A2 - Goodbye, Grandma, Accumulation Week 2 Meet Training, and a Little Old School Action...

t's been a spell, ain't it? This update has been a while coming, but its delay is not without reason.

Got back in town last Sunday from an unexpected trip to Richland, Missouri, where my last surviving grandparent, Mary Virginia Scheerer, passed away last week. I won't dwell on it much here as we all have our pains and our sorrows but, save for some difficulties close to the end, she had a good run. Eighty six years is more than some folks get, and she made good use of them. In situations of long sickness and diminishing health I can never decide if death is a good or bad thing, but we can be assured that she is at rest and her struggle is over. 

She was a good lady and she will be missed.  

As to training last week or so, pretty decent stuff overall. Press has still been a sumbitch, but that is to be expected for a while.

Forgive my brevity in this sesh posting, not feeling overly illustrative currently.

A2A - ME Squat, 8/8/2014:

• Warm up, stretch, little foam roll action - about 10min
• Safety Squat/Yoke bar to low box - 5x262lbs + 2chains/side, box at 2nd hole 
• SSB good mornings 3x8x132lbs 
• Rev Hyper 3x10x115lbs 
• Toe turn outs w/doubled over micro mini band, (one rep = both x1 then left x2) - 3x15

Decent work in this sesh overall. Hips still pretty tight, but getting a bit better. Got my desired goal in to beat last week's work and managed to keep the handles down a little better- not perfect, but better. Started with the toe turn outs, as listed, to help with the external rotation, so yay.

A2B - ME Bench, 8/10/2014:

• Floor press w/ football bar - up to 155 straight weight x5, 2x155+2 chains, 3x155 +1 chain 
• Neutral wide lat pull down - 10x100lbs, 10x120lbs, 10x140lbs 
• dumbbell bench - 10x35lbs, 10x45lbs, 10x50lbs, 5x60lbs, 5x55lbs, left - 3x5x35lbs 
• Band pull apart 4x15 
• overhead rope triceps extension - 4x10x60lbs

Not even going to lie- this session felt like the butthole. First mistake, of course was using the football bar instead of the Swiss Bar like in last sesh, but c'est la vie. This just reinforces the fact that bruh needs some triceps and back work, ya heard? Talked with Porter and Christian a bit on it, decided to add in the overhead triceps extensions listed above. Dumbbell bench and band pull aparts and/or the shoulder series will remain as mainstays for... well... probably forever. 

And I think we may need a musical interlude right about now.

Carry on. 

A2C - DE Squat, 8/12/2014:

• Warm up, stretch - about 10 min
• Squat - 230lbs + 2 chain/side to box at 3rd hole + mat (parallel)
• Deadlift - conventional 225lbs w/doubled over red bands x3

For these skwatz, for whatever reason, I decided to roll with a medium stance and back in the Romaleos. I neglected to get video, but they felt pretty good overall despite the left shoulder still being a little tight. Also, thanks to the volunteerism of Austin (selfless, charitable young'n that he is), I got to work back in the monolift, which was nice, like visiting an old friend. 

The em effer of this session, though, proved to be going back to conventional deadlifts for the set of three. 

Hips. Hips. Hips.

That and upper back. 

I pulled a handful of sets of five before this video, working up to a set of five at 275lbs straight weight, and decided to throw bands on at that point for the triple. That mother trucker barely wanted to budge past half way to the knee, so I backed the plate weight down to 225lbs for the banded set. Pulling these sumo, with a more upright posture, doesn't feel so bad. Conventional, though, with my back rounding over my belly, is a murf to pull correctly. That band tension catches up quick and with the rounded upper back, I tended to get stopped just short of lock out.

More work to add to the check list. 

A2D - DE Bench, 8/15/2014:

• Band stretching, traction - about 10min total
• Bench - 8x3x135lbs + chain/side 
• Paused V handle (narrow grip) pull down- 10x90, 10x110, 4x7x130 
• Dumbbell bench - 3x8x50 
• Band series x2 w/EliteFTS red mini pro band

First of eight sets on the bench, checking speed with the chain set up:

... and it shook when he benched like a bowlful of jelly. I gots plans for that belly.

I really liked that bar. Need to get a hold of them thar folks and find out which one it is.

As you may be able to tell from the video, this sesh happened on the road as my grandmother passed away on the 13th, shortly after which one of my brothers and I hit the road and headed up to Missouri. With a few errands needing to be completed beforehand in a bigger town than Richland for her services being held on the 16th, I headed to Springfield the day previous and dropped into Strong Gym amidst said errands.

