DirtyRed Attempts Legitimacy

[DirtyRed]

You know, I would think New Years would get BETTER as we went into February, but the gym seems to be busier than ever. Which would be neat, if the influx wasn't 99% absolute morons. I had to wait to start clean and jerks on an open platform because some idiot was using all of the bumper plates to squat, inside the rack, with the safeties set. Why the fuck would one EVER need bumper plates for that? Why not take up the most amount of potentially useful equipment for your squats of questionable depth?

Later, someone was looking for a barbell to use on the rack, and I looked around to see if I could spot a free one that wasn't the fat, bent, chrome piece of shit no one uses. I never saw a free barbell, because my attention was immediately taken by the dweeb standing on the spotting platform, with his arm kind of over his head, holding a barbell by the end of the shaft, behind his back, along his spine, and extending his elbow to raise it. Why use a barbell instead of a 45 lbs dumbbell for your Standing NOGAINS Elbow Extensions? Why not take up the most amount of potentially useful equipment for your Men's Health exercises?

Once I actually GOT to the workout, it went well enough. Except for one kind of ugly hang clean because I'm not very good at them. The proper clean and jerks might have been a wee bit easy. I think these 3x5 deadlifts are going to do a lot of good.

Volume Week 1: Tuesday 2-6-2018
C&J: 250 lbs 10x1
Hang Cleans: 225 lbs 4x2
Standing Press: 135 lbs 4x8
Deadlifts: 415 lbs 3x5

[DirtyRed]

Forgot to mention, I didn't do Roman Chair Sit Ups on Tuesday because trying to do them, for whatever reason, made my SI joint/glute/hip/whatever hurt more than anything else. "Anything else" including squats in excess of 400 lbs. It would hurt quite sharply as I hit parallel with my torso and started to come back up. Adjusting the hip rest bit of the "chair" didn't help. Don't know what the hell is going on, will wait until they next come up and see how it goes. The actual "injury" seems to be getting better in general, however.

Speaking of, paused squats at 465 lbs didn't really cause anything beyond a mild ache and acute, temporary, shortness of breath.

I WAS going to get a video of dat snatch in order to show off on Instagram to the sort of golf-happy rube that thinks a sub-bodyweight snatch is particularly impressive, but my phone's shit camera decided to skip a good 15 frames RIGHT as the pull got to knee level, completely failing to record the entire portion of the lift that looks the coolest AND gives me the most feedback. Awesome.

I decided to do bench press for sets of 8, as its VOLUME WEEK. Because that's successful programming, right? Ben Roethlisberger just improvises nonsense 10 seconds before actually doing it, and he seems pretty on the ball. I have not done normal bench press in a minute, and 225 lbs was PLENTY for sets of 8. There would not have been a ninth rep of the third set.

Volume Week 1: Thursday 2-8-2018
Snatch: 200 lbs 5x1
Paused Squats: 465 lbs 5x3
Bench Press: 225 lbs 3x8
Chin Ups: 3x10

[Str8shutr]

Back-to-back updates! Most impressive.

[Barry Charles]

Back-to-back updates! Most impressive.

Logging PR

[DirtyRed]

^^^
Ya'll is dicks.

So, surprising exactly no one, doing normal bench press all of a sudden after not doing it for months caused some mild soreness. It didn't really inhibit anything on Saturday, but that + push presses = even more sore triceps on Sunday.

Volume Week 1: Saturday 2-10-2018
Clean and Jerks: 270 lbs 5x1
Push Press: 5x3 215 lbs
Deadlifts: 3x3 445 lbs
Curls: 85 lbs 3x10

PS: THREE ON TIME UPDATES IN A ROW

[DirtyRed]

All good things come in threes. Which is why I didn't update on time four times in a row.

On Monday, I couldn't tell if I was more dumbfounded by the guy using knee wraps to half squat, with that arms-splayed-across-the-back-of-the-couch grip, 365 lbs, or the guy 3/4 squatting LMAO1PLAYT in a frog stance. There are times when I want to help the poor, huddled, unlifting masses of idiots, but then I see stuff like this and realize that even Dirty Red, The Great And Mighty, can't fix what's wrong with humanity.

On Tuesday, I realized that humanity doesn't deserve DirtyRed, even if he WAS good for anything. I have seen some shit with the deadlift bar. I have seen people squat with it, I've seen people do rack pulls with it, I've seen people do curls with it. Tuesday, I got to see someone do walking lunges with 135 lbs with the deadlift bar. I might have mentioned before that the bar has "DEADLIFTS ONLY" labels hot glued to the collars, but I guess the Persian twit can't read English. Can anyone tell me how "DEADLIFTS ONLY YOU STUPID JAGOFF" translates into Farsi? Maybe if I can get THAT label onto the collar, he'll get the hint.

