Stuffed Superdud: Bumpy road to respectable lifting

[stuffedsuperdud]

I'was out of town W-F. On my feet continuously all three days, got back, and the first thing I did was end up at the bar, where the bartender was celebrating his birthday by pouring a lot of free drinks for me and a few people around me. Ended up thoroughly worse for wear* and then was hung over Saturday AM. Decided to just go through the motions, and did:

Squat:
20kg x many
70x10
110x10
140x8,10,10,10

140 felt embarrassingly heavy but I decided to sack up and just do the reps.

Today I was feeling kind of run down as expected, but went in anyway and did:
Hang snatch:
20kg x many
40x4
50x4
60x4
70x4
72x4x2
75x2,3

Back in the office tomorrow with some stories for Chuck.

*More on that later maybe.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Muscle snatch + OHS 3+3
20kg x 1
40x1
50x1
60x1

OHS (power clean + press to shoulders because I am not strong enough to muscle snatch 70....)
70x3

Snatch deadlift
90x10
110x10
120x10
130x10

Long day at work which kinda sucked.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Hang clean:
20kg x many
40x4
60x4
80x4
90x2,3,3,2

Right elbow was....okay. It was able to flex appropriately at first, but I could the ROM degrading slightly as this went on.

Time management is now a major survival mechanism, so the stories will have to wait....

[Erok]

Maybe it's because I broke an elbow 15 years ago that never healed right, or because I'm a 40-something, or maybe also because of all the real-life examples of hang cleans I've seen, but, those seem like they'd be hard on one's elbows.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Yea, iono, man. Elbow mobility is a whacky thing. You see some lifters lose it after an injury, so it can't just be due to bone-on-bone bumping. There's way more tissue-based nonsense than I am prepared to analyze, so all I can do now is keep on mobbing it, and hope it gets better. I am quite envious of people who have the crazy ROM, where the backs of their hands touch their shoulders even without load, while at the same time, they can also hyperextend when reaching overhead. Lucky bastards... I looked into if perhaps I had injured myself as a kid, but my mom can't recall any notable incident.

I was in town yesterday, but Chuck and his wife wanted me over so that they could talk to an adult for once, instead of their two babies. Too much beer ensued and it ended with Chuck smoking a bit too much on top of the booze and rubbing Vaporub all over my body. I decided to just go with it, but it did get a bit weird towards the end when I noticed just how determined he looked. His wife as asleep in the kids' room. Monday's gonna be uncomfortable.

Today:
Press:
20kg x 10
40x5
50x5
60x5
70x2
75x5,5,5,4

Hey, anyone have any suggestions for press programming? I mean, I'm not going be able to do fahves forever now, right? and I do want to press 100kg before I die.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Landed myself a hot date this weekend against all odds, and then she bailed at the last minute, because the lord gave and the lord hath taken away, so I had nothing to do but lift. Shoulders sore but hey, embrace the pain:

Snatch:
20kg x many
40x4
50x4
60x3
70x2
75x2
80x2x3
83x2x2
85x2

Lyudmila is coming to Boston for NYE, and that's the last thing I need right about now. A few minutes ago she sent me a picture of herself on the couch with the caption, "Updated haircut! I'm not wearing any underwear.... " Well she had on PJs and a fuzzy brown robe that I helped her find at TJ MAxx, and she had told me earlier today that she hadn't showered, brushed her teeth, or left her apartment since Thursday, so my guess is this was probably a boredom-induced bid for attention after the dude she actually wants to fuck blew her off.

[Erok]

...Vaporub...
...determined...

Is this what laughing out loud feels like? Because I think that's what's happening. Good thing I'm alone in the office right now.

Not to make light of your situation. I mean, we're social animals, and physical contact with another human is a net good.

Yeah, I'm open to press programming tips as well. I've tried a few things, but keep bumping up against the 88.6363 kg ceiling.

[caveman]

I'll follow this thread even more carefully if there are going to press programming improvements. I have a goal to press my bodyweight at some point in my lifetime, but I keep getting heavier and so there has been no improvement in the difference between my bodyweight - 1RM.

And to try and add value to this thread, I bought some Angel's Envy Rye Whiskey the other day. I went into the liquor store to get the regular Angel's Envy Bourbon (which also I had never tried, but was recommended, $49.95) and got talking to the owner and he said that the Angel's Envy Rye is quite possibly his favorite whiskey of all time. Seemed like he should know, so I purchased my most expensive bottle of whiskey ($89.95) and I have to say it is pretty damn good. I'm not a huge Rye fan, though I seem to picking up more and more Rye's lately. This one is finished in Rum casks and you definitely get some of that coming through in the finish. It's also 100 proof, so there is a room for a splash of water to get it just right.