Part of the powerlifting room at Strong Gym

Strong Gym is nestled in the bosom of Springfield, Missouri. One of the first things that strikes you upon entering the gym is that it is very nice, very clean. The front doors open to the lobby, where a long bar/help desk (stocked with various supplements, and sometimes... shirts) stretches across a big chunk of the room, facing a lounge area and HD TV. I signed in and got a quick tour from Dylan, who ran me through the stuff that, while I may not necessarily care too much about, caters to a broad client base. As their Bookface page says, they are basically several gyms in one- a general fitness/lifting room, a MMA room complete with sparring cage area, a powerlifting room, and several other miscellaneous lifting and cardio rooms, and restrooms/locker rooms that include

what may be the smallest shower stalls in existence.

But that's not important right now.

You can check out their video tour on their website here.

Aside from Dylan, I got to talk briefly with Matt, one of the owners, and a couple of other guys there, Ryan and Thomas, if I remember correctly. Everyone was very friendly, helpful, and informative. Really super nice folks and a great facility. Can't say it enough.

Another fun thing that I am going to go out on a limb and say that nary a one of you hosers will enjoy as much as I did, but they are located LITERALLY right across the street from one of the several elementary schools I attended as a yute, St. Agnes Elementary.

This was the view through the powerlifting room window, LITERALLY across the street from the school:

Parking lot and playground. When I went there for 4th through 7th grades, that parking lot was a playground and the current playground was a volleyball and basketball court. Once, during a winter recess, I fell and slipped down short little hill and got my ankle stuck in that fence.

Madness, I say.

View of the gym, as seen from the corner just right of that picture:

Pure insanity.

At any rate, did the sesh as listed above, showered, ran the errands I needed to run, and met up with my brohams for some McSalty's pizza. Good stuff, and a time honored tradition when we are in the area. If you're in Springfield, grab a bear pie there and stuff your face with

Next day was grandma's funeral, which was a nice service as far as these things go. The local minister was newer, having just joined the congregation a few years ago, so he had never known her before she was sick. He did a good job considering the relative brevity of their shared experience. We got to see some family we hadn't seen in years, and the church had a reception "supper" (little late for lunch, little early for dinner), which was nice. After a time we all headed back to the house at our various paces. I took a nap, which was apparently my thing whilst on this trip. I woke up sometime around 8:00 or so for a phone call home, dinner, and a memorial game of Scrabble (another tradition when we are up in Richland), then back to sleep for the return trip home.

Home, sweet home.

Next update should be coming along shortly. It will be a quick and dirty one - yet safe for work - as I missed a few days with coming back in, getting work back to rolling, etc.

Go forth and hug your granny if ye're able to.

A1 - First Training Week In The Books For November 2014 Meet... And More New Music From the Masters

s previously discussed, I started actively training for the upcoming November SPF meet, organized by NBS, on the 29th of July. For this training cycle, I have decided to run with block periodization, a la the cycle for my first meet, as it yielded very positive results and despite the upper back injury, I hope to be able to apply my accumulated knowledge with a little better focus to keep those results rolling.

If you are unfamiliar with block periodization, there is a good write up on it here, but the long and short of the methodology is that there are multiple "blocks" of training that move in order of specificity from sort of general skills trained progressing toward very specific skills trained- in this instance moving from general strength, hypertrophy, and mobility for powerlifting toward peak performance of the actual lifts of the squat, bench, and deadlift for a powerlifting meet. In this program, we train the squat and bench twice a week each (twice every nine to ten days in my case with the three day a week schedule)- once each in the "Max Effort" (ME) method, essentially your "heavy" days, then once each again in the "Dynamic Effort" method, where the emphasis is explosive force or speed over more sets in a short period of time.  Deadlifts are programmed every two weeks and are typically max effort.

If you are unfamiliar with the programming, you were probably just scandalized by the infrequency of deadlift training programmed.

Two things on this - (1) with only deadlifting every two weeks, I was still able to put more than 50 pounds on my deadlift last 12 week meet training cycle, and (2) I can always deadlift more as accessory to squats, etc.

Cool your jets, Merlin, Maverick, and Goose.

You're welcome for the gifs, by the way.

Yesterday saw the completion of the first week of training for the November meet come to completion. Guess you can't really call it a week, as it is closer to ten days how I have my schedule set up, but "Accumulation 1" is done. Good times overall, and while it is a bit early to gauge progress, the work feels good, despite some issues getting back into the swing of things. 