Speed Week 1: Monday 2-12-2018
Snatches: 185 lbs 4x2
Power Snatches: 165 lbs 4x2 <--These were pretty easy, 175 lbs is probably a good number to try for future power snatches
Speed Squats: 325 lbs 3x8
Dips: 5x10
Curls: 85 lbs 4x10

Speed Week 1: Tuesday 2-13-2018
Clean&Jerk: 270 lbs 5x1
Power Cleans: 225 lbs 5x2 <--Also could likely be done heavier
Speed Bench: lol165 lbs 3x8 <--These were good SPEED reps
Barbell Rows: 185 lbs 3x5

[DirtyRed]

I'm liking Speed Week. I feel almost athletic moving at more than .25 m/s at something, AND most of my bones don't hurt. Too bad I'll have to actually lift weight for the next two weeks.

175 lbs was a good weight for power snatches. JUST about as much knee bend as I can justify by saying my knees instinctively do it to not jam my femur through my meniscus, but not nearly enough for there to be any actually recover after catching the weight. 275 lbs might have been lighting than necessary for front squats, but I wasn't sure what I could do for sets of FIVE, having only ever really done sets of three. They were mildly strenuous. That my upper back didn't fold forward like a lawn chair meant they clearly weren't THAT heavy. The sit ups did not irritate my SI Joint/Glute/Whatever, which hasn't bothered me at all for days. I probably need to hold heavier weights for that, but didn't want to add weight having not actually done them the week prior.

Speed Week 1: Thursday 2-15-2018
Power Snatch: 175 lbs 6x2
Front Squats: 275 lbs 3x5
Chin Ups: 3x10
Roman Chair Sit Ups: 15 lbs 3x10

[DirtyRed]

I was going to update after Saturday, but then nothing happened and I didn't do it anyway. Shut up.

Saturday went well. Except for not having ANY time to do overhead squats before I had to leave. Probably not important. Probably could have power cleaned a touch heavier.

Speed Week 1: Saturday 2-17-2018
Power Cleans: 235 lbs 5x2
Push Press: 215 lbs 5x3
Deadlifts: 405 lbs 2x5
Close Grip Bench: 205 lbs 3x8

As fun as Speed/Weeny week was, Intensity week is going to be the opposite, I can already tell. Snatches went pretty well, squats were entirely harder than I expected, and there was some mild pain in my right knee for them. Weirdly, the third set felt the worst, and it ached less on the 4th and 5th set. Maybe I wasn't adequately warmed up or some shit. It ached RIGHT on top of the kneecap, but wasn't sensitive to touch (to the point of practically punching my knee and only making my hand hurt), so I'm thinking it was some mild quadriceps/patella tendon irritation.

Surely ten rather heavy clean and jerks the next day will remedy that. Surely.

Intensity Week 1: Monday 2-19-2018
Snatch: 200 lbs 10x1
Squats: 475 lbs 5x5
Barbell Rows: 225 lbs 5x5 <--These probably do not need to be done much heavier than this in the near future. Nice and heavy without TOO much hip/knee extension bullshit.

[DirtyRed]

I really DID mean to update on time for Tuesday's workout. But I had to work the day shift on Wednesday and there was Ring of Honor (not related to the Field of Honor) to catch up on and now I'm typing up an update so that THURSDAY'S update isn't late. Deal with it.

Everything went quite nicely on Tuesday. There was no knee ache with the clean and jerks, no issues with the push presses (except the last rep of pretty much every set was a wee grind after the shove from the legs was done, which was half by design anyway) and deadlifts weren't ball-shatteringly hard.

Intensity Week 1: Tuesday 2-20-2018
Clean and Jerk: 275 lbs 10x1
Push Press: 215 lbs 5x5
Deadlifts: 425 lbs 1x5

Thursday could have gone better. I'm REALLY going to figure out a good time to do some overhead squats, because I pulled the absolute fuck out of 215 lbs twice and couldn't just hold it above my head in a snatch position. I got 205 lbs easily enough. Squats went well, no knee ache under 545 lbs. Bench press is still kind of shit, but it should get back up to where it was (which was still kind of shit) quickly. I weighed in at 220 lbs, so a 20 lbs dumbbell on weighted chin ups made me effectively 240 lbs. I should have figured that wouldn't be cripplingly hard to do 3x5 with considering I used to weigh 240 lbs and do 3x"8" I'll probably use 25 lbs next time.

Intensity Week 1: Thursday 2-22-2019
Snatch: 205 lbs single 215 lbs PHAEL
Squats: 545 lbs 5x1
Bench Press: 265 lbs 3x3
Weighted Chin Ups: 20 lbs added 3x5

[jake272]

There's always something aching, sometimes inappropriately, but fuck it, that's life I guess...