At best, I’d give today a C+. A PR, but still a C+.

“Week 3”

• 5/3/1 – Bench Press (working max: 205#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x85
  • 1x5x105
  • 1x3x125
  • 1x5x155 (work)
  • 1x3x175
  • 1x5x195 (PR)
• Asst. #1 – Bench Press
  • 5 x 10 x 115
• Asst. #2 – 1 arm dumbbell rows
  • 5 x 10 x 45
• Metcon – jump rope
  • 1 Tabata set – all single hop

Today… well, sure I set a PR on bench press, but I hated how it went down.

As soon as I pulled the bar out of the rack, I started shaking. I expect maybe a little shaking because it is a new and heavy weight, but this was ridiculous. In fact, my knees started to shake like I was trying to work a bellows between my knees! WTF? I got to rep 5 and knew this wasn’t going to continue without something going horribly wrong, so I just racked it. Yeah, 5 reps @ 195 is still respectable and still a PR for me, but what the hell went wrong with my body?

So during assistance benching I worked to plant the hell out of my legs. My legs were pushing pushing pushing… so much that after each set my legs felt worked! They had a burn, and by the end of the 5th set my legs actually felt like they had a good isometric workout. But while I pushed, my body didn’t feel coordinated as a whole. My cue has been “tight” but it’s just not all there.

And that’s really what’s going on… it’s more of my mental game failing. I just wasn’t there.

Furthermore, I’m thinking too much. I’m putting too much thought into everything. I picked up a copy of “Powerlifting – Year 1” and had a bunch of “bench tips” on the brain… that is wrong. I’m going into my heaviest week, this is NOT the time to be futzing with form. Stick with what I have, for better or for worse, don’t be fucking around with things. I can futz during deload week, week 1, maybe week 2… but on week 3 I need to just focus on moving the damn weight and setting an awesome PR. I had too much going on in my head.

There’s just too much going on in my head, period… be it lifting form, doubt, day job, night job, my other jobs, life, family, whatever…. too many things. It’s not an excuse, it’s reality. And I need to fix it. But I guess I have to admit I’m not sure how. Or at least, I’m not sure yet about how to immediately turn it on and off on demand, so when I have to get under the bar, it’s immediately as it should be.

Anyways… chalk today up and move on.

On rows, speaking of the powerlifting eBook, I changed it slightly. Instead of rowing with elbows in, upper arm running essentially parallel to torso and weight pulled to stomach, I put the elbows out at about a 45º angle and pulling the weight to my lower chest — about the same angle and location as the bar is at the bottom of the bench press. This is a better angle of attack for my needs, but it worked me a bit more — posterior deltoid peeded out sooner. Good thing.

And jump rope? Geez… I think I was just so bummed that again, I wasn’t mentally there and couldn’t jump worth a damn. Did my best, and that was that.

Gotta get over it all. Wednesday is another day.

One longer-term thing? I had been tinkering with what I’ll do next cycle, in terms of jumps and so on. I’m going to perhaps go rather conservative… maybe even less of a jump than normal? Make sure I’m solid. That’s more important than trying to hit ego-satisfying numbers. Putting up a solid performance is a lot more ego-satisfying.

Reference

Didn’t do jack, other than set a great PR.

“Week 3”

• 5/3/1 – Deadlift (working max: 285#)
  • 1x5x115
  • 1x5x145
  • 1x3x175
  • 1x5x215 (work)
  • 1x3x245
  • 1x8x275 (PR)

Due to time constraints, I pulled an “ain’t doing jack shit” variant today. I also figure that’s better for me because I haven’t slept well the past couple nights and need the recovery. Glad the weekend is ahead.

The deadlift set just felt awesome. My head wasn’t cluttered with anything… nothing positive, nothing negative, and wasn’t really even thinking about the lift. Last night I started to think about it but just put it out of my head because it will be whatever it will be. Today, it just “was” and I set one heck of a PR with it.

I attribute the 8 reps in part to the mixed grip on the last set. That helps a lot. I actually felt like I could have done 9 or 10, but just stopped for whatever reason. Err on conservative I guess, since I need the recovery.

