Geezer's Long March Toward the Elite Sneaking Up On the Finish Line

[Mark E. Hurling]

8-28
Weight: 224

Jujitsu: Tough session this morning. I ended up with a cut on my left hand that neither I or the 16 year old brown belt I was training with could figure out how it got there. I offered up the blood to a purple belt to rub into the lapel of his gi. This was something our judo team in college used to do to intimidate opponents in upcoming tournaments. Dried brown blood stains always managed to catch their eye and in a few instances enough to get an ippon right off the initial tie up. My quads were bruised up also, but that happened from working on knee bars. Nick just barred too high up on my quad instead of right at the patella. He's a good talented kid, he is trying to put on some weight so I recommended he check in here.

20 minutes light cardio 185 lb. thick bar hold for 25 seconds. Stupid of me to try a 10 lb. jump. Finished with foam roller and stretches.

8-29

Weight: 223

Today was PR attempts on the 5/3/1.

Bench Press: 135x5, 175x5, 200x3, 220x1, 260x1. No PR there since I have hit 275 for a single in my late 30's. I don't know if I'll get past that number these days, but I'm going to try like hell to get to three plates in the next year or so. That 260 was a hard single that inched up reeaall slow, but I did it!

Chin: -30 (on cybex assist)x5, -10x3, +15x1, +27x1. PR! I've never tried weighted pull-ups before, so this is terra incognita for me. Hopefully no dragons are waiting at the margins of the map.

Finshed off with foam roller and stretches.

Today: 8-30
Weight: 225 I must have been inadequately hydrating leading into the weekend. I've always been a little careless about that. Still though, I'm happy with a drop from 232 to 225 over the course of a little over a week. Gotta stay disciplined and keep going on the good start I have made so far.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Today

Weight: 226. The re-hydration tide keeps rolling in. Better to have a real picture than allow myself to be fooled I suppose.

Did a 15 minute GXP on a C2 rower. Want to change the routine up a little and get the whole body involved in the work.

15 minute foam roller and stretches.

[Mark E. Hurling]

8-31-10
I’m still getting the hang of this log thing. Couple that with some fading short term memory issues and Hey Presto! You get silly little oversights like failing to wait to put in the jujitsu session last night. I taught an 11 year old girl the basics of the white belt course. She was a nice kid and kind of timid, but then that’s pretty common with the girls. Not all, but most. She began to ask some questions like would this actually work on someone stronger than her. I said on someone my size and strength maybe not, unless she did everything just right and with some real authority. I said that if some 8th grade boy grabbed her though, she could do just fine, but she had to get over wanting to be nice if that happened. First you get his hands off you, and then you run. Getting girls (and women) to find the inner strength of outrage to channel into countering an attack is one of the hardest lessons I tried to teach so far. They have to find or develop it and then keep it lurking in wait for when it is needed.
I got to learn some more of the brown belt techniques from a 4th degree black belt in the adult class, so a good night was had by all.

9-1-10

Weight:226

Lifting:
5 minute warm up on bike.

Hip Belt Squats: 160x5, 180x3, 205x1. I tried for a 250 PR, but I’m still getting the hang of the set up with this rig. I carelessly picked out an EZ curl bar with a loose revolving sleeve and a spring collar that wouldn’t hold. I had a really bad moment standing up with the 250 when the front facing sleeve, plates, and collar slid forward a few inches and the collar failed. It’s a little unnerving when the bar is sitting right under your wedding tackle and rocks around like that. Fortunately I was not injured. Good thing too, because I plan on using that stuff some more later on. I just have to pay more attention to equipment selection in the future.

Power Clean: 135x5, 150x3, 170x1. I am going to play this one nice and slow. I’m going to sneak past my previous best on this of 185 by concentrating on form and speed a little at a time. My back was dodgy this morning and it still feels wobbly even now.

Pinch Grip: 130 lbs. for 30 seconds. PR

I’ve been debating going to jujitsu tonight. I didn’t sleep well last night and have been trying to blow out the cobwebs with a nap during my lunch hour and strategic hits off the caffeine bean throughout the afternoon. This happens a lot when I exercise at night a la jujitsu. I get a rush from the activity that either takes me hours to come down from and keeps me up late or disrupts my sleep. Sucks, but that’s the time frame I have to do jujitsu. My back is still feeling a little whacked but better than the morning. This is the juggling of rest and recovery against the results of the stuff you like to challenge yourself with that gets tricky to pull off successfully. Growing old is not for sissies.

