Training Sesh 3/15/14: Man Love Saturday

I'm sitting here as my wife is going through the bedtime ritual with Ilse, our five year old daughter, and I decide to throw on Pandora on the ol' Roku. Pull out the tablet and the keyboard and what should be the first song Pandora throws at me?

That's right, bitches. Flipping cham peens. How fortuitous.

Anyhoo, Mr. Mercury finished up, a David Bowie song came on, and I switched over to Meshuggah.

Sorry, Mr. Stardust.

I should also warn you now this will be a long post and that thanks to David at the gym, you will all be periodically enjoying autotuned interviews remixed as house/dance songs.

We'll go ahead and get into the swing of things now.

This was a long but fun sesh that had been anticipated for some time now- couple of friends I know from AR15.com came down to train. There is a group of us on there that hang out in a particular thread in the Self Defense and Fitness subforum that all train, or have at some point trained, using Jim Wendler's excellent 5/3/1 program. We gather on arfcom in that particular thread to share the trials and tribulations with training and in other threads to evangelize (harass?) on strength training, offer insights and experience, etc.

This being the modern age of the internet, however, few of us have actually met each other in real life. I have met one of the two gents that came down on numerous occasions, the other only online, but again we have all shared conversation for the past two and half years or so. The stars aligned for a handful of folks to be in the area this week, and we set it up a little while ago to meet at the lovely NBS Fitness to get a day of lifting in and go grab some BBQ after.

Thus it happened that Saturday I woke up and got to the gym about an hour ahead of our two intrepid travelers- we'll call them Dan and Jake to protect the innocent- to make sure we got into a rack and, since previous discussion sounded like we would be working mainly on bench and deathlifts as our main lifts, get some squatting in. As it would happen, though, most of the folks that I would have expected to be in the jamesnasium starting around 11:00 or so got in earlier, the racks were full and I got to foam roll and finish my Starbucks.

Round about the time I got into a rack and got it set up to start squatting, Dan and Jake walked in the door. We greet each other, the fellers filled out their waivers and got fees settled, got changed, and as it would happen, we all started squatting.

Here's what occurred (from my programming standpoint, anyway):

• Squat - 5xbar, 5x95lbs, 5x135lbs, 5x185lbs, 5x225lbs, 5x245lbs, 5x275lbs, 5x320lbs, 1x335lbs, 1x365lbs
• Bench - 5xbar, 5x95lbs, 5x135lbs, 5x155lbs, 4x170lbs, 3x8x135lbs
• Deadlift (sumo) - 5x135lbs, 5x185lbs, 3x225lbs, 3x275lbs, 1x315lbs
• Deadlift (conventional) - 1x365lbs, 1x405lbs
• TBar row w/ three count holds at the top - 3x10x45lbs
• Reverse hyper - 3x10x90lbs

As mentioned, we started off squatting. Turns out it was pretty much all of our days to squat, just from different parts of our programs. We got through it all with Jake and I hitting singles at 365 and Dan hitting one at 385. All of us have hit 405 in training previously, but as it turns out, our last singles were all kind of periodic PRs, the first time any of us have had those weights on our backs in a long while, for whatever reasons.

Also interesting- three different lifters, three different squatting styles. This makes some sense as all of us are raw lifters, but with some key differences. Most obviously, Jake is a former competitive CrossFitter that pretty much always squatted for strength and conditioning and does a lot more Oly lifting than either Dan or I do. Dan lifts according to 5/3/1, squats in Chucks, and is taller with longer limbs than either Jake or I. I lift in more of the powerlifting style, have shorter limbs than Dan, but squat in Oly shoes.

Didn't get video of any of mine from this sesh but, in general, this is mine- still playing with grip, but it is typically medium to wide grip, medium stance, low bar:

Dan, with a LOW bar, medium grip, wide stance:

and Jake with a high bar, narrow grip, narrow stance:

Just goes to show you- the same thing doesn't work for everyone. This spawned some good discussion on the appropriateness of squat technique to the individual and to what gear worked best for us, etc. I am still not convinced of any one hand positioning, so I think I alternated grips on each set.

Per one of Wendler's 5/3/1 templates, we did some Joker sets (singles after the working sets). I did singles at 335 and 365. The 365 was nasty- shot my hips up too soon so it ended up being the better part of a heavy good morning. Did this one wide grip, wondering if medium with a tighter upper back would have helped prevent it... hmmmm... Jake singled up to 365 and lost 385 about half way up, Dan got up to 385 and ground it out. Good work all around.

