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

  1. #921
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    Sorry Gwynn, I was trying to soft peddle some other concept about my discontent regarding our daughter and I inadvertently swerved into a marginal denigration of dance. I know dancing is very demanding in terms of physicality. The real problem is that she's lazy when it comes to physical activity and fat, and not just a little either. I recognize I may get some grief for this comment, but there it is. Nothing I could do would motivate her. She did work out a little on the track and field team and golf in high school. She's a big young woman now at 22. Like most of us Hurlings where The Old Man's DNA overwhelmed lesser organisms like it was Iwo Jima, she reached 5' 10" by the time she was 15. Also well North of 200 lbs. Like me she competed in the discus and shot put in the field events. But then we have a large population of Samoans and other Pacific Islanders and they can toss those implements like nerfs. Maybe she'll get the ferrous religion later and get herself in some semblance of order, but that is her decision to make and her life to lead. My own poor attempts at programming were worse than useless.

  2. #922
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    Weight: 246.5

    5 minute warmup on the bike. (Heavy day)

    Overhead Press: 140 x 5 x 3. Today was the beginning of my re-programming of decades-old practices. Fortunately, this was not too hard with this movement. I picked up some good things from the book like hand spacing and breath control, but it seems like just accepting that layback in the press was not a bad thing and locking back into the full extension from last week was a big part of the battle. I had to experiment with hand width a little, but the breathing was a fairly significant technique.

    Pull Ups: Bdywt. x 5 x 3.

    Deadlift: Warmup sets of 3 with 95, 135, 185, 225, and finished with 245 x 2. I spent the morning getting the deadlift section under my belt before going to Golds because I knew that not doing a sumo style would be a huge break with what have become comfortable with. It was like the re-programming I had to undergo when I took up jujitsu and found that most of my judo hardwiring was the wrong circuitry and had to be torn out and replaced. Unlearning must get easier though once you've done it once already, because this seemed relatively easy. Narrowing my stance and widening my hand spacing had far less disruptive impact than I thought it would once I lined up my feet properly under the bar. Remarkable! I also discovered that my alternating group didn't feel right, but the double overhand felt perfect. That struck me as odd because a mixed grip has always felt find in DL's and shrugs. Of course my shins are barked up from keeping the bar in close so I'll have get some longer socks or start wearing sweat pants. I felt rock solid but stopped at 245 because I split the butt of my shorts.

    I finished with a GXP foam roller and stretching.

    The effect of the book even so far seems huge. I am going slow with small jumps to dial in the form. Also, my back is still not quite right from the power cleans Friday even after the second session with the chiro. So it's a good thing that there was no jujitsu yesterday for other than black belts. I continue to do presses and pull ups back to back, with a 3 minute interval between the two. This kept the heart rate cooking along at 135 for the full 62 minutes this workout took from stationary bike to last stretch. For 61 year old geezers, this represents over an hour at 85% of MHR. Lots 'o cardio from that. Also the shorts splitting gave me an idea for what to tell Dearly Beloved to give me for Christmas. Since she's been asking me what I want. So since my years-old Columbia hiking shorts are losing internal support for my boys and the seams are starting to split from wear and tear, that's what MS Claus will see that I get.

  3. #923
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    Thanks for the tip jon. I'll point her in that direction. Oh, she asked me to ask you if they will provide adequate support for the boys.

    What other stuff besides training? Why sir, whatever do you mean?

  4. #924
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    Weight: 250 !?

    5 minutes warmup on the bike. (Medium Day)

    Bench Press: 190 x 5 x 5. The re-programming continues. Strangely, breath control with this is harder for me. I'm using a wider grip around 24" and getting used to consciously changing my hand orientation slightly. Not really a problem, it just feels different. If anyone but Rip had said this I'd probably shine it on, but then again, I know what a subtle but significant difference the right samll hand movement can make from some of the joint locks we use.

    Curls: 65 x 5 x 5. Nothing to see here. Move along.

    Pinch Grip: 160 with nothing to show for it. I made three tries at this and could not hold it for even one second. Odd, because I've held this weight for 15-20 during earlier work with this weight. I can only conclude that the high humidity from the rain the last two days has some obscure effect on the plates that even chalk doesn't help overcome. The weather was much the same the last time I had this problem.

