Stuffed Superdud: Bumpy road to respectable lifting

[stuffedsuperdud]

6/20/2014
Benched and left, brotein-style. Legs too sore to walk, much less do work.

Push
Bench press: 215x5x3

Squat

This..........will never be me. I quit.

Jokes aside, Misha had better watch out because Mart Seim is fast becoming the internet's coolest SHW. His technique is kind of rough, which might explain his disproportionately low snatch and the ugly thing he calls a jerk, but this is the kind of freaky strength that might give the Iranians a run for their money at superheavy.

Sn/CJ

Pulls

Conditioning

[Oldman]

I really like the vid. It's great to watch a guy rep out a weight that would crush a normal guy! It's sort of like when my kids tell me I'm the second best dad on Father's Day, lol.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Ahahah that's rough, sir. I'm not sure what the criteria for "best" is, but hey, if nothing else, you're easily the world's toughest dad, and probably in the top 100 strongest ones too. Plus it looks like you take them to the gym and buy them delicious piles of postworkout food several times a week! What more could they want?! Yeesh!

6/22/2014
I actually went to the gym yesterday, but had been on my feet all day standing in front of a panel of optical instruments squinting at tumor cells, and was pretty tired by the time it was over. Not getting any sleep the previous night didn't help. I was also still really sore from volume day and my protein and calorie intake these last few weeks haven't been good at all. What ended up happening was, I snatched 40kgx3 and 50kgx3, and found that my wrist was still uncomfortable. I was trying to think of something else to do when my phone rang: "Hey want to watch The Grand Budapest Hotel?" "Do I ever!" And I left.

Today, feeling marginally better.
Motivation:


^Super cool that someone filmed this: it's an entire training session with the Russian men's national team, with guest appearance from supercutie Tima Turieva, 2013 world champion at 63kg. It's not just her, either; almost every single sportsman in this room has at least one medal from the EWCs, WWCs and/or Olympics.

Here in the USA (and esp. on this site), whenever the conversation turns to our lack of success at this sport, we bicker over details like how to squat and whether or not to deadlift, but just look at this training environment: everyone is feeding off of everyone else's energy, every lifter has a personal coach on top of the team coach, food/drinks/massage are provided, etc etc. I'm no expert, but it's probably reasonable to hypothesize that until we match this level of desire and intensity, everything is just noise.

Push

Squat
Front squat up to 275lbx1. I went for 295 for 3x3 work sets and gave up in halfway down the 1st rep for fear of straining my wrist. Probably should have just stuck with 2 light sets of back squats or something. I started loading the bar for something like back squat 315x5x2, but decided hey, today is recovery day, not get stronger day. Well consider me recovered, dammit. And I left to go make much needed food.

Sn/CJ
Snatch:
40kgx3
50kgx3
60kgx3
70kgx2
80kgx1 + 3 misses

Wrist kind of naggy, which made me hesitate a bit on 80, but recall my consistency used to fall apart at 70kg. It looks like my new "wall" moved up 10kg. Can't complain, I guess.

Pulls

Conditioning

[Oldman]

Every bit of progress is good progress.

The bit on being second best dad is sort of a family tradition. When the kids were young, they would, from time to time, exclaim, "You're the best dad ever!" And I would tell them that, no, I was really second best, and there was a dad in France named Jean Pierre who was number one, and that I competed with him every year in a contest but had so far been able to beat him. Later, when they were older, they went to one of these DIY ceramics places and made and fired a coffee mug for my birthday. On the mug, they painted "#2 dad!" on one side, and "Jean Pierre #1 dad!" on the other. It's my favorite gift ever.

[stuffedsuperdud]

6/24/2014
Dreading this intensity day all day due to the poor diet and sleep this past week, plus I had to be on my feet all day today.

Push
I will press again someday, I promise.

Squat
Squat intensity:
380x5 5RM PR. Bonus fun: The 1st rep was also a 1RM PR.
My lifetime 1RM was 375 from over 1 year ago so I guess I can't argue for 380 for 5, eh? Coming for you, Lovchev.

Sn/CJ

Pulls
Eccentric clean pulls:
60kgx5
100x5
130x5
155x5
160x5

Deadlift: 185kgx5 5RM PR
Getting heavy, but whatever. My mind was still on the squats; this was basically an afterthought.

Conditioning

[stuffedsuperdud]

6/28/2014
Missed yesterday's session, as detailed here.
Did it today. Legs are sore from walking around but otherwise it's fine.

Push

Squat
Volume: 340x5x5. Repeat of last week's weight since ID was pretty easy.

Sn/CJ
Snatch up to 60kg. My wrist flared at this weight and I decided to cut it short before anything catastrophic could happen. Might have to get this looked at next week. Lame.