Come. Set PR. Leave. Felt good.

Started crappy. Finished awesome.

“Week 3”

• 5/3/1 – Press (working max: 130#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x55
  • 1x5x65
  • 1x3x80
  • 1x5x100 (work)
  • 1x3x110
  • 1x3x130 (PR)
• 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 – all single hop
  • 4 40yd dashes with a 20# Prowler

Today started out crappy but finished awesome.

It’s “week 3” so it’s 5/3/1 week and time to set some PR’s. Last press session I accidentally did 125, which was supposed to be today’s weight, so I said heck, let’s just do 130 and see how it goes.

It didn’t.

The whole Press session didn’t feel right. Something just felt off the whole time. Then I put 130 on the bar, press 1, 2… on the 3rd time something didn’t feel right, and I go for 4 and my body just said, “No.”. I didn’t accept that. Rest a couple seconds, take a couple breaths, go again… “I said, no.”. Rack the bar. Fuck!

I’m not sure what the deal was. It wasn’t like my muscles were tired, it was as if my CNS just shut down and said “we’re not going to fire, we’re not going to do this”… the body just didn’t want to move. I had a conversation with someone before I left the gym and he said it’s happened to him before and he believes it’s just the body shutting down to protect itself. Maybe that’s the case. Maybe a little mentally off my game today. Maybe just one of those days. Still, 3 reps with 130 is a PR for me, just not the PR I wanted.

Assistance work was fine. I’ll bump up from here.

Rope jumping…. “warming up” with the running in place went excellent. So I started the set doing that, but became fumble feet… on the 3rd rep it was more fumbling and resetting than jumping so I did the last 5 reps double-leg.

Then… I saw it.

There’s a guy at the gym who I’ve seen only a few times before, but we hit it off nicely. He’s bigger than me, probably the strongest guy at the gym (if not, certainly one of the strongest). I saw him walk in, take 2 10# plates, then walk out to the back parking lot. And I heard it… the sound of scraping.

He has a Prowler.

After I finished jumping rope I went over to talk with him. He just got it. Tried it last week with a couple 45’s and it was too much. So like all things, gotta work your way up to it. He let me try it… I did 4 sprints and boy, you don’t feel it while you’re doing it, but afterwards? It hurts in a good way. I stopped at 4 because I figure I need to work my way up to it, don’t want to kill myself right out of the gate. But he’s going to be coming regularly in the mornings, and he said he’d love it if I worked with him… means he’s not the only one out back looking like an idiot. 😉

That was pretty cool. And if it means I can do Prowler pushes on a regular basis? Awesome. N.O.V.

So, today didn’t start out great, but ended on a cool note.

Pardon a little self-indulgent rambling. It’s zipping around my brain and I wanted to write it down… not that I expect you to care about it, but it’s just part of my recording of my journey in life.

Tomorrow begins “week 3” of my 3rd cycle on the Wender 5/3/1 program. This is the “heavy” week, where you push further, deep deeper, and set new personal records. It’s probably my favorite week of the program.

I’m giddy about tomorrow’s workout. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s Press day and I’ll be pressing 130#. Yeah I know, not a ton of weight, but big for me. I think what has me more fired up is that I was supposed to do 125 but accidentally did that last workout and knocked it out of the park. So I’m really fired up for tomorrow. Kinda crazy… never found myself so fired up about lifting things up and putting them down.

Then there’s deadlifting, which I really enjoy. Apparently Dave Tate hates the deadlift, but used that as a way to get lots of useful advice from other lifters about deadlifting. Some really good tips in the article, which I’ll probably put to use in Friday’s deadlift workout.

But what I’m really looking forward to is the next cycle. I can’t help but think about it now because the numbers are all there, just out of reach. And how I perform this “week” sets the stage for the next cycle.

The work weights will have me pressing 135. That’ll be cool because that’ll be my first venturing into 45# plates with my pressing. It’s a small milestone, but a cool one.

Deadlifting will just get me closer to 300# working weight. Nothing necessarily special, just progress.