    Foam rolling and stretching for the conclusion. Hustled into work with a very demanding schedule all week. Late commitments tomorrow are looking make getting to jujitsu dicey.

  5. #925
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    Weight: 246.5

    Well. Not only did work overwhelm jujitsu on Wednesday night, but also lifting later in the week and even bled over into leaving me too drained to get bounced around on the tatami this morning. So why piss and moan about what I didn't, or more accurately couldn't muster the will to do? Not because I enjoy telling others of my misfortune and the woe is me. It's part of the balancing act of life and how tenuous that act can be when work demands overwhelm the rest of life. The physical demands are near zero, but the standing around this week supporting multiple tours as security minder or zampolit took a huge toll on my lower back. Moving around and walking during my normal course of things I do at work actually keeps me loose. But standing at parade rest making sure no one goes someplace they aren't supposed to starts a chain of events that after 5 minutes makes my posterior chain start to contract and lock up from the back of the knees to the erector spinae. Coupled with new duties I don't fully understand and this week's chaotic string events, it also cooked my grey matter.

    But, I did manage to get in some low intensity cardio along with my old friends foam rolling and stretching. Tomorrow I start squatting better courtesy of Rip.

  6. #926
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark E. Hurling View Post
    Sorry Gwynn, I was trying to soft peddle some other concept about my discontent regarding our daughter and I inadvertently swerved into a marginal denigration of dance. I know dancing is very demanding in terms of physicality. The real problem is that she's lazy when it comes to physical activity and fat, and not just a little either. I recognize I may get some grief for this comment, but there it is. Nothing I could do would motivate her. She did work out a little on the track and field team and golf in high school. She's a big young woman now at 22. Like most of us Hurlings where The Old Man's DNA overwhelmed lesser organisms like it was Iwo Jima, she reached 5' 10" by the time she was 15. Also well North of 200 lbs. Like me she competed in the discus and shot put in the field events. But then we have a large population of Samoans and other Pacific Islanders and they can toss those implements like nerfs. Maybe she'll get the ferrous religion later and get herself in some semblance of order, but that is her decision to make and her life to lead. My own poor attempts at programming were worse than useless.
    Hey, I didn't take it that way! But I know that dance as a profession makes many parents scratch their heads and wonder how their child will manage to feed him or herself, much less get health insurance etc. Sounds like your kid is not heading into dance as a profession? At 22, she should already be there if she is. I think it's great that she's 5'10" and 200 pounds, especially as a discus thrower. But the dance world is not ready for that body type and probably never will be. She will find her own way. :-) P.S. I was 5'8" by the time I was ten years old. It is NOT easy to be a big girl child.

  7. #927
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    Nov 2009
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    Indiana
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark E. Hurling View Post
    She does indeed have that potential, but she is entirely uninterested in anything but dancing. One of my most significant failures as a parent.
    All we can do is cook em and love em. Give em a moral compass and be there for them. Don't be so hard on yourself. Her choices are hers, and perspective makes a difference as far as the validity of any pursuit is concerned. Thank God I only have to live my own life...
    PS. How's the pressing coming?
    ZKP

    PSS. Gwynn speaks truth
    Last edited by ZKP; 12-17-2011 at 06:53 PM.

  8. #928
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    Gwynn, ZKP, thank you both for your thoughts and observations. Both spot-on and ones which I know to be true. But truth and reality can be hard. When all is said and done, she does indeed have her own life to lead. I was a fat kid myself until 17 when football season ended. I have deep and abiding issues of my own on the subject and happily for her, she does not seem to have herself or had to undergo.

    As for my pressing, I'm re-programming oooolllld habits of long standing with advice from Rip's 3rd edition. So far so good.

  9. #929
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    I think I can answer this in part jon, but I'll just say up front that some of my comments and advice are heavily freighted with some deeply abiding personal matters that color what I have to say. I highly encourage Gwynn and spar to chime in on this if they would. One because of Gwynn's own experience in being tall and spar's better grasp of the less conservative currents than I have. I happen to think I'm tuned in to this pretty well, but I'm also smart enough to know that I'm not always right.

    OK then, part one - tall girls. We knew our daughter was going to be tall early on. She was in the 95th percentile of growth from the beginning and was 3 feet tall before age 2. The rule of thumb among pediatricians is that you reach about half your adult height by that age. So since I'm 5'11" and she got the Hurling DNA big time we figured anywhere from 5'10" to 6'. She looked exactly like my middle sister who also got the Hurling DNA overwhelmingly as well. In fact she looked more like my sister's daughter than Dearly Beloved's daughter.