Here is what occurred:

A1A - ME Squat, 7/29/2014:

• Warm up, stretch -  about 5min (definitely should have been longer)
• Safety Squat/Yoke Bar to low box - 5x262lbs + one chain/side 
• Reverse Hyper - 3x10x90lbs
• SSB good morning - 3x10x127lbs

All in all a good sesh. I will freely admit to pussing out and not not getting the weight I wanted- at the very least I should have gone another chain per side, and should have kept the handles lower BUT I have to say that I was happy with the depth, at least.

Dig it:

Yeah, yeah.

I haven't even busted out the Soffes yet.

Hit the aforementioned accessory work and was done- low back and hips toasted. 

A1B - ME Bench, 7/31/2014:

• Short warm up
• Swiss Bar bench - worked up to 5x145lbs + one chain/side, 2x2x145 + two chains/side
• Lat pull down, paused, straight handle 4x10x100lbs
• Cable rope handle press down - 10x80lbs
• Cable rope handle press down, left arm only - 3x8x30lbs
• Band pull aparts - 3x15 w/red Pro mini band

Another good training session. As has been said before, bench is my most dropped lift what with the injury of last year and my subsequent jack leggery for rehab/therapy (or the lack thereof), so it felt good to do bench on the alternate bar and push. As much as I hated only being able to get two reps each on those last working sets, it felt good to HAVE to grind them out.

I am a bit behind last year's numbers here (5x135lbs + 2 chains/side) but in addition to not being injured last year, last year's Accumulation block was spent on the straight bar to spend more time on the competition movements and help ingrain patterns, etc.

No video, just trust me.

A1C - DE Squat, 8/3/2014:

• Little more extensive warm up, but hips still tight
• 8x2x205lbs + two chains/side to a slightly high box (set at fourth hole), roughly one minute rest between sets
• Reverse hyper - 4x10x115lbs
• Deadlift - 225 + doubled over EliteFTS Intense or Aggressive Onyx Band, see below for reps

This one was some decent work, but the hips were pretty tight. Should have been a parallel box (third hole), but with the tightness going on I went ahead and brought it up a notch and rolled. Got a little video of it, set to some fine tunes.

So I lost track of which video was which set during editing. I'm sorry, puddin'.

Note the tight left shoulder that I fought with throughout the sets- didn't seem to hinder the squatting, but I had to consciously drop the left elbow to get it aligned anywhere near the right. Need to get some more external rotation work in on that side. Also, the still tight left hip and my attempt at conscious correction. Again, more external rotation work needed there. Talked to Jason at NXT Level Chiropractic a bit more on it, and while I still need to get my happy ass up there on a Saturday that he's in, or just to his shop in general, he still thinks more constant maintenance is needed.

And for some reason, as I sit and type this, I don't have my TENS unit on the shoulder. Wow.

Sweet move, dude.

Anyhoo, wrapped it up with some accessory, a little band toe turn outs on the left leg and external rotations on the left arm, and joined Craig and Brian in the deadlift area for a little mental torture. They had wrapped up squatting and were doing some speed pulls. 225lb bar weight plus some doubled over Onyx bands (either "Intense" or "Aggressive", not sure which), and I'll be honest- freaking heavy. First two pulls I had to square my shit away and lock my form back in- barely pulled it off the ground. The next went most of the way up, but fell pretty far short of lockout. The fourth I managed to grind into lockout, belted up, then managed to get the lift with RELATIVE ease, at least not a 10 second grinder.

As Craig said, bro hugs, man. Bro hugs.

Okay, TENS is hooked up and cranked now.


A1D - DE Bench, 8.6/2014:

• 8x3x125lbs w/2 chains per side, roughly minute rest between sets
• Band pull aparts 4x15 w/ EliteFTS red band
• Band pulls, left side only- 4x5 w/red band
• Dumbbell incline bench, 4x10x45lbs 
• Incline dumbbell bench, left only, 3x10x35lbs 
• Lat pull down 4x10x100lbs 

Another decent sesh.

Admittedly, it would have helped if I was paying attention to the program and only loaded up one chain per side- probably would have gotten a little more speed out of those speed presses, eh? Whoopsy. Next time more plate, less chain.

Lolly.

At any rate, good work, even if the last set was pretty slow at lockout. Got some extra pressing and band pulls on the bad left side to help work that back into shape along with the regular accessory work and called it a day.

