just increase my conditioning, but accellerate my fat burning. HIIT is the way to do it, and while the Prowler will be my first choice, when it’s not available I want to do something that’s “up there” so…. here we go. We’ll see what happens.

“Week 4”

• Deload – Deadlift (working max: 285#)
  • 2x5x115
  • 2x5x145
  • 2x5x175
• Asst. #1 – Good Mornings
  • 5 x 10 x 65
• Asst. #2 – Hanging Knee Raises
  • 5 x 5 x BW
• Metcon – jump rope
  • 1 Tabata set – all single hop
• Grip
  • 2x10xT, 2 sec hold
  • 3x3xS, 2 sec hold
  • 1 10 sec hold, No. 1

Again, deload week so nothing special. I did feel a bit nicer on my deadlift form, pulling more “back” than up, so that was cool. I need to keep working on getting my eyes up; they start focused a little too close to the ground, not the best for pulling.

Good Mornings I went deeper on. Let the stretch happen, and yes if it rounds the lower back a bit, that’s fine because I need the stretch. Thus, why I’m using such light weight. I went deeper today, felt like the bar was going to roll over my head, better stretch and by set 5 it felt better, so yeah…stretch is helping, work effort was better. In the interest of time today I supersetted it with the knee raises. I was doing sets of 5×8 but noticing I was peeding out those last 2 sets and not getting quality reps on the last reps so… that’s no good. Take a step back and let’s strive for 5×5 and make them all high quality, full intensity, knees curled up to my shoulders every rep. 5×5 worked well today for that. Since next cycle starts soon, I will probably go 5×6 for quality reps all the way through and see how that fares.

And yes, I have been thinking about the grip work. My current thinking? Let’s try for 2x a “week”. Since deadlift days are so grip intensive as it is, let that act as a “heavy” day. So deadlift, all the hanging raises work my grip well too, so then just continue with a “heavy” work set on my gripping like you see above. Warm up with the “light” gripper for a couple sets of a lot of reps, then work sets with the medium gripper for 3×3 or at most 3×5 across (maybe even going 5×5?), then one final set of hold with the heavy gripper. That plus the work I got during the lifting portion of the workout should be ample. Then on my squat day, I’ll do a “light” workout, probably something like 3×10 with the light gripper. And just try 2x a “week” with this sort of heavy/light alternating and see how it goes. Try this at least for 1 Wendler cycle.

Today’s workout didn’t go to 11, since it’s the start of deload week.

“Week 4”

• Deload – Press (working max: 130#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 2x5x55
  • 2x5x65
  • 2x5x80
• Asst. #1 – Press
  • 5 x 10 x 60
• Asst. #2 – Supinated grip lat pulldowns
  • 5 x 10 x 115
• Metcon – jump rope
  • 1 Tabata set – 3 reps running in place, 5 single hop
• Grip
  • 2x10xS, 2 second hold
  • 3x3xT, 2 second hold, last rep pf last set hold as long as possible

In past cycles, I’ve upped my assistance work during the deload week because with the work sets being so low I wanted to ensure I still got a reasonable workout. But, deload needs to be deload and I need to realize that the workouts won’t be all the stressing or impressive, but they are important to the long term. I need to stick to that and hold myself back.

So that said, the workout was nothing to write home about, but it felt good and probably what it should be. 🙂

Jump rope, I was a bit of fumble feet on the running in place so I only got 3 “reps” out, but it was good and useful and I just have to keep at it until I get it. The single-hops were at the same rope speed tho.

And you’ll notice something new. Grip work. It’s a weak point that became evident on my heavy deadlifts and leg raises, so I want to see if adding some specific grip work can help me out here. Yes, I ensure my grip doesn’t suck during any lift that needs it (i.e. no hooks, no barely holding on, have a firm closed tight grip), but if a little extra work can help, great. I picked up a set of Captains of Crush grippers, the Sport, Trainer, and #1. With effort I can get #1 to close with my right hand, can’t with my left, so that’s a good threshold for me. My general approach will be strength building, just like they tout on their website… not a zillion reps with an easy gripper, but working in that 3-5 rep range with progressively heavier resistance. I’ll do it on my walk home from the gym. Start with the Sport to warm up, crank out 2-3 sets of 10 reps, and every rep isn’t just a “close and open”, but a close (and close means the bottom tips of the handles touch), hold for at least 2 seconds (and that means the tips remain touching the whole time), then a controlled release and start again. I think a hold is important because grip isn’t touch and go, it involves holding. Then I’ll go up to the Trainer and do some lower rep sets, like today I just did 3×3, again holding in between reps and on the last rep of the last set holding as long as I can.

