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

[Mark E. Hurling]

Went in to our jacuzzi when I got home last night to dull the soreness and dinged up feeling in the upper body and then a little in the lower back as the day progressed. Felt a good deal better afterward. Woke up this morning with some of it returned and an entirely new spot on the right rear side of the thoracic back. Right around where the lower traps probably meet the lower lat attachments. Or it could a rib or two got out of alignment. I've got a scheduled appointment with the chiro this afternoon, thank God, so she'll no doubt work her usual magic on me.

I was planning on doing a GXP this morning but my heart rate was high, in the upper 80's and lower 90's so I decided to check the VO2 max through a fitness test instead. I tested out at 36.6 just at the bottom end of excellent for 60+ geezers, but it still represented a 10-15% drop from the 40's and 42's I usually test at. I've been feeling tired this week and I think the PR's along with the stupid and accidental peak loading in the deadlift from the last several weeks has caught up with me. That and the unaccustomed pull ups with at 5 x 5. I had originally planned to ease in to those by starting with sets of 3 working into 5 x 5, but my dick got hard and diverted the necessary blood flow from my big head because of the success with the PR's. In spite of my best efforts to back down a little and retrench, my ego just found another outlet. Next week that is exactly what I'll do, 5 sets of 3.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Terrible night's sleep. Big time brain gallop over work related Bravo Sierra. The sub routine kicked in at O dark 30 and my brain started polling the extremities for a suituation report. All remote stations reported in OK but the brain was severely fogged from lack of sleep and and too many neurons firing all night. Sleeping in would not have helped so I figured I'd blow through the morning surfing the crest of an endorphin wave and hopefully things would go well. We'll see later.

5 minute warmup on the bike.

DB One Arm Push Press: 40 x 5 x 5. Fast and light. I've never done these before and I can see already that the stabilizing factor of one DB will be a major factor. Felt good though, despite a lot of odd looks from the usual morning suspects. I learned my lesson from pull ups so I didn't go for the gusto this morning. I'll build up to more challenging weight as I get the feel for this move.

Bench Press: 155 x 8 x 3 + 160 x 15. Again fast and lots of reps on the last set. Try for 20 next week.

Back Extension: 90 x 10 x 3.

Abbreviated foam rolling and stretching to get into work early and git 'er done.

[BillBrownley]

See? the maturity/ego checking thing can be useful. Just not everywhere.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Too true. The endorphins sttod me in good stead this morning and everything went waaay better than I expected.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Very hard inspiring myself to get out of bed and onto the mat this morning, I'm still recovering from erratic sleep and probable overtraining with the iron. But off to jujitsu guzzling coffee all the way. I drew the short straw again and got paired up with the OCD green belt. He is getting better about that but what a test of patience. We worked on a wide variety of stuff today starting with ground techniques. Several involved variations of reaching between the attacker's arms while they were in the mount and grabbing the chin and top of the head for a neck twist that extends the neck, jaw, and head in an upward and circular ellipse that opens the whole neck cavity for a nasty range of strikes. It felt like my molars got chipped and my eyes rattled like dice in a cup even though the green belt was not putting a lot of mustard behind the strike. It was head scrambling even though I outweighed him by 60 lbs. We did a whole range of standing strike deflections with back hand flag blocks that take the attacker of line and re-vector his linear strike into a downward circular arc that off balances them and sets them up for counterstrikes or takedowns of several varieties. We finished the session with counters from being trapped against a wall by an attacker. The first move is to form a perpendicular or T shaped angle to the attacker and then straight linear elbow shots into the torso or face. That and some knees into the front quads and groin. Just to keep the attacker wondering and off balance some low ridge hand strikes to the groin that are very hard to see coming from that low angle and body posture. I've never seen the wall techniques before or anything quite like that application of the counter attacks. Very interesting and informative session.

[Oldster]

I went out and did a little target shooting.

Much less painful than an attack to the knees or groin.

I shot very well.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Ooooo firearms! What'd you shoot and what kind of targets? When Dearly Beloved and I carried guns for a living we used to go to all kinds of matches and compete. Indoor and outdoor ranges with mainly B 27 silhouette targets but a few were the shoot/don't shoot friendly and foe targets. Now that could be nerve wracking and not just because you might lose points. I woke with nightmares a few times after those matches, except for the time I shot a news camera guy target. That lense on his camera looked just like the barrel of a shotgun. Dearly Beloved and I were neck and neck for shooting, she beat me at matches just as many times as I beat her. She was one hell of a shot. My favorite were bowling pin matches for time. You had to start from the holster and hit 5 pins on a table in 10 feet in front of you. You had to hit the pins dead center just below the narrow neck to make sure they would fly off the table or the shot didn't count. The pins represented a very realistic if narrow kill zone and the distance was the far end of the range where most engagements take place.