So there you have it, week one, or "A1" in the bag. A2 will pretty much be this same schedule of lifts with the numbers upped a notch and some deathlifts added on DE Squat day.

It's gonna rock dat ass.

And speaking of rocking dat ass

MORE NEW GODFLESH!

Yes, though we were just graced with the release of the Decline and Fall EP not too long ago, the advent of a full length album, A World Lit Only by Fire, is coming soon. October 6th, according to the man himself. Until then, Captain Broadrick and First Mate Green have released a new track to tickle your oodly bits, titled "New Dark Ages".

Enjoy!

Go forth and believe in nussing, Lebovski.

Training update: Short Timing To Meet Training

ast week was deload for the 5/3/1 program, had a deload squat sesh, skipped the deload bench sesh, and I managed to convince myself that "deload" deadlift day surely meant "dynamic effort" deadlift day. At first, I was reasonably convinced that it was just going to be a rep day, and as mentioned in the last sesh report, I had already decided on working toward getting hips more involved. If you track what happens biomechanically in a sumo pull versus a conventional pull, this generally means working the feet a little further out BUT I didn't want them as wide as I had initially had them set when starting with sumo pulls. 

"Skip a bit, brother..."

Here, listen to this

At any rate, according to the standard program the deload top set was supposed to be a set of five at 225lbs

HOWEVER

being apparently bored and easily swayed by peer pressure - Austin's fault, and maybe a preworkout isn't necessary on deload days - went ahead and pulled out the band platform for the deathlifts and added some doubled over EliteFTS orange Pro micro mini bands. Since we were adding bands, might as well do them in the dynamic fashion and, instead of a single set of five, go ahead and knock out eight sets of three with short rests between. True dynamic fashion, at least how we typically run it, would see you with less than 60 second rests between sets but as this was a deload (and deadlifts, to boot) I went with enough time to check form on video and grab some water between most sets.

Fun stuffs. Almost makes me want to rewrite the program to give deathlifts their own day in the block periodization scheme, but too late for that now.  Maybe gearing up for the next one after November's meet, probably April at earliest.

C'est la vie.

Sooooooooooo... this week was supposed to see the start of a new cycle of 5/3/1

HOWEVER

I went back the other day to look at my programming for my upcoming meet and tracked it backward from the meet date on my calendar. After doing so I realized that, based on a three day per week lifting schedule, my meet training actually needs to start this upcoming Monday, 29 July, not 09 August or so like I originally had mapped out.

And I got a little giddy.

As an aside - it's kind of a sad commentary on the current state of things when you go to do a Google image search for "schoolgirl", as in "giddy as a schoolgirl", and the results come back more suited to "naughty schoolgirl". I found out, though, that if you search for "giddy as a schoolgirl" instead, this image is among them:

And of that I approve. It makes me giddy as a schoolgirl.

What. The. Crap.

Anyhoo, looks like this couldn't happen at a better time, because I am apparently getting bored with 5/3/1. Don't get me wrong- 5/3/1 is a great program that I wholeheartedly believe in and will run again when not prepping for a meet. It does, however, get a bit monotonous, especially when you start remembering things like bands and chains and specialty bars and start to cave into your own programming ADD. Of course, you can program 5/3/1 for specialty bars, swap movements, etc, as it is a very flexible program, I just heart me some block periodization.

But I digress.

A few days later it was time to squat. Having decided to go off program and having caught the scent of the upcoming program, I decided to try something else out- getting back to squatting wide(ish) in my Chucks. Despite my recent mobility concerns, this didn't go as bad as expected. I did manage to expose some imbalances and technique fixes that need to be made, but aside from some mobility work that needs to be done this was halfway decent.

Here's an earlier video in the sesh.

Yeah, the camera is not set properly level, so it looks like I am leaning way right BUT I am actually leaning a little right- note the more closed knee angle on the right side, the higher grip, etc. My left shoulder is the injured side, and you can tell the shoulder is tighter as it is physically higher than my right- that plus tight hips is probably most of the imbalance there.

A little later on in the sesh -

Side view on a little later set - 

Hard to tell, but I got my feet set out a little wider, balance is a little better left to right. The left shoulder still tight and a little high, still need to get a little lower into proper parallel. There's also a little front to back motion that needs to be eliminated.

And just a touch of... BUTT WINK... DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Work to do. Mobility work to do. But David already knew that.

Stay tuned and destroy.