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

[Mark E. Hurling]

I thought I caught a whiff of Shatoe in that story you linked a while back. You're right about TBC, it takes over your waking consciousness once you start it.

[tertius]

Mark, I fiddled with the Hi-row machine today, fer shitsngiggles. Not nearly as strong as you, obviously, but interesting movement.
It just occurred to me that you never seem to do chin-ups. Why is this?

[Mark E. Hurling]

Weight: 247

I did a GXP and finished out with foam roller and stretching.

I did do chins for a few months a ways back, but as I have said once or twice I suck at them. Of course now I know why with that rat bastard Tanita having screwed me over on weight gains as it kept indicating progressive weight loss over nearly 8 months. So it's my fat ass. I'll try them again in a little while, after I make one more run at 225 in the OHP. In spite of all the slagging about machines here, Hammer makes some good ones for the upper back pulling movements in my opinion. Much better than a cable pulldown. I found that their bench pressing machines never failed to give me tendinitis in the elbows for some reason no matter how I varied my grip.

[Eric K]

...In spite of all the slagging about machines here, Hammer makes some good ones for the upper back pulling movements in my opinion...

I gather that a strong upper back is essential to a good press; probably why your's is so strong.

...I found that their bench pressing machines never failed to give me tendinitis in the elbows for some reason no matter how I varied my grip.

This is probably just a result of the forced line of action inherent to a machine.

[Mark E. Hurling]

On the way to jujitsu last night I noticed that Temple Menorah had it's usual Redondo cop car in the parking lot for Rosh Hashana. Terrible that it requires police protection to worship in safety.

The kids last night were profoundly lackadaisical and loosey goosey. They improved in the last 20 minutes, but was herding cats par excellence through much of the session.

The adult class had me paired up with the recently arrived 13 year old blue belt from the kids class. He struggled with a few of the new techniques we got shown last night because the bar has been raised for him. But he hung in. We worked on wrist grab counters where the defender uses a circular step around to move past and behind the linear force exerted by the grab. Once there, a simple move of the defenders hand, wrist, and arm will draw the attacker back and off balance to a fall if they don't release their hold immediately. We also worked the shoulder drop move from a wrist grab. The wrist is grabbed and instead of pulling back the defender steps into and slightly across with the opposite foot and puts a shoulder into the solar plexus or sternum of the attacker. At the very least it knocks them back a step or so and can knock the wind out. We worked on a chest push counter where the attacker's hand is swept downward to the belt line bending the fingers and wrist back and then reaching under their elbow and pulling up. Very bad for the wrist and fingers and to a lesser degree, the attacker's elbow. Finally, we did some rear bear hug counters. One involves rotating the attaker's hands upward and rotating the palms outward. This changes the configuration of the forearm so that they can't "dig in" to the torso and so the defender slips right out of the hug. Another variant was a delaying and prevention move to being picked up off the feet from this attack. The defender simply grapevines a leg in between one of the attacker's and hooks the shin and instep in behind their calf. This kid weighs 75 lbs. and I could not pick him up no matter how hard I pulled. It's the picking up by the bootstraps phenomenon because they are anchored with that foot and leg.

My back has always been strong Eric. These days though I take a lot of care with the lower back because of the pounding it gets from the falls in jujitsu. So I don't try to gut out the utmost in my squats and deadlifts so as not to end up with down time from a tweak. I can't recall if it was Jowett or Liederman from the early 20th Century who said that the lower back was the keystone to strength because it was so pivotal in the big results producing moves. They were right though. Even Arthur Jones, as much as he got wrong, was correct in one of his strength bulletins when he talked about how without the connecting linkage of the lower back to transmit force from either the upper or lower parts of the body in concert with each other, no one would realize meaningful strength. As for the Hammer bench press; yeah true, but I figured it was angle of the handles that did it more than anything else.

[Eric K]

One definitely needs lumbar strength for power transfer. That was the biggest indicator for me to switch from pulling every session to pulling every other session; when the point came that my back was still recovering from deadlifts, my squats suffered. You have a tough balance to work, with your dedication to jiu-jitsu; I'm sure you've got a good handle on it, though. (Hell, you can't be doing too much wrong with a press like yours.)

[ZKP]

Mark

Have you tried a shitload of singles? If you could press, say, 215 for 15 singles in one session, I'm sure 225 would go up. I've found you can train singles more often as well. Just food for thought. Your issue might not be strength per say, but expressing it as a single, hard lift. Good luck.

[Mark E. Hurling]

One definitely needs lumbar strength for power transfer. That was the biggest indicator for me to switch from pulling every session to pulling every other session; when the point came that my back was still recovering from deadlifts, my squats suffered. You have a tough balance to work, with your dedication to jiu-jitsu; I'm sure you've got a good handle on it, though. (Hell, you can't be doing too much wrong with a press like yours.)

I haven't mentioned lately but early on in this log I used to talk about the balancing act involved between lifting, jujitsu, and recovery, especially with respect to the graeco-roman shocks to the lower back from falls. Like I said to Gwynn, it's like staying stable on a four legged stool with one of the legs missing and it gets trickier as you get older. In the nearly 7 years I've been practicing jujitsu I can tell the difference from when I was in my mid-50's.

Mark

Have you tried a shitload of singles? If you could press, say, 215 for 15 singles in one session, I'm sure 225 would go up. I've found you can train singles more often as well. Just food for thought. Your issue might not be strength per say, but expressing it as a single, hard lift. Good luck.

I've thought about that and it may have some merit and application. Once I get this PR out of the way, I am planning on trying it for a cycle or so.

Speaking of age and recovery, I was too beat to get up at O-dark 30 this morning and lift. Work has had me putting in some longer hours and the usual sleep disruption that happens on the nights I do jujitsu were more than I could deal with. So I slept in.

[yorick]

I've thought about that and it may have some merit and application. Once I get this PR out of the way, I am planning on trying it for a cycle or so.

That advice from ZKP seems like a pretty good option.

I was able to hit 290 on the bench press at about 175 lbs bodyweight by doing a lot of heavy singles, doubles and triples. I mostly did a lot of pyramiding up and down. I would bench once a week and hit something like 225x5, 245x3, 275x1, then come back down.

I've been back on the linear progression train trying to get to 300. 225 for 3 x 5 felt pretty tough recently. If I can't keep up the LP with microloading, I might go back to the pyramiding scheme.

[Jonathon Sullivan]

I haven't mentioned lately but early on in this log I used to talk about the balancing act involved between lifting, jujitsu, and recovery, especially with respect to the graeco-roman shocks to the lower back from falls. Like I said to Gwynn, it's like staying stable on a four legged stool with one of the legs missing and it gets trickier as you get older. In the nearly 7 years I've been practicing jujitsu I can tell the difference from when I was in my mid-50's.

Balancing strength training recovery and martial arts is an art in itself.