    So we prepared her early for the probability that she would tower over the others in her classes. Which she did. She never came home upset from teasing over it though, and I don't know if that meant it didn't happen or that she didn't care about it. We worked on self esteem thinking and body image so that she would feel comfortable being who she was and how she was. I know this may sound utterly unlike me and most of the things I say and do here, but some aspects of the liberal ideas of self esteem have some merit. I know I grew up hating myself for being a fat kid and I was teased about it mercilessly. Dearly Beloved, being half Polish and half Swedish is pretty dark skinned. She got it bad as a kid too being called the N word during the summers when she'd get really dark. Given our own experiences we wanted to armor her up in case she got some of the same treatment. It seemed to work.

    Now for the part where I go to the dark side. In conjunction with this, Dearly Beloved and I got into some bad habits in child rearing. We both had full time jobs until our daughter was in high school. So the golden arches for a quick drive through became convenient when taking her to day care and later kindergarten. Then in grades 1-5 we discovered that the kids had very little time for lunch and so would stuff their food down fast. More bad eating habits. About age 8 or so, we were appalled when she face planted herself at an Italian restaurant into the tomato salad and gobbled it. Nothing we did could get her eating back on track and we were stuck with a dilemma between trying shame to get her to eat more rationally or starving her. So I resorted to near dragging her to the gym to get her to exercise. Yeah, that went well. I should have remembered my own experience with The Old Man when he expressed less than favorable opinions over my own physical prowess. But then I wasn't prepared to put her through boot camp like I got from him.

    The down side of the self esteem movement has morphed in the US and from what our daughter tells us in the UK as well to fat acceptance. She was even a spokesperson and activist for it in college. They have all manner of studies and rationalizations for their fatness and too bad if you try talking them out of it. Ain't gonna happen. So we gave up about her senior year in high school. She has to find the will and desire to this for herself and that's that.

    So I can only say in conclusion that you have to be alert to what you are doing and what they are doing and try to head off any bad direction earlier rather than later.

  10. #930
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    starting strength coach development program
    Weight: 247

    5 minute warmup on the bike. (Heavy Day)

    Standing Overhead Press: 145 x 5 x 3. So far so good. The levering myself under the bar at full extension seems to be dialing in better each time I do it. It feels comfortable and strong. I also can knock out all three reps on one gulp of air. This keeps the whole upper body locked on like I was wrapped in kevlar. Still a little fumbling finding the right width of grip. I was little too close on the first set and couldn't get the bar all the way down on the upper chest.

    Pull-Ups: Bodyweight x 5 x 3.

    Squats: 225 x 3. This was the first session trying to incorporate Rip's 3rd edition. I find that I think I have the foot spacing and back extension down pretty well along with the head and neck eyeline tips. What came as something of a shock was the probability that I wasn't going quite deep enough. So I dropped as low as I could. It wasn't a lot farther down, and I suppose I'll have to get the final word from Rip in March at the seminar. But it felt OK and it definitely engaged the hams and adductors more, because both are grumbling as I type this. Mister back however, feels just fine. I also noticed that I had to put the bar a pin lower to follow Rip's guidelines and that took some getting used to as well. Now I'm trying to dial in the upper body skills of positioning the bar low enough and fine tuning my hand spacing properly. The two are linked in a manner I had never considered before. I also discovered that the very small detail of "grip," wrist, and hand positioning on the bar are tricky too. I did this correctly I think maybe once in my warmup sets because the bar seemed to float. I made some more adjustments and discovered I went too far when I got home and referred to the book again. Ah learning! I stopped at 225 because I want to get these small things and depth as good as I can and build up 5-10 lbs. a session.

    In other news the geezers were out in force this morning at Golds. There was only the one geezer dude bro and since he didn't have his grooming partner to chatter away with, he was quiet for a welcome change. While I was doing my pull-ups I saw another guy with an Old Guys Rule t-shirt with The Duke on the back. I told him he needed to get the one where Wayne says, "Well if I can't teach you respect for your elders, I guess I'll just have to teach you to fear your betters, pilgrim." He asked where I got mine, and I told him the same place he bought the one he was wearing.

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