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

[BillBrownley]

Mark--thanks for checking in on my log. Congratulations on your Squats. I find 300 is a significant mental barrier as well. It goes better if I don't think about it. I am about ready to go to a leaning out stage. At 6'1" 270 it is time to drop some weight.

Thinking of this for working out: 1 day a week heavy--Squat, press, dead lift. Two days barbell complexes--a string of exercises that work together, all reps done consecutively, example--deadlifts, power cleans, snatches, back squats, shoulder presses, front squats, done. Each for eight, never put the bar down. You can play with reps and weights. One day LSD (walking the dogs--two boxers and an American bulldog). The bulldog kind of looks like Rip. Two days tabata intervals--work/rest ratio of 2/1, you can vary length and exercise--but you must go as hard as you can for the 2. Would like to work bench in--not sure where.

Diet--who knows--done Atkins, Primal, Paleo--nothing seems to stick, never going to be able to do zone--way too much measuring and so on.

Any suggestions welcome.

Your press numbers are very impressive. I feel weak whenever I look at them.

Thanks, Bill

[BillBrownley]

Mark--thanks for checking in on my log. Congratulations on your Squats. I find 300 is a significant mental barrier as well. It goes better if I don't think about it. I am about ready to go to a leaning out stage. At 6'1" 270 it is time to drop some weight.

Thinking of this for working out: 1 day a week heavy--Squat, press, dead lift. Two days barbell complexes--a string of exercises that work together, all reps done consecutively, example--deadlifts, power cleans, snatches, back squats, shoulder presses, front squats, done. Each for eight, never put the bar down. You can play with reps and weights. One day LSD (walking the dogs--two boxers and an American bulldog). The bulldog kind of looks like Rip. Two days tabata intervals--work/rest ratio of 2/1, you can vary length and exercise--but you must go as hard as you can for the 2. Would like to work bench in--not sure where.

Diet--who knows--done Atkins, Primal, Paleo--nothing seems to stick, never going to be able to do zone--way too much measuring and so on.

Any suggestions welcome.

Your press numbers are very impressive. I feel weak whenever I look at them.

Thanks, Bill

[Mark E. Hurling]

Thank you for your kind words Bill. I'm contemplating pushing the edge of my envelope on my next session of squats to 315, even if just for a single, just to get past the next mental barrier of three big wheels. I'll probably decide the morning I get to Gold's depending on my physical and mental state. As for your description of the work out is that a question regarding what I think of it, or a suggestion? Either way a little explanation of some of the things I only allude to in my lifting sessions might be in order. On my heavy days, I take 3-4 minutes between sets to recover. As a result, my heart rate (HR) stays around 65% of my Maximum Heart Rate (MHR) through out my lifting and even during my foam rolling and stretching. On my light and medium days, I cut the rest to 1 minute and sometimes less. I also superset my pull ups and presses on medium days, and superset the front squats with presses on the light day. I periodically wear a heart rate monitor just to spot check the aerobic value of any given session of lifting. Today for instance, I wore the monitor for my light session. My average HR was 133 which comes in at 83% of MHR and my entire session with warm ups, lifting, some delt rehab, and stretching ran 43 minutes. Oh, I am so OCD about some of this shit, and I don't want to make a mockery of myself by talking about it or recording it too much, but that's some of the stuff I note in the background.

5 minute warm up on the bike (Light day)

Tested the delt with a set of 10 with an empty bar on the bench press. Delt felt almost completely better, but my awareness of the potential for greater owieness urges me to be cautious until this little fucking demon in my right front delt gets exorcised well and properly.

Overhead Press: 130 x 8 x 3 + 11. This doesn't bother the delt at all, thank heavens.

Front Squat: 135 x 3 x 6. This didn't hurt the delt exactly, but the pressure on it is apparent.

Delt Rehab: I forgot the paper with the rehab protocols I got from Jamie so I kluged together some of the exercises I could remember. All were done for 2 sets of 15 reps.
Face Pulls, Cuban Rotations, External Rotation, Internal Rotations. The external rotations were very tender. This alone tells me I neglected pre-hab and maintenance of delt muscle group balance for too long, and was almost certainly the prime mover behind my current problem.

Foam roller and stretching. The right delt now feels a little tender. Maybe from the rehab stuff. Time to get the cold pack out of the freezer at work.

[Jamie J. Skibicki]

I do what I can. Bad shoulders suck.

[BillBrownley]

It was more a question about what I was going to do, since the reality is I am remarkably self centered. However--I like hearing about your workouts. Press doesn't hurt--but bench does? I know that story. Plus--I get stuck at 115 with presses. Very strange--last time out was real solid with 3x5 115. I would expect to go up--but the usual pattern is--I micro load (total of 3 pounds, for some reason can't get it. Then the next time I back down to 115, I can't get all three sets, then after that I can and it feels solid--then the cycle repeats.

Bench--since going to the narrow grip--progression has been good, very little pain, just not as much weight as I used to do.

Squats and deads are seemingly "strong" exercises for me. Upper body exercises are not. I am not sure why there is such a difference between my upper and lower body weights. If you saw me--you would think my upper body was dominant. 325 for 3 sets of 5 was not too hard, 362 for 5 with deads was not hard, and I have very recently been at 379. I know I can double 409.

