Welcome back to strength training! It looks like you maintained a very high percentage of your previous strength levels. I'm confident you'll be back to hitting PR's very soon. A 300 press would be most imPRESSive.
Original Log (Powerlifting 2012-2015)
2nd log (this time, with fitness- CrossFit 2015-2016)
Background: See above links.
Current Stats:
BW: 198
HT: Still 5'10
Age: 31
Occupation: Slave at UCLA
Interval history: So CrossFit ended up being exponentially less fun and the time requirements to actually train for it were too great for what I currently have available to me. Additionally, I didn't really get the impression that I was going to have the sort of competitive outlet that I wanted with it. I also missed lifting heavy weights So, back to strength training!
My initial idea was to do Raw Nationals in Atlanta (panda, panda, panda), but I'll be on inpatient Peds that month and it seems highly unlikely that I'll be able to get there. On the other hand, that rotation will be over just in time for me to drive up to Oakland for the Starting Strength meet, so that seems like a good idea.
Strength has been coming back fairly quickly. I squatted 515 x 1 and 474 x 5, benched 405 x 1 and 360 x 4, and pulled 650 x 1 and 585 x 5. Then, last week I tore my left pec doing some back offs on comp bench. It's not a full tear, but it is still uncomfortable at the bottom of the bench even with 60kg or so. I take this as a sign from the Gods that I need to actually train my press hard for a bit so I'll be working with some programming ideas I've been tossing around recently while really figuring out how to drive up the press (hopefully).
Goals: Squat 600 w/o wraps, Press 300, DL 700+ again. Honestly a 1550+ total at a Starting Strength meet would be cool IMO, but pressing 300 would be really cool.
As always, thanks for following along. You can see more that I don't post here on my Jordan Feigenbaum, MD (@jordan_barbellmedicine) • Instagram photos and videos.
Last week's Training:
Monday @ CF West (Santa Cruz)
Pin Squat, beltless: 220kg x 1 @ 8, 190 x 4 @ 8, 190 x 4 @ 9, 180 x 4 x 2
Press: 225 x 4, 210 x 6 x 3
Rows: 325 x 5 x 3
Tuesday @ CF West (Santa Cruz)
DL 660 x 1 @ 9, 507 x 5 @ 8.5, 451 x 5 x 5 @ <7
Feet up bench- Nope
Pull ups BW + 25lbs x 10 x 2
HBBS, paused: 315 x 10 x 2
Weds:
Drive down PCH @ RPE 10, for the car mostly. Seriously, powersliding around corners labeled at 25mph while you're in the middle of 2nd gear and 5000rpm is fun
Thursday @ Deuce (Gym is cool, outdoors, with really chill people- but the thing is not level at all. I keep an ohio power bar there and some plates, but I need to build a platform before my pelvis and lower back explode. It is 1 mile from my house, but the hours suck here 7am-730pm. It's cool to get there and work on my tan, however)
Squat w/ belt: 500 x 1 @ 8, 375 x 5 x 5 @ <7
Press w/ belt: 225 x 1 @ 7, 245 x 1 @ 8, 195 x 4 x 6
Pin Press, eyebrow level: 235 x 1 @ 8, 185 x 5 x 3
Friday @ JTS (in Laguna Niguel. Too far to get to regularly, but honestly the best place to train in the LA area if doing anything not purely SS)
2ct paused DL, beltless- 591 x 1 @ 8, 550 x 3 x 3
Pin Press, above forehead: 253 x 1 @ 9, 220 x 4 x 3
F/S- 330 x 10 x 2
Welcome back to strength training! It looks like you maintained a very high percentage of your previous strength levels. I'm confident you'll be back to hitting PR's very soon. A 300 press would be most imPRESSive.
I was hoping Cross-Fit would be your Segue into Olympic Lifting...but PL is Ok I guess.
Looking forward to following along!
Haha, yea it's come back pretty quickly overall. Just need to keep progressing
Thanks Paul. Brute is like an oasis compared to the gym situation here.
Eh, OL would be bad for me unless I had a lot more time to train and was a few years younger IMO.
Jordan, have you considered getting into the supplement business, if you haven't looked already? I think you may be at the point, in terms of notoriety and physical accomplishment that you could pull it off. You might have to tweak the aesthetics a lil, but can always 'shop it up for social media frankly, and just refuse to take your shirt off unless the rider is signed. Could cover a lot of bases. I mean, it's a no brainer, there's always a plethora of noobs around that "don't know better" that will automatically buy your product if you stick it next to the ebook y'know? Better yet, Facebook post to followers: "hey boys look at my new medically-approved sup line perfectly formulated for SS and TM, decreases novice phase time by 50%!" Boom. Money in your pocket dude. Is there any hold-back in the way? I get the impression that Rip doesn't like dealing with physical products, gym equipment, etc. Understandable. But look you could pitch the angle that you run the Jordan stuff as a market dry-run, and if it catches on then get the rest of the boys into this with a broader "SS supplement conglomerate". There could different supps for each training level, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Each with increasing levels of creatine of course. Start selling this shit at the seminars, it's an extra couple of suitcases. Even use this place's history of fat trainees as a sell point. Lemons lemonade bro. Be like "don't want to become a fatfuck doing SS? Well we listened. Drop the milk and buy these perfectly balanced formulas, blah blah blah" Each scoop contains your bodyweight in protein per day. blah blah blah It basically writes itself. But obviously there's a lot of brand abstraction thinking and logistics to work out first for sure, but I feel this could be a hit if you put your heads together on this. Anyway getting way ahead of shit here, but just wanted to put the idea out there.
Keep up the great logging,
ZB2
So I know that CF has lots and lots of drugs in it -even at the lower levels. Just consider the prevalence of anabolic use in the recreational commercial gym lifters. Now consider how many people do CrossFit.....this doesn't even take into account the incentives on the line for people who are actually good at this stuff. I
Anyway, I don't really think I'm taking anything with me from CF programming to what I'm doing now as far as how the lifts are programmed. I have been playing around with Active Life stuff for my shoulders and knees and some of the gymnastics progressions are fun to keep in rotation. Still, I don't think that the people who coach high level CF'ers -in general- are very good at programming outside of pumping lots of volume in and hoping their athletes are good enough to not get hurt. As I wrote in my article about my experience in CF, there's not a real recipe for success just yet because the sport is still relatively new, but as long as all the modalities are getting hit and you have an athletic client- you might get famous.
Also, doing CF basically confirmed some previous hypotheses about training that I had expressed here an elsewhere. I think most people under train and it's possible to handle lots and lots of work without blowing up. This is especially true if someone is young, well trained (good background), has good genetics (lots of meanings to this one), and drugs can only make up for some of this IMO.
For some reason it seems a bit unethical.