Stuffed Superdud: Bumpy road to respectable lifting

[stuffedsuperdud]

I wrote a long-ass post but the site glitch ate it so the TLDR is:

1. Twisted my ankle today but it didn't turn black and blue so I took four Advil and lifted. Hurts like hell now though, heh.
2. Did a TON of snatches at 40kg and a "3rd pull" drill around 20kg. Yea, weird exercise and out of my usual "STFU and just lift!" mentality, but I found it helpful. Gonna see if the Pollock will want to incorporate it into his programming for people like me who are in the habit of not finishing their snatches.
3. Amazon is having a blowout sale / pricing algorithm error with their house brand of clothes (Franklin Tailored) and shoes (Franklin and Freeman). Rumor has it the quality is garbage, Amazon lost a bunch of $$ shipping this stuff and then dealing with returns, and are just trying to cut all their losses, but even if the quality sucks, who cares? We're talking $6 for ties, $25-ish for leather shoes (depending on color/size). If nothing else, it's a chance to try out something you'd never have considered before to see how you like it; I got a pair of leather gloves for $9 and blue suede shoes for $18, with free shipping. Go check it out.
4. My roommates are hot but they're babies. Idlehands, don't go to jail for pedobearing!

[stuffedsuperdud]

I was up all night last night binging on Archer, overslept, got to the gym with less than an hour to go. I did:

Squat:
20kg x10
70x10
110x10
115x10
120x10
125x10

Despite my current post-exertion sweating, the weights didn't feel particularly heavy at the time, but my calves and Achilles were VERY hot from bouncing in and out of the hole so many times. Should probably foam roll more?

Related: I got my hands on a pair of old-man pants: high-waisted, pleated, cuffed badboys from Italy. While marking it up for the hem, the tailor was like, "Hey did you know your hips are uneven?" I was not 100% surprised since I recall one of those school district doctors telling me I might need to my spine looked at when I was 12, and my right hand is about a 1/4" lower than my left even though the arms themselves are the same length, as measured from the shoulder. He then took some careful measurements and found the culprit: the right shin about 3/8" shower than the left. I mention this here because my clean and snatch setup have always been uneven: I have to put my left foot a bit in front of the right and close the left knee more than I do the right, and as a result would always bang the left shin but not the right. I just always chalked this up to a strange right ankle; interesting to know it's actually a, well, a deformity. Heh.... What does this mean going forward? Probably nothing, thought it might partially explain why my left knee is more problematic? I doubt it'll change how I lift, and besides, Moradi here shows it's possible to win gold even with huge asymmetries:



Just for shits and giggles though, I might try squatting with the uneven feet next time to see if there's a difference.

[Chris McCarthy]

I'd always assumed his asymmetry was down to a shoulder injury / dislocation - for probably the most famous lifter of late who lifted quite crooked you'd need to look no further than his Countryman Reza Zadeh, who was nowhere near the middle of the bar...

[idlehands]

I wrote a long-ass post but the site glitch ate it so the TLDR is:

1. Twisted my ankle today but it didn't turn black and blue so I took four Advil and lifted. Hurts like hell now though, heh.
2. Did a TON of snatches at 40kg and a "3rd pull" drill around 20kg. Yea, weird exercise and out of my usual "STFU and just lift!" mentality, but I found it helpful. Gonna see if the Pollock will want to incorporate it into his programming for people like me who are in the habit of not finishing their snatches.
3. Amazon is having a blowout sale / pricing algorithm error with their house brand of clothes (Franklin Tailored) and shoes (Franklin and Freeman). Rumor has it the quality is garbage, Amazon lost a bunch of $$ shipping this stuff and then dealing with returns, and are just trying to cut all their losses, but even if the quality sucks, who cares? We're talking $6 for ties, $25-ish for leather shoes (depending on color/size). If nothing else, it's a chance to try out something you'd never have considered before to see how you like it; I got a pair of leather gloves for $9 and blue suede shoes for $18, with free shipping. Go check it out.
4. My roommates are hot but they're babies. Idlehands, don't go to jail for pedobearing!