Is that the most intense grip workout? Probably not, but like all things, you have to start somewhere and it’s better to “start light” and work up to it. On non-obvious reality for me is I cannot work so hard that I get sore and cramped in my forearms and fingers because I have to type for a living and crippling myself that way does me no good. 🙂 So I shall start “light” and work my way up. I’m also not sure how often I’ll do this, probably once a “week” for now, but I could see bumping it to 2x week as I adapt. We’ll see. Just got them yesterday and am figuring out what to do with them.

“P” is for Personal Record (PR). “P” is for Prowler. “P” is also for puke. 🙂

“Week 3”

• 5/3/1 – Squat (working max: 240#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x95
  • 1x5x120
  • 1x3x145
  • 1x5x180 (work)
  • 1x3x205
  • 1x5x230 (PR*)
• Asst. #1 – Squat
  • 5 x 10 x 95
• Asst. #2 – leg curls
  • 5 x 10 x 60
• Metcon – Prowler
  • 90#, 4 40 yard sprints

Overall, today was good… even the fact that as I type this, I still feel like I’m going to drop dead. 🙂

The work set of squats felt good. I felt strong. I didn’t have any sort of mental issue. It was again a “squat, or squat not” sort of approach. In fact, as of Monday’s workout I actually tried to just not think about this workout as all. It will be whatever it will be, don’t think about it, don’t stress over it. And I think that helped.

During the final set, I did ask someone to spot me, just in case. I think that helped give me a little confidence that if in fact I did fail I’d be alright. And so I hit the bar, did 1x5x230. I consider that sorta a PR. It’s not truly because I have done 1x5x230 before, back during the PPNP stuff, but my form was horrible. My form is MUCH better now and it showed today. Sure there was some forward lean, it wasn’t 100% perfect, but it wasn’t the ridiculous struggle it was before. Plus, just getting back to this level is a bit of a win for me. So, it’s not technically a PR, but it’s progress. Now that I think about it, I should have went for 6 and made it more of a firm PR. Oh well, there’s always next cycle.

Assistance work was fine. I have been thinking tho, one thing I’ve been doing on my deload weeks is upping my assistance work so that it stresses me like all other weeks. I’m thinking no, don’t do that. Keep my assistance work as-is during deload and truly let deload be deload. I may not break much of a sweat, but that’s fine because it’s more about recouperation. I’ll bump when I start the next cycle.

No jump rope, because Mr. Prowler was there. Of course he’s been working every day on this and has worked himself up to 90# (2 45’s) on the prowler. Me? I haven’t, but I wasn’t going to let my situation interrupt his flow since he’s doing me the favor. I did figure however that it would kill me, and I wouldn’t get 10 sprints in, especially given all the heavy leg work I just did. So I did 4 40 yard sprints with 90# on the prowler. On run 3 I started to slow towards the finish line. On run 4 it was tougher still to finish up. I was sucking wind pretty hard afterwards, my glutes and adductors were screaming at me, and I felt like I was going to puke. 🙂 Didn’t, but I was sucking wind and sitting on a bench for at least a good 5 minutes just trying to recover. Heh. The walk home was weary. Right now my body is saying “go take a nap” because it wants to recoup. I think I just might do that.

Next up is deload. I want to take that rather seriously, really go light and easy tho let my brain focus on form. One form thing that I want to work on is breathing. I stumbled upon something today that I want to explore.

See, when I come up to the bar, I’m setting myself, getting my body in position, tightening things up, which includes the torso for the valsalva maneuver… so I suck in a big belly full of air, hold it, tighten up, get the bar unracked, get into position… and by then my head starts to feel kinda light or dizzy or whatever, and so when I take the first breath that just exacerbates the situation and it can make getting through the set difficult. Happens on any set, but is most noticeable on the heavier sets. Of course, that’s no good, and has been a source of some of my problems.

On the second to last work set of squats I came up to the bar, got under it, and didn’t take a big breath until I was lifting the bar off. It was like I was fully in position, then all at once I breathe, tighten the body, and unrack. That seemed to work a LOT better and my body responded better, no dizzy feeling or whatever. I attempted to do the same on my last work set, and didn’t quite get there, but it was better than normal. So I need to figure out the groove here. But I want to explore this more because it’s been a source of issue for me. A small technical detail, but makes a big difference.