Couple all this with the upcoming Great West Coast Road Rally 4.1, and I have to really evaluate how important this session is tonight. I’ll need to be as fresh as I can when I take my daughter back to school at Oregon State this weekend for her senior year. It’s 950 miles and at least 14 hours up there and then drive 950 more home again. I do it in one day each way. Last time I did it in 13 hours because I didn’t get out to move around. I was crippled with back spasms for a week. That won’t happen again, I’m getting up and out of the damn car every two hours to stretch this time. This all fortuitously falls during the deload portion of the 5/3/1 routine I'm doing, so if I miss Sunday’s workout it won’t be that big of a loss.

Today 9-2-10
Weight: 224. It looks like maybe the old self discipline is paying off again. Got to keep it going.

Got home last night and lost energy like a capacitor getting an isolated ground. The cobwebs rolled in with the fog coming off the Pacific and that was that. My back is not happy this morning for no accountable reason except maybe that swaying EZ curl bar yesterday morning may have put something awry. I don’t know, but all things considered it’s just as well that I didn’t get bounced a few dozen times into the mix last night with the upcoming drive. May try to see my chiro.

[Mark E. Hurling]

9-8-10
Weight: 224. No change since last week, but then again it is 8 lbs. down from 8-16-10. That’s about 2 lbs. a week weight loss, and I’ll be happy if I can even keep to 1 lb. a week loss until I drop 5-6 more lbs.

Only two more weeks until 60! Love it or hate it, it beats the hell out of the alternative. I am going to kick this upcoming decade in the butt. I finished the Great West Coast Road Rally 4.1 in fairly OK shape. The back is still tight from the 14 hour 950 mile drive up and back again from SoCal to Corvallis, OR, but it’s been worse so I’ll take it. I may try to get cracked again by my chiro if this doesn’t let up a little more today. That will determine if I get on the mat tonight for jujitsu. The prospect of doing backfalls on this ole back is a little daunting just now, but we’ll see.

I decided to take a week off lifting and then re-start next week with the 5/3/1 deload beginning a new cycle. The increasing load and intensity of the last weeks was satisfying especially with some of the PR’s I managed to hit; so after studying PPST the last several days for those who are long in the tooth lifters requiring longer intensity and recovery cycles, I decided to get some good recovery under my belt and then push on for some more advances in the next cycle.

The back felt better as the day progressed so I soldiered on and went to jujitsu. The kid’s class I help Master Bellman teach was an eye opener tonight. He has always had even the lower ranks start to teach (kids included) early on but he made a point of telling the orange belts that they are being evaluated on their ability to teach the newer kids. He added that such experience will make them learn even better themselves. The kids and some of their parents were taken aback by this but not in a negative way, just surprised to be given the responsibility. It surprised me too. Some of those kids are good teachers too. I did get some attitude from a couple of the Japanese orange belts. One has become arrogant in the last month after his promotion to 2nd degree. The other one gave me an eye roll when I corrected him on a minor form flaw. Bad move on his part because I called him on it and told him to never roll his eyes at me again. His father saw and heard what happened from the sidelines and gave the kid a look that I am amazed didn’t cause the kid’s gi to spontaneously combust. Oh, he’ll have hell to pay on the way home tonight. No matter how many generations, the Japanese never assimilate to the point that his kind of disrespect doesn’t get hammered out of them in short order when detected by the parents.

The adult class went well until my right erector spinae and oblique started to spasm. We were doing a lot of circular head and neck displacement which twists the rest of the spinal column into a corkscrew until you collapse like a shaken stack of play room blocks, so that’s probably what brought it on. Master Bellman finished the class with some demonstrations of ki disturbance and energy strips that never cease to amaze all and sundry, including me; and I have seen him do this more than few times over the years. He had a purple belt extend his arm and a blue belt try to pull it down. It didn’t work too well for the blue belt until he simply by brought his hand under another the purple belt’s extended arm. It dropped like a stone. I could hear Yoda chuckling dryly in the background.