Bench press will have the work weight be 200#. That’s another milestone, to break the 200# mark. 225 will be cooler, because that’ll be 2 45# plates, but to get to 225 you have to go through 200… and 200 is cool enough in and of itself.

And squats. This will be the big one. Before I did Wendler I was doing PPNP and got up to 230# but my form was horrid. I dropped back and have been slowly working my way back up. This week I actually will do 230. Next cycle, I finally break back into PR territory with my squats.

So next cycle will be interesting for me, because just about everything will be hitting some sort of milestone.

I enjoy seeing the results of my labor. I see the physical results of how my body looks, how my clothing fits (had to buy new jeans because my thighs and butt couldn’t fit into my old jeans any more… in a good way!). I do enjoy being strong, and stronger than I’ve ever been. Being strong is useful. Heck… I just got my medical profile from the life insurance exam and my results are stellar.

If my martial arts situation didn’t become what it was, I wouldn’t have gone back to lifting because I needed some sort of exercise. If it wasn’t for being ill and aimlessly browsing the web and seeing a video on the Beast Skills website, I never would have learned about Wendler 5/3/1 and then Mark Rippetoe. I would have continued to lift in the same “bodybuilding” aimless way I always did and probably stopped after a couple more months of minimal progress. But with these plans? Geez… I’m seeing progress unlike I’ve ever seen in my life. It keeps the motivation high, it keeps me going back to the gym. Tho, it’s well possible that just being a lot older and having a lot more self-discipline in life helps too. But certainly it’s seeing the results that keep me going.

I’m really enjoying this part of my life’s journey.

It may end tomorrow. I may lose interest before I’ve completed a year at it. Who knows what will happen. I’ll just take it day by day and enjoy it, and take from it whatever lessons it teaches me (and there’ve been a lot, so far).

“Week 2”

• 3 reps – Squat (working max: 240#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x95
  • 1x5x120
  • 1x3x145
  • 1x3x170 (work)
  • 1x3x195
  • 1x5x220
• Asst. #1 – Squat
  • 5 x 10 x 95
• Asst. #2 – Leg Curl
  • 5 x 10 x 60
• Metcon – jump rope
  • 1 Tabata set – all single hop

Today was interesting. If you follow along, I’ve been having mental blockades about squatting for whatever reason. I’ve been trying to overcome it, but it’s been a struggle. Well, today I may have had a breakthrough.

I turned off my brain.

This is something I already know, to just quiet down the brain. Just do it. Squat or squat not. See, I spend so much time trying to deal with my hatred of squatting, my fears, my hangups, whatever they are. Then, I create this big internal dialogue to counter it. All these cues and phrases to psyche myself up, to not suck, whatever. Well, all that’s doing is creating way too much chatter in my head, plus it’s fake. It’s not real psyching up, it’s just trying to lie to myself to counter all the negative thinking. So in the end, it’s really just reinforcing the negative and so things continue to fail.

Today, for various reasons, I didn’t have a chance to talk to myself much about anything. I just had to squat. I put the 170# on and it actually felt good. Strong. I had surprised myself at how good it felt. 195 felt fine too. So I strapped on 220 and sure it felt heavy, but I just kept going. The problem tho was that my brain was going… I was focused on my surprise about how not focusing on anything seemed to be helping, but then of course I was focusing on something, and it was just too much internal dialogue and not enough focus on squatting. But it was a happy feeling, not a “fuck, I suck” feeling. So all good.

So, I just need to get a little less psyched and a little more “zen” about things. Just quiet the brain, empty the head, and move the weight. If I say anything, it should only be small cues to remind myself about something, e.g. “tight” or “chin up” or whatever. Because I either can move the weight, or I can’t. The brain will affect if I can or not, so just take it out of the equation.

Things felt alright then. When I look back at last cycle, my “week 3” was 1x4x220, so I beat that by 1 rep. I actually think I could have gotten 6 if my brain wasn’t so giddy. So strength is improving, form is improving, and mental game is improving. Peace. Peace. Peace.