[Erok]

I am really pleased that rye is making a resurgence. Many options nowadays. That said, I've been on an Old Forester bourbon kick lately. The 100-proof is the perfect one-ice-cube glass, and the 90-proof is pretty good, too. Especially for the price. I was just gifted a bottle of 90-proof rye made by a well-known local winery who just added a distillery, and it's very good: Wollersheim, if you can find it elsewhere. Weird thing is, it comes in a long-neck white wine bottle.

As far as the Press, I'm signed up for a rookie powerlifting meet in January, so I'm still collecting ideas for press programming to begin immediately after. Chuck Sipes' shoulder workout looks like fun to try, and The Bill Starr press programming seems like the best bet for me so far. I basically get all my ideas from the Dezso Ban blogspot and Andy Baker's site blog. So, I'm looking for equal parts sensible and ridiculous.

That said, if ssd has any objections to us crashing on his couch, we should probably take this thread elsewhere.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Ha! I still have readers in this thread! I've never fancied myself a rye guy beyond the one that Bulleit makes. But will definitely swing by Costco tomorrow and see what they have in the way of the ones you mentioned. The holiday parties at the office depleted my stash pretty severely and I'm due up for a refill; this is as good a place as any to start.

RE: press, recall I was a SS/TM guy for a long time, but kept hitting a wall on the press in the 80s. My elbow mobility is better now though, so I wonder if I might be good for at least breaking the 90kg barrier any time soon? In the meantime I'm starting to read all the intermediate/advanced programming ideas generated on this site and others over the past few years to see what I get. I also remembered Jim Steel put out a lot of programs in 2012 that I still have (email him if you want a copy, btw...it's like $10 and well worth it). To be perfectly honest, at the time I was pretty into fahves, and his methods included a ton of volume with percentages, which I decided were unnecessary, and the PDF he sent me mostly went unused. I did halfheartedly take the high-rep squat program he recommended and subbed in the press, but really what I should have done was run the bench program he had.... Might be worth a shot now? Esp. in light of the more recent ideas on programming beyond the intermediate phase.



A few days ago Luydmila and I are making pointless shitchat and I go "What are you up to?" She sends me a picture of herself on the couch naked below the waist, her junk obscured by a pillow, with the caption "lol TOM"
"???? who is tom?"
"no, not TOM. it's T.O.M."
"okay....what's T.O.M."
"it stands for: thinking of...touching myself lmao"
"ooooooh okay well you should send pic again...but...better " [yes I use emojis when pathetically asking for nudes, go fuck yourself]
"hahaha would you like to see more?"
"you said it, not me"
"haha no that's not for you"
"oh...what do you mean?"
"it means you've already seen enough"
"awww are you sure?"
"ewww pervert. okay i have stuff to do. i'll talk to you later bye"


Chuck goes, "There ought to be a Netflix special about you guys."
"Me?"
"Yea you, and everyone else like you. There are tons of you guys. The benchwarmers that girls keep at a distance and then reach out to, sort of, when they're bored or frustrated. And you guy never get laid. You just keep the other guys' seats warm."
"Ha fuck you. And technically, we did awkwardly squish body parts once..."
"Gross. Well that was ten thousand years ago and this is now. So anyway you're a flaming extrovert with a giant closet of suits and shoes, you can squat like 300 or something crazy like that, you know a ton of useless interesting shit, fucking just go fuck girls already. Quit being a pussy. And quit talking to Lyudmila. She's a cancer."*

Chuck's wife is a European former model and suggested that she teach me how to dance, because clearly that, and not this three-decade-old existential crisis, is the hole in my game.

*Chuck met Lil L once at a stem cell biology conference and hated her right away. Later that evening at a reception he ran into some of her co-workers, and over probably too much booze, they all agreed that she's probably a psychopath, but that her unlikable persona keeps her from doing too much damage, so they're just going to wait her out. Me though? One man's garbage, right?


In between all that I did lift a little. The week before Christmas I did:

Push press:
20kg x 10
40x10
50x10
60x10
70x10
80x7

My back seized up and I had to dump the weight. Spent several minutes trying to work it loose before Chuck called me from the airport telling me he was back in town a bit early, and if I could pick him up.

I then had to take off for the Christmas break, where my extended family grilled me for a week on my marital status.

I got back yesterday and did:

Squat:
20kg x many
70x10
110x8
140x10
150x8
160x8
150x10

150 and 160 were a bit tougher than they deserved to be, probably from the de-training, and the 8th rep required a bit of grinding and a reminder to keep my chest up. For the backoff set I told myself to quit being a bitch and just get all 10 already.

Press:
20kg x 10
40x10
50x10
60x8
70x3
75x5x3
60x10,10,9

I started catching up on all the programming ideas that came out since 2016 or so. Had to google "What are density blocks" because that's how out of the loop I am. Didn't quite figure it out in time for this session so I just tried to do 3x10 at a backoff weight in a 15 minute period after the working sets. Missed the fucking 10th rep! Classic bitch move.