9-9-10

Weight: 224

I did some low intensity cardio this morning, at least it was supposed to be low intensity until I added in some clap pushups and box jumps along with a timed thick bar hold of 185 lbs. That fired the heart rate up to over 145 bpm. I wear a heart rate monitor to keep an eye on things so to better evaluate just how much cardio I am getting outside of the GXP’s I do. I did foam rolling and stretches which still kept my heart rate at 106 to 115 bpm, or 65% of MHR. The total time was 30 minutes. Sleep was good last night and the back seems to have recovered nicely.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Weight: 224

Lifefitness GXP with handles again. This morning's session was odd because it took 7 1/2 minutes to finally get my heart rate up to 85%. This usually ramps up anywhere from 3 1/2 to 4 minutes, and I used the same machine at the same level of resistance. Might be the loss of weight is taxing the heart less, or the rest, or some combination of both. Have to keep an eye on this.

New foam rollers in the gym today which is good because when you are north of 200 lbs. they tend to get squishy after several months. I like a hard roller to really mash down on the spine to get the erectors and vertebrae back where they belong. I work out at a Gold's and God knows I have seen them come in for plenty slagging over the years, but these guys replace and maintain their equipment on a regular basis. They even have a trap bar and bumper plates. No beefs from me there. Of course there are all the usual suspects you would figure to find there that make you wonder about the gene pool and thinning the herd, but then the same could be said for every police department, rail road, or aerospace company I've ever worked at too.

[Mark E. Hurling]

9-11-10

Weight: 224

No jujitsu today for us mere mortals. Black belt only class this morningat the dojo. Instead I did some low intensity cardio in the form of a 30 minute walk along the ocean. The dolphins were out jumping around and doing tail stand walks like you see at Sea World. The pelicans are coming back in numbers this fall like always. You watch them fly in a wing tip to wingtip formation of 4 – 5 along a breaking wave face and you understand how naval aviation was inspired. I love the looks of this place, but the fruit, nut, and flake ratio is getting too high here. I can hardly wait 5-6 more years to retire and get out of this madhouse.

9-12-10

Weight: 224

Lifting: This is a deload week on the 5/3/1 so poundage is light. This is the first time I’ve actually done a deload, and just completed a first cycle of 5/3/1 so I’m still learning as I go.

5 minute warm up on a stationary bike
Bench Press: 95x5, 120x5, 145x5.
Chin-ups: -130x5, -110x5, -85x5. This may look a little odd, but unlike most, I don’t treat chins as an assistance exercise. I also calculate body weight plus the max single I eke out with added weight. I then work back the percentages of the total in accord with Wendler’s formulas through the remaining weeks. This results in negative numbers for most of the chins on a counterweighted chin-up machine. I’ll see how well this works.

I wore my heart rate monitor to see just how a deload affected the heart rate under a low intensity load. The lifting portion only took about 11 minutes since I only rested a little over a minute between sets. My heart rate stayed above 55% the whole time, about like taking a brisk walk. Add in the warm up, along with the foam roller and stretching, and I got 34 minutes of low intensity cardio.

9-12-10

Off and resting today which normally would mean nothing to report; BUT I did drop another pound to 223 this morning. It took a little bit of teeth gritting restraint with food and some potent potables to do this, but there it is. In the past, I would have just upped the cardio. I did that for years, all through the 80’s and 90’s, and even the 00’s. No more though. Will power to do a push away is easier to muster than to detract from my jujitsu or lifting from too much time on the rat wheel.

[Mark E. Hurling]

9-14-10

Weight: 224. Maybe a premature self-congratulation yesterday, but I’m going to continue to grind the fat down and out. I’ll be doing jujitsu three times this week, so that’ll be a boost of the old calorie burn.

I did the Life Fitness elliptical GXP again to test my fitness level from last week’s experience. I have been setting the resistance level at 14 and maintaining a speed of 60 rpm. It would take me up to 85% of MHR in about 4 to 4 ½ minutes as the intervals ramped up the intensity. It happened almost exactly the same way again this morning. I’ll be trying this again later in the week and if I get the same result, well then it’s time to up the resistance level. I want to vary this cardio routine more, and I will once I get a baseline again; but first I want to determine what and/or where that new baseline is.