As for assistance work, just all good. Keep steady here, and I’ll bump the weights during deload week.

On rope jumping, I started out trying to run in place, but I’d trip up about 2 hops into it. A combo of leg muscle exhaustion and that tendon in my left ankle being jammed out of place. So I stopped after a few flubs, why reinforce bad form, and just did normal two-foot hops. I spun the rope at a fast pace tho.

All in all, I’ll take this as a good day, as hopefully a breakthrough in my mental approach. We’ll see how it leads me into next week, being “week 3”.

Exhausted!

“Week 2”

• 3 reps – Bench Press (working max: 205#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x85
  • 1x5x105
  • 1x3x125
  • 1x3x145 (work)
  • 1x3x165
  • 1x9x185
• Asst. #1 – Bench Press
  • 5 x 10 x 115
• Asst. #2 – 1 arm dumbbell rows
  • 5 x 10 x 45
• Metcon – jump rope
  • 1 Tabata set – all single hop… sorta

Today was cool. Bench press felt very good, all up until the last set. I’ve been trying to refine my form, especially using the cue “tight” to keep my entire body tight from the floor/feet up through my whole body. I was doing fairly well all throughout until the last work set when things went to pot. I was probably focused more on moving the weight for many reps, which is OK in that case, but I would find myself lowering the weight and the body got loose, I’d start to press and remember to tighten up, which would maybe have the foot drive but the torso would be loose, then I’d tighten the torso and the legs would loosen so I’d tighten that again and then the butt would come off the bench… just all over. Not good for form.

Nevertheless, cranked out 9 reps with 185, which is alright. Last bench workout was 1x12x175 and “week 3” last cycle was 1x6x190. So, I’m doing just fine and should kick it out of the park next bench session @ 195#. 200+ here I am.

I forced myself into strict form on the assistance bench, and especially noted that I wasn’t going to full lock-out… I’d go like 98% because I was focused on powering through the reps at a fairly rapid and explosive pace, so I was clipping the lockout. Fixed that. I’ll stick with 115 for next week and go 120 on deload week.

Rows went alright, but I felt like I was peeding out faster than last workout. Not sure why. Stick with 45, go 50 deload.

Then on the jump rope. I started out just working on the running in place technique and it actually went pretty well. So after doing that a few times I figured why not just start the set with that and see how far I get. I got through 1 proper reps (in addition to all the other I did just to practice) and felt that was enough because I was starting to trip up too much, so then I did 3 reps of the double-leg hop… and that was all I could muster. I was just truly out of gas. Go fig. I do like the running in place tho… it’s FAR more intense work. I’m just going to keep this up for a while… do a few to kinda warm up the CNS to the movement, then just kick into the set and do the run in place as much as I can and once the coordination falters finish out the set with double-leg hops but moving the rope at the same pace.

All in all, not a bad workout. Some good, some bad. But progress in general.

Short, but good.

“Week 2”

• 3 reps – Deadlift (working max: 285#)
  • 1x5x115
  • 1x5x145
  • 1x3x175
  • 1x3x200 (work)
  • 1x3x230
  • 1x8x260
• Asst. #1 – Good Morning
  • 3 x 10 x 65
• Asst. #2 – Hanging Knee Raises
  • 3x8xBW
• Metcon – jump rope
  • None

I had to cut today short. My Dad is in town visiting, so we’ve been running around a lot and I was pooped last night. Woke up later than usual this morning, and have to meet Dad for brunch today so… had to just get to the gym and get out. I didn’t want to do the “I ain’t doing jack shit” variant, but just did a few time-savers.