[Oldster]

I put a new 3.5-10X Leupold on my 35 Whelen CDL and resighted it back in. Too much scope but I ran into a great deal on the scope and couldn't pass it up and beats my 30 year old 2-7x Redfield all to heck. It will put 3 shots into anywhere from 5/8" to 1 1/4" at 100m just about any day. Recoil is somewhat stiff since it is a fairly light rifle.

Then I got into killing rocks with a Colt Anaconda in .44m. Rocks were lurking everywhere and believe me, they deserved to be taken down like so much vermin.

Surviving rocks that did not die instantly and tried to crawl off to heal were then smashed into oblivion with a Marlin .44 and its Ruger companion in .44 special.

The only competing I've ever done formally was in Trap and years ago I used to travel around quite a bit competing. Nothing major. It is so far to travel to compete and besides, I have a 200 yard range out behind the shop that used to be an old rock quarry where I can shoot until my hearts content. A neighboring town where I grew up is where I spent most of my time trap shooting and still do from time to time (every Thursday!).

My wife isn't much of a shooter but don't let that fool you. She is one of the best rifle shots I've ever seen and I see a LOT of shooters. 25 years ago I bought her a Colt Officers Model and she's never really like shooting it though she carries it and is a 'fair' shot. Hold your hat up at 25 yards and she'll put 6 rounds through it, but she ain't gonna shoot yer eye out! She can do a little better with her little Ruger .32 mag that she uses for her 'trailgun' when we are out hiking or camping. She won't look at a shotgun for some reason. For being over 50 years old she is a blood thirsty old coot and loves deer hunting almost as much as I do.

[Mark E. Hurling]

We never shot long guns much, just at the qualifications at the various places and agencies we worked at. Even then it was mainly Remington 870's and the occasional M-16 depending on who was the rangemaster. I did fire a lever action 45-70 once when I was out with some cop buddies just farting around at targets with the various and sundry guns we brought. What a recoil. Not a hard kick so much as a heavy push back at the shoulder. Never got into hunting. The Old Man didn't exactly actively encourage it because of some of his own experience in the Corps before heading out across the Pacific. He was stationed at Goleta Airfield (still there by Santa Barbara) and a big forest fire broke out. They sent his company out with Garands and a few hundred rounds of 30-06 each. Their orders were to shoot any animals that ran out of the forest burning. He would only say he killed a lot of deer that day. He never wanted to hunt after that. So neither did I.

5 minute warm up on the bike.

Bench Press: 240 x 5 x 3. This actually went 3-3-2-2-2. It felt heavy from the first set and I was sure I had 3 in me for the 3rd set but thank God for catch hooks, 'cause I couldn't rep it out. Even the last 2 sets were hard to get 2 out.

Squats: 280 x 2. If my hooded companion was whispering to me last week, he was right in my face this morning and talking in a slightly louder than conversational tone about what was supposed to be my top set of 3. "Your back, think of that you crazy old fuck. Isn't hurting? Can you get down far enough and not screw it up?" Well, I may have had a 3rd rep in me, but I decided to let that happen in the next shot at 280. The whole of last week took something out of me, especially Friday when I had a lot of stair climbing forced on me at work to clear up some problems. It's frustrating though, because I know the quads can handle this, just the low back gets fatigued and turns me into a coward sometimes.

I did a GXP consisting of Turkish Get Ups to get my heart rate up to 85% of MHR and then careened through some heavy bag striking intervals using every strike and block I could recall at short notice from mushin ryu. Palm heel, vertical fist, upper cuts, roundhouse, insanity blow, ridge hand high & low, knife hand and a bunch of knee kicks and roundhouses. Add to all that some clap push ups, box jumps, and some mat drills and I amped up to around 90% MHR as a result of pushing it a little more than I intended. I feel good, but hungry as hell after this workout. Foam roller and stretched to warm down.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Could not get out of bed and moving this morning (again). My left shoulder is nagging at me from who knows what, could be lifting, Saturday's festivities on the mat, the pull ups last week, or maybe slept wrong on it Sunday night. Add to that some minor tendonitis in both elbows around the brachioradialus, and a dicey left ankle and I'm just thoroughly grumpy and uncomfortable everywhere. But my lower back feels OK, in spite of the taxation I have put on it with squats and deadlifts in the last month or so. So at least some good news there. I just checked my Excel log and counted days and weeks and discovered that I have been at this current unbroken cycle since January 1 for a total of 14 weeks. Usually before now some minor disaster or Great West Coast Road Rally has caused me to miss a few days or a week. So what with my run to 215 in the press and repeated near max singles in the deadlift, my enthusiasm for pull ups last week, I need some down time. To include keeping out of the dojo. I may or may not hit some cardio later this week, I'll just see how the next couple of days go and then come back again on Sunday refreshed and ready to fill in those sets of 2 on the bench press with sets of 3. I'll be backing off from the 355 on the deadlift to 335 anyway so that should add to the R&R effect.