DirtyRed Attempts Legitimacy

[Simon Rest]

nice "raw/raw" bench.

we had a gym employee like your TOD, but I clocked early on that he was autistic spectrum so probably couldn't understand my non verbal cues (like I'm reading my phone and wearing headphones means I don't want to talk to you). So I took to politely telling him not piss off while I was training. He then understood that I could chat after I was done, showered and changed, leaving me with the reduced problem of sneaking out of there without him cornering me.

[broseph]

Late to the party unsolicited AC pain advice:

I've dealt with bench related acromioclavicular pain in the past with success by:
Keeping shoulders externally rotated HARD when benching/pressing.
If you sleep on your side, do so with a pillow as an axillary roll to keep pressure off.

Axillary roll is the thing under dude's rib cage


Source: Bench is my only decent lift.

[DirtyRed]

Good News: Shoulder pain largely alleviated with a slightly narrower grip and keeping my elbows down as fuck. Still a wee bit of it on the first set, but much less than previously. I'm content to assign it to lingering inflammation or some such and continue without any adjustment. Also, did squats without my left knee aching any. In general, everything this Monday went better than LAST Monday, with more weight this week. No idea why, I'm just going to assume I remembered how to be DirtyRed, Certified Baller. It went better to the point I was double checking weights to make sure I loaded the bar right. Two 45s, a 10, and a 5 on each side is 255 lbs right?

Just don't tell Tomathy that his advice helped. I don't want him getting a big head. Also, him being right about anything annoys me.

Bad News: Right knee kind of ached when I woke up. Still aches now. Especially when I stand on it as it is locked. It's almost not in the knee but at the top of the tibia, if that makes sense. Naturally, it didn't ache AT ALL when squatting heavy ass weights, only when walking and standing under bodyweight hours later. I'm 99% sure this is because I slept for a time with my leg hanging off the side of the bed, causing my swole foot to pull my leg downwards at an angle that went against the knee joint in some fashion, basically stretching the knee into VERY mild hyper-extension. I shall apply DirtyRed Protocol and spam up the Coaches Forum s'more if that doesn't work.

Confusing News: The director of the April 1 meet helpfully told me that the previously mentioned Best Belt, along with the singlet and knee sleeves I was looking, at were ran by some "State Chair" and declared to be allowed for the April 1 meet and other Local meets. How in the holy fuck that doesn't also equal "okay for literally every USAPL meet" is goddamn beyond me. The knee sleeve has a manufacturer logo on it, so that might be the problem (though why it is then allowed in local meets when it doesn't meet the bullshit logo requirements in beyond me). The singlet is 100% plain, and explicitly on The Fucking List.

I swear this shit is an April's Fools joke. Either these people are bugshit insane or COMPLETELY incapable of communicating a clear and consistent set of rules.

Better News: While TOD was sighted, he was too busy taking part is some boot camp shit class for wankers. Hashtag #ShitClass4Wankers. I managed to finish and leave before it ended and didn't have to interact with him.

Amusing News: You know That Guy that does full body curls? I saw someone manage to do that on the preacher curl rack. Achievements in buffoonery, and probably some distal bicep tendonitis.

Volume Day 5

Squat: 5x5 455 lbs
Bench (paused): 5x5 255 lbs
Speed Deadlifts: 3x3 330 lbs

[DirtyRed]

Light day, somehow had that quadriceps-at-the-knee ache occur on my first set of squats. By which I mean the first warm up set, with the empty bar. Wasn't any worse than before, but it's starting to twist my pubes. Also, I weighed in at 237.4 lbs. That's at least two pounds of weight gain that probably wasn't because I weighed in before I took a dump.

Otherwise, a Light Day like any other. Full of everything but sound and fury, signifying a resigned sense of obligation to do this boring crap.

Light Day 5
Squats: 2x5 315 lbs
Standing Press: 3x5 185 lbs
Chin Ups 3x8 you'd never think 2 lbs would make this THAT much harder.

[DirtyRed]

The knee wraps I ordered came in. Yay! The seams in one started tearing after THREE FUCKING REPS. Boo!

Either DirtyRed is getting a full and immediate refund, or a shiny new set of knee sleeves that aren't made out of socialism and failure (but DirtyRed repeats himself), or someone in Sweden is going to have laid upon them the kind of asswhooping that future generations will remember in song.

Still got all the Intensity Day stuff done. Jumping RIGHT INTO the same weights all of a sudden wearing knee sleeves probably wasn't too intelligent, but it didn't feel funny after the first two or three reps. TOD not sighted, he said, hearing the people stop reading right there.