Deadlift was good. I won’t say 1x8x260 is a PR; 1x5x265 is my current “most I’ve moved”. But certainly I can say I’m stronger and well on my way to next deadlift session, moving 275 and I will set a nice PR with that I know. As mentioned before, I had some grip problems with my left hand, so I’ve been working to ensure my grip on everything I do remains a “closed fist” grip, no slipping into “hooks”. That helped a bunch (no wedding ring on either while I deadlifted), but when I got to rep 5 of the 260 I felt things slipping. As soon as the weight touched floor I switched to mixed grip (left hand, underhand) and kept pulling. This is the first time I ever used mixed grip and well… I probably shouldn’t have just dove into it. Nothing really bad happened, but just going “cold” like that could have been a problem, a little risky. It certainly helped, but part of the reason I only pulled 3 more was my brain was overloaded with lots of feelings and thoughts about the mixed grip, like “wow, that does make a HUGE difference!” “this is cool!” “hrm, that does put a lot of stress on the bicep, I can see why people get tears” and things like that. So the brain was just going too much so I opted to stop. I think next deadlift session I’ll do everything mixed just to get more experience with it. Likely my routine will be overhand with good closed fists (no hooks) but go mixed on the PR set. Apart from that, the deadlifts felt great, strong.

Good mornings and the knee raises I opted to only do 3 sets of each, and to superset them. This was in the interest of time. GM’s felt alright, 65 was good, probably go to 75 next time and work to a weight that actually works me BUT still ensures I work to stretch the hams… that’s more important right now, to get the proper range of motion. I’d rather slowly work up. Knee raises are quite happy; I pretty much accomplished the 3×8 across with little swing and just full body involvement and getting the knees up there the whole time. Quite awesome; getting stronger. I did notice my left grip starting to falter on the last couple reps of set 3 tho.

As for why the left problems… could be a matter of pure weakness there. But I’ve also wondered… I donate blood fairly regularly, and always have them poke my left arm. Could that be a factor? e.g. nerves poked? arm not up to snuff? I doubt it’s an issue, but I do wonder because I know the arm feels a little weaker for a few days afterwards. *shrug*

Ah… nothing like setting personal records.

Well, except perhaps a world record, but that ain’t happening right now. 😉

“Week 2”

• 3 reps – Press (working max: 130#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x55
  • 1x5x65
  • 1x3x80
  • 1x3x90 (work)
  • 1x3x105
  • 1x6x125 (PR)
• Asst. #1 – Press
  • 5 x 10 x 60
• Asst. #2 – Pulldowns
  • 5 x 10 x 115
• Metcon – jump rope
  • 1 Tabata set – all single hop

1x6x125 on the Press is a PR in every way: never done that much weight for any number of reps. Last cycle’s week 3 was 1x7x115, so this is a nice bump! It’s good to get stronger. As Rip says, “Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general.”

But you know what? I just realized something. I messed up.

I was only supposed to do 1 x >3 x 120 today. 125 is next workout. Heh. Maybe I’ll do 130. Why the heck not? 🙂 Sure there are physical limits to strength, but there are mental limits too… now if I can just break through these same mental limits when it comes to squatting.

Anyways, worked well, felt good, glad to have really blown the PR out of the water and will set another one next Press workout.

Assistance pressing was good, only had some pausing during the last few reps of the last set, so I’ll stick with 60# (1 min. rest between sets) and go to 65 during deload week.

Same with the supine grip pulldowns: only slight pause between last reps of last set, so I’ll go to 120 during deload week.

Oh on that note… I took a slightly different grip on pressing. I’ve noticed my shoulders feeling a bit odd, and I think it’s because my grip was too narrow, and so the moment I started pressing out of the hole my arms would twist and my elbows would be pointing “outward” instead of forward. Granted, eventually they do rotate, but it was a little early and causing some pain. My grip now is about the same width as my pulldown grip width, with the outside edge of my thumbs about even with the outside edge of my shoulders… that “just wider than shoulder width” grip. Felt a lot better today, pressed up and the rotation was a bit more natural later on in the movement.

On rope, I forgot to work on the running in place stuff (bad John), but I did pick up the pace and tried to almost as fast as I could… wasn’t all out, but close… just wanted to have enough in reserve to ensure I made it through. I’m sure I can pick up the pace even more, so long as I keep my coordination and don’t sacrifice rope speed for lots of fumbling about. The interesting thing? I felt a lot less tired. I did make a concerted effort to deeply breathe throughout the set, and all that extra O2 may have done the trick.

Anyways, good workout. Starts the day off on a happy note.