50/20 man, it's a thing I think. I'll just jump ahead and aim for it at late 30s?

Would a lift help with the shin assymitry ?

[ChasingCurls69]

I'm 24, you can send the pics.

[MBasic]

re: asymmetry: I was watching all this very closely. That Chinese lifter who won the 69's is a basket case in this regard. Shi Zhiyong? There's not one thing straight/true on that guy. And yeah, he's the best in the world too.

[stuffedsuperdud]

I'm 24, you can send the pics.

TBH, most of the guys on teh non-E&P parts of this site would probably be significant upgrades on what they find on Tinder. I was on SOS-duty for NM last week (tell cops his name and phone # if she is found chopped up in the woods, etc) and to my amusement, I actually got from her the date-abort text, i.e. I call her with a fake emergency. Yes, this is realz. According to the autopsy report, to which I had to listen in its entirety while sucking Jim Beam, the guy ended up being a Millennial caricature of the "I build businesses and help brands reach consumers. I direct visions from a solutionist perspective" type. He apparently called himself a serial entrepreneur completely unironically, and said his job was "technology evangelist" even though he doesn't math real good, but he did double-major in Asian Studies and Classics at Vasser. I don't know, man.

I was like, "Uh, and that's why you texted me?"
She went, "Well, I downed an entire bottle of wine to make him more bearable but then he said that he likes wine and hot yoga."
"Okay.."
"So I went, 'Oh cool. I used to work at a distillery,' and he said, 'I don't drink whiskey.'"
"Heh, okay, so he likes wine....that's okay."
"Eh...so I was like 'Oh yea I like to lift four or five times a week' and he said he doesn't got to the gym."
"Uh...is that bad?"
"He doesn't drink whiskey and he doesn't lift. Unless you're super beautiful, yea, that's a fucking dealbreaker."

^^^^We're all gonna make it, gois!

And he's actually not even the worst first date since I've been here. Guys are setting the bar real low......so what does that make me?

re: asymmetry: I was watching all this very closely. That Chinese lifter who won the 69's is a basket case in this regard. Shi Zhiyong? There's not one thing straight/true on that guy. And yeah, he's the best in the world too.

That was the one session I missed. Just caught up now and......dude this guy...



I couldn't find a video on YT of him from the front, and I'm too lazy to rip and cut a video grab from NBC, but I did manage this screen grab from the NBC feed and big LULZ at this derpy mofo. Let's not even get into the twisting motion he makes while liftingl his little tics and mannerisms suggest that he's....special...in that Michael Phelps way, which seems to help people become the best in the world at stuff. He should look into academia if weightlifting doesn't work out for him.

So I was up all night Saturday binging on Superstore. Not sure how I feel about it after watching all twelve episodes. It's kind of like if The Office and 30 Rock had a bastard child that they then tossed into the foster system, I guess? Also, since when were people allowed to say dick and butthole on TV? I'm disappointed that the seven dirty words are still dirty, but I'd like to think that if George Carlin were still around, he'd be at least grudgingly okay with the progress that we've made...........though the whole new shitstorm of "that's offensive!" things would probably give him and even lethaler heart attack the second he emerged from the ground... Anyhoo, the TLDR is that between that and the Commonwealth's monopoly on the liquor supply, which led to me hate-drinking that bottle of Absolute that NM was adding to her ginger iced tea moments before before she passed out, I overslept on Sunday and missed training, which kind of brings us to today:

Power clean + clean 3+2
50x1
60x1
70x1
80x1
70x1
60x1
50x1

Some of the reps were dicey. The coach went into lots of detail about finishing extension etc etc which was kind of a nice balance to "Hey fucking poooosy! Beeeg pull!!" (no one says catapult or triple extension anymore, thank goodness, and superman archangel hit and catch etc is dead along with the rest of Jon North's legitimacy).

