So, meet day came and went, and it generally went pretty well. Though it's a little ironic and more than just a little silly that, for all of the USAPL's bitching about stuff that could "bring the 'sport' [scare quotes mine] into disrepute," they'd certify someone so goddamn fat he can barely walk as a national referee, AND that he'd be pissy with The Lord, God, DirtyRed for not knowing when and, more importantly, fucking WHERE to get his rack and bench safety heights, when there was absolutely ZERO indication of either.
I really took for granted the simple things even the saddest golf tournament had. Like a sign that pointed to the goddamn driving range so you could be ready for your tee time. Or a tee time so you knew when to be ready. The afternoon flight squats were delayed an hour because the morning flight ran long, and they announced that halfway into my warm up. And I was in the second group of the afternoon flight, which meant I had to unwarm up, then rewarm up before squatting. Part of that COULD be considered my fault for not thinking that half the afternoon would get three attempts before I got a turn, at least if I wasn't so goddamn infallible about everything ever.
And they need to fucking ban baby powder. I thought the fools in the morning were bad. They had half the "gorilla position" covered in that shit before the afternoon started, and I had to keep running to the bathroom to wash it off my shoes so I'd stop slipping all over the fucking place, as it seemed like a poor idea to put 600 lbs on my spine when I had about as much grip on the ground as your average hockey player. The afternoon flight made that mess look like child's play, and eventually the combined smell of ammonia and stress-caffeine farts (IT WAS ME) gave way to an overpowering smell of baby powder. But at least by that point, I was done squatting and on to deadlifts, where my conventional stance wasn't going to slip for anything. Not sure how the sumo pullers didn't IMMEDIATELY slip out when they started the pull.
And it's not like the baby power is actually warranted. If you are deadlifting such that you need to lube up your thighs, you are doing it wrong. The solution is not to lube up your thighs, it's to stop fucking doing it wrong. I wouldn't really give much of a shit if it wasn't liable to get me killed on squats.
All those complaints (some of them quite nitpicky, admittedly) aside, the actually LIFTS I did were rather successful. No video, because I was there by myself like a stone badass and didn't want to bother strangers with my phone, because I'm a gentleman like that, and because I didn't want to give my busted, old, cheap ass phone to strangers because if I had any inclination to buy a new phone, I wouldn't have a busted, old, cheap ass phone to start with. But I do have a picture of the lifter card:
http://i873.photobucket.com/albums/a...t/Untitled.jpg
I actually overdid the weight cut just a bit, and came in at 226 lbs. Better under than over though, and still hit 601 lbs on the squat, 314 lbs for the bench, and 546 lbs (<-Large PR) on the deadlift. I might have been able to get more on the squat, but declined a third attempt because I didn't want to waste energy possibly missing a lift when I could have been saving it for deadlifts. AND the goal was to hit a total that would qualify for nationals, so I figured it was smarter to back off and hit the deadlift PR I needed to and knew I could in order to do it. Which worked well, as I made a fat PR in deadlifts, and got a 662.5 kg total when, I'm pretty sure, I needed 655 kg to qualify for national meets.
Those of you who have paid attention for nigh 12 pages might realize that my bench press has been stuck at LMAO3PLAET!1!! since buttfucking December. First order of business after a recovery week is tweeking my goddamn programing to remedy that. With my pterodactyl arms, I will never be GOOD at bench press, but I would at least like to go to sleep at night fairly certain that I can bench press more than 16 year old Russian girls. The rather low "tonnage" of bench press on a minimalist Texas Method like I've been doing is probably why it hasn't at least CREPT up in months.
Options are to add some assistance lifts like dips or the like to Texas Method to add some stress to triceps and pecs to drive some adaptation, or to program bench separately from the Texas Method stuff that was worked well for squats and deadlifts. The latter seems to me to have more potential, but that could end with me being in the gym 5+ days a week in some capacity, and being stuck dealing with the fucking 10 hour "day" shift on Tuesdays and Thursdays until the semester is over and I'm no longer literally the only option on those days makes trying to lift on those days unappealing. The former is goddamn easy. Though Monday workouts could begin to breach four hours if I start adding shenanigans after the core lifts. Though I'm almost never scheduled for Monday anymore, AND being in the gym all day gives me a good excuse not to suffer through 195 minutes of Monday Night RAW.
I might start a thread on this on the training forum. The first wise ass to suggest some RPE based scheme will be added to the list of people I'm going to execute when I rule the world. A list that is getting long enough to give me concern about the viability of the human species once I rule the world. A concern most of you share, I'm sure.
-DirtyRed's LiveJournal
I mean, uh, training log.