I'll putz around with some different grips then. Thanks.
Weight: 247
GXP today with foam roller and stretching. These were real Godsends with my back and hamstrings tighter than tight from a lot of standing yesterday.
'Probably' not, though if I were you I would be experimenting and finding out if a different width would be painless. It is a strange thing about how just a few inches on either side can made such a dramatic different. Case in point, a wide grip with my pinkies on the power rings hurts my left shoulder so bad I just couldn't bench. So I found a close grip (16") was absolutely painless. Now some 6 or 7 years later I'm finding that the CG bothers my elbows a bit since I can't get my elbows in close enough due to tricep/lat thickness. Now the 20" wide grip feels so good I can hardly stand it, which contributes to my new tied PR I set last week.
It NEVER hurts to experiment a bit.
I'll putz around with some different grips then. Thanks.
Weight: 247
GXP today with foam roller and stretching. These were real Godsends with my back and hamstrings tighter than tight from a lot of standing yesterday.
Weight: 247.5 Not the rate of loss I want, but I'll take it.
This week has been a bitch, actually this whole month has been a bitch. First an internal review three weeks ago to prepare for a government inspection this week. It was a very stressful and tiring five days, so I bagged on jujitsu and Thursday's lifting session because dealing with a rubber gloved (IG) Inspector General type of review just drained me. To which I might add, I met a new weasel dick that I hope stays well away from the West coast in general and me in particular henceforth. Asswipe.
Jujitsu this morning had a small group of us concentrating on tuning up our falling technique. Even I had some things that needed fixing along with the blue belts. We also had to put our own mates down over the other interlocking rubber tiles on the floor for the other MA outfit that we share the dojo with, a ninjutsu bunch of all things. Apparently we are damaging the tiles by causing the interlocking tabs to tear from the way we do our techniques. I can only surmise that the twisting, lateral thrust, and standing torques we use as we maneuver into attacks and counters causes this. An interesting and odd phenomenon. Victor a third degree black belt and probably the only one who may be stronger than me was working me over again, with an eye to making sure I was executing the techniques correctly and not just blasting through them by overpowering my other partners. Can't do that with him very easily.
He spent some time talking about how when you block, it isn't just about keeping the strike from connecting, but also blocking in such a way as to take the striking limb out by numbing it or otherwise disabling it with the force and location of the block. As in really hard and downward. It feels like sparks want to fly out your hand when you get tagged by one of these, and it takes you entirely off line and balance often staggering to the side. He called it attacking the weapon. When you add a quick dropping of your center of gravity by bending you knees you add your bodyweight to the block and about 30-50% more hit capacity. My right arm is still a little numb from a few of his blocks. I was tired all through the session from this weeks festivities at work, but I made it and am now planning on relaxing for the rest of the day.
Kinda surprised he didn't offer to rub the beat up areas. It does usually help, and is the polite thing to do when you're dumping a lot of force into someone's nerve clusters. Too touchy feely?
We do that at the point of contact and downstream of the meridian point affected and he did today too. It didn't help today though. I think it's probably because I was and am so damn tired and still sparkling with stress through out my CNS from this week.
Ah. Sorry to hear it. Also didn't mean to cast aspersions on your training associates. Also, I saw a clip today on a news show on PBS that made me climb inside your head. I'll see if I can find it. Afterwards, I went "This is what conservatives think of when they think of liberals." I mean, I already knew that, but my annoyance turned into a sort of visceral, unforgettable horror when I contemplated it from the point of view of a conservative. And then it sort of made me want to kill everyone involved in the production of the story. Or at least smack them in the head. Especially the doctor. Though I will say the Hotdog Octopi are pretty cool.
Last edited by tertius; 07-31-2011 at 12:15 AM.
Weight: 245.5
No problem with the question. We're pretty good at quick minor repairs of the minor to major havoc created by strikes to the nerve centers. I just haven't talked about it much. Probably not at all now that I reflect on it. That was some clip, but I only get really volcanic over people like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the democrat version of Man Coulter who I am also not enamoured of. Anthony Weiner was another one who would tick me off too. I've said often enough, we don't have to agree, but we can at least endeavor to be civil. Until I get really pissed, then I kind of forget that resolution when the red mist descends over my eyes.
5 minute warmup on the bike. (Medium Day)
Bench Press: 195 x 5 x 5. I moved my grip out a little to see how that felt. The first set was a little uncomfortable, but the last two felt reasonably OK.
Squat: I warmed up and got to 275, dipped my knees and felt the load begin to bow my back, so I decided to call it a day. I haven't been talking much about this but my back has felt unstable the last week or so. I'd bore Hell out of everyone if I talked about all my geezerish aches and pains. It didn't stop me from DL's but squats, well that was a different matter. My chiro (bless her) worked on me Thursday and said instead of my usual suspects of L-4 and L-5, it up higher around the T-1 this time. I do know it was wobbly for nearly a week and a half. The session didn't take which is also unusual, so I am attributing this to the week's stress given the location and the buildup getting worse by Monday afternoon. I've had this lock up on me so bad about 10 years ago from similar circumstances, I couldn't reach up over my head. This is nowhere near as bad but it is daunting to try to squat with. So back on Monday for some more chassis realignment.
I then did a GXP and finished off with lots of foam rolling and stretching.
I'm glad to see you feel a bit better. T1 can sure cause some problems! A problem spot for me after a dump truck roll over has always been C7-T1. Apparently a tough spot to adjust. Glad to see your gal gotcha feeling a bit better.
Have you tried some high reps to warm up for your benches? As I've gotten older I've needed more and more higher rep warmup sets. Instead of causing me problems with heavier weights it instead seems to prepare me. After playing with reps using my main warmup weight of 240lbs, I've experimented with reps as high as 25. After a few years I've found the perfect amount to be somewhere between 12 and 15 reps. From there on up it doesn't seem to matter what rep range is used, from 10's down to just singles.
Maybe give something like that a try and use it as your warmup during every single bench day.