When I am going heavy I take 3-4 minutes. The purpose of the complexes is to get HR up, lean out, still work on weights/strength, but obviously more oriented to muscular endurance/hypertrophy. Yet--I don't want to lose strength gains, and would like to still improve that way--at least a little.

Though I may be hoping for too much.

Re: Shoulders--Rip always talks about doing nothing but chins and presses with lots of warm up on the press.

Thanks, Bill

[Mark E. Hurling]

OK, I got it now, and thought that was the case, but my aging brain doesn't always process the message correctly via the internet as I've discovered a few times by flashing over in Ends and Pieces. I'm trying to hold firm to my resolve of making sure I understand before reacting lately. My own experiences with Tabatas and things like that is that as the reps increase for me my form goes to shit, even with lighter weights. Thats one reason why I talk some of the shit that I do about Crossfit. Intervals of things like on a cross country ski machine type elliptical (to get the upper body engaged) seem to do well for me as does running on a treadmill. I keep stalling on the 8% ramp down the 30 foot bluff at the beach near my house for some reason, I just have to get my ass down there and do it. Before I hurt my delt I returned to some heavy bag striking intervals too. More of those are on hold until I get this delt back up to speed. My focus is on likely real world engagements, but the reality is 30-60 intervals of anything with commensurate rest or lower intensity intervals between, burn fat just fine. In reality what I do is a variant of HIIT and that includes the lifting on medium and light days. As for as the upper/lower body bias, at one point some years back my upper body was way behind my lower body size and capacity. Hanging in with the pick and shovel in the trenches got me where I am now. I think for most it really is a matter of time and patience.

[Mark E. Hurling]

No jujitsu today, the black belts were at Tom Reichenbach's memorial service. I didn't feel I knew him well enough to attend in spite of my deep respect for him during the limited contacts we had at the dojo. So I decided to get off the pot and try out some sprint intervals. I headed on down to Esplenade Ave. where there is a 30' bluff overlooking the Pacific. I paced off the ramp with my pedometer and it came in at 80 yards with an 8% grade. After a few gradually faster walks and trots up and down I took off. A couple of dads and their 4-5 sons were waling up the ramp at one point and I started up and halfway to the top heard the sounds of other feet behind me and a "You're catching him!" The boys decided to follow me. I apologized to the dads for riling them up and they just laughed and said, No it's OK, you inspired them sir." Sir. These guys were in their mid 30's. This is the equivalent of women in despair when they get called ma'am and it makes them feel old. Well screw it, I was wearing my Old Guys Rule t-shirt.

Later I went to Gold's with Dearly Beloved and worked on delt rehab a la the Diesel Crew link from Jamie. I think I'll concentrate on retractions and external rotations because protractions and internal rotations seem to aggravate the delt where the pulls do not. In any event, if I'm correct, this is the result of neglecting rear pulling movements that brought this on. I also tried out floor presses with an EZ-curl bar to see how that treated the delt. Not much better than bench presses, so that's out. I also tried cable tricep pushdowns because if this keeps up, I may drop all pressing movements for a while. I've noticed that after even overhead pressing the delt doesn't feel happy even though it doesn't hurt when I'm doing it. The pressdowns felt fine so I know I have them to keep up some pushing strength if I need it.

[tertius]

If you're interested, I have rendered a bunch of our techniques into a narrative list of 4-5 one sentence steps that make sense to me that I can send you. I'll even translate them into something more intelligible than standard Knurling-speak if need be.

I totally missed this, until I was over is Skibicki's log and saw you mentioned it. Sure thing. hit me up.

[Mark E. Hurling]

tertius, I'm always happy to send things along to my friends. I have this stuff on my PC at work. I'll send a sample along Monday, and if it makes sense to you, I have some more.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Dearly Beloved and I are both having a slight relapse of the plague from a few weeks back. More hawking, coughing, and feeling like your head is in a fog from the congestion. But onward to Gold's!

5 minute warm up on the bike (Heavy Day)

Overhead Press: 180 x 5 x 3. Delt felt OK and the reps were solid and smooth. I'm not going to test the delt with a bench press until it feels good all the time. The ache some hours or a day after overhead pressing will be my barometer for this. As a proactive measure I've been using the cold pack on it since I got home.

Sumo Deadlift: 365 x 1. A little frustrating because I was going for 3. On the first shot at it, my weight shifted forward or the bar moved forward or both and of course things got bad fast. I fought it halfway up and said screw it, not worth the potential injury so I set it down. After a few deep breaths and a careful reset I tried again and up it went, but slow and hard. I tried for rep #2 and flexed the bar but I left behind too much of myself in that first failed attempt so I decided next time. This also could have been the result of a significant discovery (for me anyway) I made yesterday. Master Bellman is always talking about the importance of bending the knees in jujitsu but beyond lowering the center of gravity has never explained more thoroughly. I found that shifting from standing with locked knees to bent knees shifts your bodyweight forward from heel dominant balance toward the ball of the foot. I've been thinking about the implications of that ever since, and it may have resulted in a break in form for this. On the plus side, I just about ran out of room on the loading sleeves of the bar with three big red bumper plates and a yellow 25 pounder. They made a very impressive "whump" when set back down, even on the failed attempt. Maybe even more impressively on the failed attempt. It also looked pretty cool too. I know, I'm an old sillyhead.

I then did 10 minutes of delt rehab and finished off with my old friends the foam roller and stretched. Getting ready for a nap now to try to out sleep the plague. Rip Van Knurling.