Intensity Day 5
Squats: 5x1 555 lbs
Bench (paused): 5x1 300 lbs
Deadlifts: 3x1 505 lbs

[shib]

This is a fun log.

[DirtyRed]

The gym's hours weren't affected by Black Man Got Shot Day, yay! Apparently customer service was, boo! If I don't hear back from them about my knee sleeves tomorrow, I'm going to send them another, potentially less polite email.

But volume day, sans knee sleeves, went well. I was ready and everything with rest and energy, but it's getting to the point where even if I don't drag ass into the gym, I'm certainly dragging ass out. That this place still has the heat on even though it's in the upper 50s isn't helping. The squats in particular went well IN the sets themselves, but after racking the bar and stepping away, I was dying.

The bench sets were all paused, which I'm fairly certain is at least 5 lbs more than I was able to do 5x5 paused for in the previous training cycle, before the volume day went to Touch'n'Go in order to keep using more weight. So that's progress. Though I BARELY got them all, AND if I want to get another full-ish training cycle in before the April meet with a decent 7-10 day mini-taper, I'm PROBABLY going to halfsies up volume day next week, barely do a light day, and test some maxes and/or mock meet on intensity day, and use the weights hit then to judge were I'm going to drop them to in order to start a new training cycle.

The way things are going, I'm cautiously optimistic about FINALLY hitting a 600 lbs squat (though the slanted rack I have to use requires me to walk it out an extra foot and might doom me), some PR on the bench (though I am VERY bad at bench press), and pretty goddamn certain I'm going to be able to get the 540 lbs deadlift I failed in that December lolmeet. If this week's intensity day goes well, it'll be three 510 lbs deadlifts, which I was unable to do the last training cycle, before dropping to one heavy single.

It would also be just jingles to have a WORKING set of knee sleeves for the start of the new training cycle. Give me 8+ weeks to get used to them before it has to matter.

Volume Day 6
Squats: 5x5 455 lbs
Bench (paused): 5x5 260 lbs
Speed Deadlifts: 3x3 335 lbs

PS: I think TOD may have died. Or at least moved. Either way, things are finally starting to look up for ole DirtyRed.

[DirtyRed]

Light day. Good thing I'm going to weeny out the start of next week to test maxes next Friday, because "light" standing press is getting heavy enough that, in combination with all the bench press, my shoulders are perpetually "heavy" and tired feeling. Going to sleep like a motherfucker the next couple of days and should hit the 5x1 305 on Friday with little issue. Light squat is still easy enough that it's embarrassing to even do. Possibly because I don't increase the weight ever on light day because I am so fucking good at squatting (the best [terrific]) that the accumulated stress from the super baller weights I'm lifting on Monday and Friday mean I don't NEED anything approaching stress on Wednesday. While my weeny-tastic bench press is less capable of overtaxing muscles locally and SO MUCH less capable of burning out the entire system.

Light Day 6
Squat: 2x5 315 lbs
Standing Press: 3x5 190 lbs
Chin ups 3x8

Also, I weighed in at 238 pounds. Yay progress that was probably due less to actually gaining weight and more due to eating some COOKOUT before gym!

[DirtyRed]

My replacement knee sleeves came today, yay! I no longer have any reason to beat Swedes to death, boo!

Also, they went an entire workout without exploding, which is grand.

Also, I done goofed and deadlifted with a bar I'm not particularly fond of for deadlifts. My gym has three Intek bars that are generally decent. Two have a red cap on the end of the sleeve, and don't roll as well (though still better than most of the crap bars in the gym) and feel like they have rougher knurling. The other has a blue end cap and rolls much better and doesn't seem to have as sharp of knurling.

I usually like the red ones, I started with the blue one and didn't notice until I had already put goddamn 500 lbs on it and wasn't going to be assed to change. My grip failed on the first rep before I could lock it out. Got two more with extra chalk and grip (and some dipshit might has slightly bent that bar, which didn't help), and then did a third successful one, meaning I did about 3.75 deadlifts. Which is totally something to be doing a week before testing maxes, adding half a rep, totally. Terrific. The best.

ALSO, my idjit sister happened to be in the gym for some Sissy Idiot Faff Around class, and before she left I managed to get her to record a squat because I was unsure I was hitting depth on the first couple of reps. Which, naturally, meant I went deeper to definitely hit depth and defeat the purpose of the video. The point is, if I get bored enough to fight KY Internet and YouTube, I'll post it later.

Intensity Day 6
Squat: 5x1 560 lbs
Bench (paused): 5x1 305 lbs
Deadlifts: We're calling it 3x1 at 510 lbs because fuck you it's simpler that way.

[DirtyRed]

Here is the squat video.