Jujitsu tonight had one of those small revelations that you get when you finally pay attention. During the kids class master Bellman demonstrated a very basic escape from a wrist grab. It is the first one all beginning students learn and I have seen it demonstrated for over six years since I started with this system. Tonight for the first time, I actually heard Master Bellman describe how to anchor the grabbed wrist and forearm against the body and use this back up mass with a turn of the hips to get the hand free. This has happened several times over the last year with basic techniques that I have seen repeatedly. It’s a good indicator of how much we actually miss when we think we have learned all we need to know about something. Back was OK, but fatigued.

9-15-10

Weight: 223

Lifting: Last deload session this morning. 5 minute warm up on the bike.

Hip Belt Squats: 90x5, 115x5, 135x5. Why this weird exercise? My answer is it gives Mr. Lumbars a chance to recover from the more stressful dead lifts and bouncing off the mat at jujitsu. It also gives my quads one heck of a cooking. If Magnus Samuelsson used them, that’s good enough for me. I know, he was recovering from his bicep tear, but just read about Harvey Farrell in John McCallum’s article about hip belt squats Keys to Progress. He seemed to do just fine with them.

Power Clean: 70x5, 85x5, 105x5. Back was stressed a little, but feels OK now.

Pinch Grip: 132 lbs. for 30 seconds. PR!

Foam roller and stretches. The spine crackled away loud enough to get a couple of looks from bystanders this morning. The hard new roller is doing it’s job.

[Mark E. Hurling]

9-15-10
I forgot about jujitsu again last night for yesterday’s entry. The kids class was chaotic. We figured with school starting it would lightly attended but nope, at least 25+. We also had a police Explorers cadre of nearly a dozen older kids show up. Madness, sheer madness I tell you. The regulars couldn’t concentrate with the new big kids on the mat. It was cat herding at it’s finest.

The adult class for me was working with a green belt on this throws and choking technique. He knew his stuff, but hadn’t had an opportunity to practice it lately, so my assignment last night was letting him work me over and correcting his minor technique flaws. One of the techniques is called a rice bale throw. The attacker (me in this case) comes in for a low tackle at waist or knee height. The defender wraps his arm around the attackers neck and rolls backward carrying the attacker over his shoulder and lands on his back. The defender keeps his hold on the neck and rolls to one side applying a naked choke. It’s something of a cross between the stomach throw (tomoenage) in judo and a suplex. The attacker gets slammed really hard in that fall. When you hit it sends a tremendous shock wave through the central nervous system from the heels through the pelvis, up the spine, and ends at the back of the skull. The weakest link in this chain always feels it the most. In my case the L4 and L5. It took him about six times to get it right. This morning my back feels like I’ve been worked over by Joe Pesci using a baseball bat.

Now a question here. I include these jujitsu entries because it is part of my training. What happens there has a direct impact on my ability to train and how hard I can do so. It is part of the choices I make (and we all do to one extent or another) for the physical activities we engage in. I recognize that this may seem stupid, superfluous, and self indulgent to include here. So I’d like to take this opportunity to elicit some commentary from viewers here, am I better advised to just keep this stuff to myself, or does it add any value or interest to this log?

9-16-10
Oh yeah; weight today was 221! OOORAH!

[Oldster]

Wow Mark, you are making some good gains! You are losing weight pretty quickly though, pretty soon it will affect your lifts.

Keep the good work up.

Oldster

[Mark E. Hurling]

Weight: 222

Thanks for the encouragement Oldster. Coming from someone with your lifts, it is just too kind. I know you're right about the weight loss, I've made that mistake a few times over the decades in the past. My goal is to drop one weight class so I'm just a few pounds away from getting under 220. When I hit 219 and stabilize there, I'll have made it.

Now for the latest in my shifting cardio baseline. I did the same GXP on the same machine at the same speed and resistance levels. It took 6 1/2 minutes to hit 85% MHR this time, a minute less than the two times before. I didn't sleep well last night so that may have had some effect. In any event, this enough empirical data for me though. Time to up the resistance a click to 15 and see what happens then.