Oh yea. I'm glad we're finding some sort of middle ground these days. CF folks are focused on size and strength and not that "firebreather" crap, while the whole "I only care about strength. Fuck abs" thing is fading too in favor of cleaner eating and more prowling, and suddenly curls and shrugs aren't taboo anymore! Good times.
Space Hulk is great in how much fun it provides with just a few pages of rules. You can teach a new person to play in five minutes, and the sixteen scenarios provide a ton of replayability, especially for the human side. They also have old scenarios from the 1st and 2nd editions and you can make up your own, too.
Hahahah that's pretty sweet. That does remind me: with the rise in the popularity of barbell training, I'm hoping that gamers might finally move beyond the stereotypical super skinny or super fat look and start lifting. The analytical OCD-tinged personalities are a perfect fit for playing around with barbell programming and supplemental conditioning, I think. For leveling up! We can all do with +2 strength, right? And then I can make stupid jokes like "Inzer suit provides +3 modifier!" What a thrill it would be if in 2020 or so, I could go to GenCon or Origins or something and every table was a bunch of ogres bursting out of their short-sleeve collar shirts while playing Power Grid.
Oh wait, something like this is sort of happening already, only from the other direction:
Packers obsessed with 'Settlers of Catan' board game
Truly a new century.
So today was the second anniversary of the meet I missed after hurting my knee a few days prior. Coincidentally, it was also the 1st time since the injury that I was able to train pain-free (mostly). Getting hurt sucked balls, no doubt about that, but there's a silver lining too: my strength levels were stagnant (mid 300's squat and dead, mid 100s press, mid 200s bench, all for 1RMs), my technique was ugly, and I was training with an overpriced / underqualified coach whom I did not have the balls to fire. I ended up parting ways with him while I was rehabbing, and got the strength up and addressed some of the issues that led to my injury in the 1st place (my hot physical therapist said that with my weird asymmetries, the whole leg, not just the knee, was a ticking bomb), and now we're back on the progress train. Also, instead of training in a scary dungeon gym run by a sociopathic pothead, I'm in an awesome training group now (the gym even has a USAW membership flag on the wall!). Could be much worse.
Snatch:
"Today is a snatch day! Tell me, what is snatch?!"
"High pull, drop under, lock elbows?"
"Yes yes you know it now! So show me!"
40kgx3x2
50x3x2
60x3x2
70x3x2 I missed a few here due to fatigue. For the misses, I knew right away that I did not finish the pull.
60x3
65x3 Missed one due to crappy focus.
Next to me, The Girl was banging out the reps, no problem. Something like 40kg snatches for 15 triples. She's also noticeably more jacked than she was 3 months ago, much to the coaches' delight, and her's too. Coach was like, "See her! Not very strong yet, but every pull is finished and the weight moves in a perfectly straight line!"
The good thing is, for me now, strength is not the issue, and technique comes more easily than muscles. The bad thing is, squats and deads are fun. All the more reason to hurry up and get to 100/140, so that we can start that strength cycle, I guess.
Muscle snatch:
40kgx3
50x3
60x3
"How many sets today?"
"For now, let's say 6 sets. We will see. Okay you do 60 already?"
"Yes for one set. I was going to do another and then do 65x3x2."
"Come! On! You seriously want to just stay at baby weights? Okay okay if that's what you want, that's what you want....pussy."
"Uh...okay what should I do then?"
"65! Then 70!"
"Remember I missed 70 many times last time."
"Good, so today will be a PR day for you. 65!"
65x1
"Okay drop it. For the other reps. 70! Don't. Miss."
70x1 easy PR LOLOL what?
"Better do another to be sure. Okay rest and then go!"
70x1
"Okay one more!"
"Ugh..."
"Stop complaining! Still very tiny weights!"
70x1 RPE:10
I don't think I've ever ground this hard for a lift before. I managed to get the barbell flipped up and my hands/elbows under it, but then bar speed went to exactly 0 m/s and I held it there isometrically for what felt like 10 seconds. Miraculously, after that eternity, it started inching up, accelerating all the way, and I was able to lock it out.
Cuban coach: "Wait so muscle snatch same as snatch?"
Polish coach: "Yea! 70 kilos for everything. Muscle snatch, snatch snatch, power snatch, clean and jerk, press, bench press, everything!"
Front squat:
70kgx5
110x5
120x3
130x3,2
The knee started getting annoyed at the end so coach told me to take it easy. 130 was embarrassingly difficult anyway, and was choking me out a little. Strength was fine, but oxygen was lacking.
Press:
50kgx4
60x4x3
70x4
Not too heavy because my traps were already roasted from today and yesterday's upper body fun. Cleaned the bar, too, because Girl 2 was hogging to the rack doing front squats.
Speaking of Girl 2, if The Girl is an intimidating hyper-intense bulldozer, Girl 2 is, whatever the opposite of that is. She has almost zero strength (can front squat about 80lbs) and is so slow that even when she missed a snatch today that sent her tumbling head over heads into the back of the platform, she even tuck and rolled slowly, as if some sort of special relativity applies to her. She also reflexively laughs every time she catches the bar successfully, when we all know that the bottom of a snatch is how we all find out about each other's O-faces without actually having to get naked and sweaty, right?
Even a hottie like Nadezhda Evstyukhina isn't immune to snatch-face-itis.
She has all the enthusiasm, flexibility, limb ratios, and technique a coach would want though so it'll be a lot of fun to see her get something like 40/60 in the next month or three.