After this, we hit the competition bench for some working sets and technique work. Despite my rehabbing state, I feel that bench is most technically correct and understood lift (thanks again to David and my experience with the team), and the guys' least technical lift, so we had agreed beforehand to trade knowledge on- my bench for their deadlift. We ran through everyone's working sets and ran a mini seminar through accessory sets.

Not a lot had to be done, but we made some tweaks to everyone's bar path and hand and elbow positioning, getting the lats more involved, and worked on leg drive. The most immediate improvements came from hand positioning and getting the elbows inside the hands- again interesting as we all bench a little differently, but generally gravitated towards tucked feet and a narrow to medium hand position.

Some good work was done, and since we were all starting to get acclimated to each other from meeting for the first time, got some catching up and "life outside the gym" conversation in. Though I fully acknowledge I am no expert, I was hopefully able to help the gents a bit and offer some insight into the powerlifting style of bench press.

Also introduced the guys to JM presses. Win.

Bench work and some tricep accessory done, it was time to move on to the recent bane of my training life- the deathlifts.

And since I owe Tarbox...

This was also the point that all of us went ahead and hit some intraworkout nutrition- not sure what the gents had, but I think it was some sort of either aminos and/or preworkout. I had premixed some fruit punch Carnivor with two tablespoons regular ol' sugar. Not the sexiest thing, but it worked alright. Energy still on from the Starbucks earlier.

Having just deadlifted a few days prior, Jake rolled with some cleans and Dan and I deathlifted. I demonstrated mine for the gents at lightweight and they agreed I had some low back rounding. I didn't think it was that bad in lighter sets, but this is part of why you train with other folks from time to time- figuring out the things you don't even know you need to figure out. After a set or two conventional and realizing we had an Oly bar loaded up instead of a deadlift bar (lighter knurling), I switched over to sumo for technique work and reps as intimated in previous training seshes.

Queue the ever-helpful Christian, who gave me some pointers for hip placement, etc. I can't do the weight with sumo that I can with conventional, but they were feeling better positioned, etc, than my conventional. As soon as I can get all my queues down, I think this will be a good set up for me- getting the bar off the ground seems to be the roughest part of it, so I know more set up work will need to be done, but as soon as it is past about the knee it's just the hips seem to pop the lock out right in place. Figure this will also be good work for getting my hips worked into a wider squat, should I want to go there (which I think I do).

At any rate, I worked up to a single at 315, which was slower than dog shit ("You guys didn't call for pizza and have it delivered in while I was pulling that?") and took two attempts to get it off the ground properly, but felt pretty good. Still need to work on hip rotation and opening up while getting the hips set back properly. Switched over to conventional and followed Dan up to singles at 365 and an ugly 405. Dan went on to a single at 465.

Somewhere in there was also the moment that I realized that Dan has been around for all of my better pulls- my first 405 almost two years ago before I was on the team, my meet 465 last year, and my return to 405 (most I have pulled since at least August of last year) this training sesh.

Weird.

Wrapped the deathlifts and cleans up and we moved on to some quick accessory work. Reverse hypers and T bar rows for me, pull ups for the gents.

If you want to call them that.

Such tiny feet and quads. Sends chills down the spine, it does. 

Time to get changed, not shower, and head out for grub. Dan was the only one that thought to pack a clean shirt and any sort of deodorizing device, but men so screw it. Jake and I had clean(ish) pants.

Note: Dan is the one among us not married. Correlation = causation? Hmmmmmmmm...

This might be why, I having served as the dining trip driver in the mighty Subaru Crosstrek, this back and forth transpired betwixt my wife and I within minutes of her taking my car out for groceries a grocery run shortly after my return from the sesh:

Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh... men.

The gents having agreed to BBQ for our refuel dining experience (because, really, it's Memphis and who can disagree with BBQ after lifting?), I selected the Summer Avenue location of the excellent Central BBQ for our destination. Of course, this selection ideal for numerous reasons- excellent BBQ, several good local beers available, and a good atmosphere in which to relax and shoot the proverbial shit for a while. We got some BBQ nachos to split, the "70% Paleo" Jake and I selected beef BBQ and the excellent Memphis Made "Lights Out", Dan got the pork plate and the also very good Yazoo Brewing "Hop Project". Jake got some pork rinds and was good enough to share- first time I have had them there, and they were pretty tasty.

And, of course, we all got cookies.

But we did forget ribs. Damn it. Next time. And there will be a next time.

Alas, all good things must come to an end, so after a good bit of conversation on manly topics and plentiful food it happened that we traveled back to the Dirty Dova to get the guys on their way back to their respective locations.

But not before coffee and a selfie.

Yeah, I said selfie. Because we're fabulous, bitches.

Go forth and destroy.