Pulls

Conditioning

[Oldman]

Congratulations on the SQ and DL PRs, man. Great work!

[stuffedsuperdud]

Thanks Ed! It's great to finally be able to string together a bit of good training. Too bad my wrist is still giving me trouble at heavier weights; I can practically taste the sn/cj PR's. Hopefully this clears up soon. I am still shooting for 100/120 by the end of the summer or so and 110/130 by the end of the year.

6/30/2014
And half of the year is in the books. I didn't quite reach my goals because the injuries took longer than expected to heal, but I got pretty close, the PR's have been steadily coming, and quite frankly, are more frequent than I probably deserve given my laziness, and I am definitely stronger than I have ever been in my entire life, so I can't complain. For today, just a bit of recovery. I am stiff and sore from volume day, but I guess that's just the new normal these days.

Push
I was hoping to do press volume, but the wrist said no. Gonna get it looked at just to make sure it's just a sprain and not something more serious.

Squat
Recovery: 315x5x2

Sn/CJ
See wrist.

Pulls
RDL: 315x6,5
Bringing this guy back! I hadn't done RDLs since the weeks immediately following my knee injury, opting for the snatch pulls instead on the light pull day. Forgot how much fun these were.

Conditioning
Tried to keep the rest to 2:00 or less because I was in a rush, plus I was teaching Cancergirl (her words, with pride), which further cut into the time.


Cancergirl's Adventures
I had been suggesting strength training for months now, since the end of her treatment, but she was resisting. The other day though, out of the blue, she asked if I could teach her. WHAT?! I was actually worried, as I almost never train people, and when I do, it's just to show a healthy 20-something male how to squat or something. Female special population? Sounds terrifying. Who do you think I am, right? Andy Baker? But I decided, hey, challenge accepted. She was medically cleared for all activities and had been very active previously, but six months of deconditioning and medicine will do a number on people, so we started off super light with my keeping a very strict eye on technique.

We opened yesterday, for sets of 5, with:
Squat: 45lb
Press: 20lb

She was extremely teachable and, for bonus points, was super flexible.
"Can you squat as low as you can for me?"
"Like this?" *Bangs butt onto floor.*
"Remember, chest up, head through, speed speed speed."
And boom, the bar is up and over her traps.
Ahhh miracles.

Today:
Rows: 45lbx5x3
RDL: 45lbx5x3

That's right, with no rest day. I told her we should only lift every other day for now, but she insisted, so who was I to say no to that kind of enthusiasm? I tried to leave her shoulders/traps and quads alone, so no bench or DL. Guess we're NDTP, but I suspect it'll all smooth itself out once the weights go up and her technique and recovery are dialed in.

[Oldman]

It's awesome that you're training Cancergirl. (My wife calls me Cancerboy...) If you are looking for a four-day per week program, you could look at the four-day split approach (Callador often comments on that as an option).

[stuffedsuperdud]

Thanks Ed. I hadn't considered that; will see how it goes. To be honest though, this might be blasphemy, but I am not super concerned about programming right off the bat. My focus for the first week or two is just to introduce the basic barbell lifts and how to do them safely, and the idea of weight progression. I think we're spoiled in that we train in "real" gyms and take for granted that everyone has at least some exposure to training and if nothing else knows what, say, a squat is, but this is turning out to be trickier than I thought so I'm going aaaaaaallll the way back to basics. When I learned to lift, it was in a big class setting full of 100% newbies, with just one instructor, the S&C coach for our D1 teams, and one TA, so we didn't really do programming for the first few weeks; we just learned one lift a day and then did that lift for sets of 10 with next to no weight while the two of them supervised. Programming didn't really come together until later when we had a handful of exercises in our toolboxes and could be trusted to start pushing up the #'s. True confessions: I was so detrained that my first day, I did box stepups (yes, box stepups, like moms in aerobics classes....) for 3x10 and was sore immediately. The trainer laughed as I seized up on the floor, and I was 20 minutes late for my next class because I was too tired to make the uphill hike across campus from the gym over to engineering.

Related: I am actually super thankful for Rip's recent articles on the difference between exercise and training and how to explain this to new trainees who might want to quit if they're not sweaty and destroyed after each session. Just as an example, today, as I was warming up she asked, "Hey, wait, so you got all these muscles (hehehehehe ) just from doing the same couple of exercises over and over again?" Guess I have the Muscle Confusion™ clowns to thank for that one. Fuck you, Tony Horton. So really, right now it's more playing around than anything else. I'm imagining it's kind of like starting a fire.* You have to gently blow on it at first; throwing a heap of wood on top might just snuff it out.

*Disclaimer: I am a city slicker and have never actually built a real fire. In the event of the zombie apocalypse, you don't want me on your team.