Push press:
50x10x2
60x10
I had to some reps BTN becuase my right wrist was getting aggravated from maintaining the rack position for so long. This is due to the ROM limitations in my right elbow; because the elbow can't close as far as it needs to, the wrist tends to hyperextend a bit to make up the difference. It's getting better, but just the same, I might have to start learning to clean, rack, FS, and jerk from a slightly wider position.

Deadlift with 2-second pause at knee:
70x8
110x8
120x8
130x8
140x8
Low back was roasted immediately. I did these pulls with slightly offset feet, the same way I naturally start cleans, and lo and behold, the push off the floor felt more symmetric than I am used to! I am not Steve Hill or Savs, so I won't go into any off-the-cuff biomechanics talk right this moment, but I'm definitely going to try to examine what's going on. NB: I took an undergraduate course on biomechanics but due to the professor's absentmindedness and harried schedule, my official college transcript stays I got an A- in "Bimechamics" or something like that. Oh well. He got tenure recently and I'm here, so no harm no foul, I suppose.

[ChasingCurls69]

Holy shit, that date sounds so bad that it almost gives me the confidence to talk to women and go on dates, because at least my shitty jobs aren't pretentious and I drink whiskey (that I know nothing about) and lift.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Holy shit, that date sounds so bad that it almost gives me the confidence to talk to women and go on dates, because at least my shitty jobs aren't pretentious and I drink whiskey (that I know nothing about) and lift.

Plus you're not a raper, right? Because the latest guy, some megabro a few days ago, was straight up caught redhanded roofie-ing her drink. So you've got that going for you too. Men are pigs, amirite?


Well today was productive, along the lines of the shitty third of the two-steps-forward-one-step-back thing.

Snatch 3rd pull drill + OHS 1+1:
10kgx3x3
15x3x2
20x3x2
25x3x2
Yup yup....using the kids bar...

Hang pwer snatch + hang snatch 3+3:
40kgx1x3
50x1x2
60x1x2

Here's where the problems declared themselves. Coach says I flare my feet out way too wide when catching the snatch, which causes a lot of front-back instability. I also still have the problem of the right hip closing in. "We're going to have to fix this so that you're not miserable when doing the Olympic lifts." Yea, pretty sure I'm still going to hate this hobby.

Mentioned in E&P but will mention again: the one good thing to come out of the IWF/WADA scorched earth sham.

All hail three-time Olympic medalist, and Iberian goddess in general, Lidia Valentin. Long may she reign.


^Oy vey.........

"Yes but what man can tame her?"
-Ralph Wiggum

[stuffedsuperdud]

Mehhh...

I got bored last night and found a half empty bottle of Jim Beam left over from a cookout last week. (Our liquor cabinet is bullshit is full of things for making shots and pregaming). Ended up putting it all away myself while binging Vice Principals. Woke up with a nasty headache but thoroughly amused by Walton Goggins's (SoA, Justified) comedic skills. Recalled Starr's article on training after boozing but to my horror found I was out of coffee. Ended up chugging down about eight scoops of Amino Energy, brought six scoops more to the gym......and got there to find that they had to close at 12PM on the dot for a private event. I did:

Front squat with 2-second pause:
20kg x10
70x5
80x5
90x5
and an assload of hip and elbow mobility before they kicked me out to go nurse my pounding head. At least Lagavulin is back in stock at the ABC store.....for $110, or double its price at Costco in California. Thanks Parks and Rec. But we have Bulleit which is fine too. Thanks Rip.

Remember I was watching Mad Men a few months ago? I had to stop after season 3 because it was getting to fucking depressing.......and now I'm back on and it's.......way more depressing. Goddammit. To the #menswear assholes who got all tingly in their pants over the characters' wardrobes, are you even watching the fucking show? How can you be thinking about suits when all life is completely meaningless and happiness is a chemical reaction to some flyer drawn up by an asshole on Madison Avenue? Fuck.