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

[Mark E. Hurling]

Weight: 250.5

5 minutes warmup on the bike. (3-3-3 week)

Standing Overhead Press: 115-3, 135-3, 155-3. The last set was a mess. My concentration on the first rep wandered, but I managed to get the hamsters lined back up on the wheel and got it spinning again for the last 2 reps.

Barbell Row: 185-3, 205-3, 235-3.

Claw Grip: 230 for 2 sets of 5. PR! Strange how my grip strength is suddenly getting better. Must have been the deadlifts.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Weight: 249.5 Yay! Small vistory in the righ direction

Between getting a case of the fades yesterday afternoon and prep for a BFD later this morning I didn't get to jujitsu last night. One gigantic piss-off and lot's-O-guilt over how work and life gets in the way. I gotta cogitate on another lessons learned review. Haven't done one of those in a while.

But I did do a GXP this morning in the gym. Quick in and quick while I watch some engineers sit in the pit and rev their engines for the next big thing. At least last year they put me through enough of my paces of utterly new shit to deal with that this year is no big change.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Weight: 250

5 minutes warmup on the bike. (3-3-3 week)

Bench Press: 17-3, 195-3, 220-3. Shoulder is doing better now with the narrow grip. I did the last set with a 2-3 second pause to get used to it.

Power Snatch: 7-3, 90-3, 100-3.

I have filled out the form, signed off on the release, and written the check for the Santa Barabara Open. Dearly Beloved wanted a meet T-shirt too so I ordered two. She is nearly as jazzed about this as I am.

[Meshuggah]

That's cool, what are your goals for the meet Mark?

[Mark E. Hurling]

My goals for the meet are DL: 445, SQ: 335, BP: 270.

[Meshuggah]

Nice, I'm sure you will easily hit those numbers.
Train Smart & Be Safe !!

[Mark E. Hurling]

Weight: 250

It was cold in the dojo this morning. The concrete sucked the heat right out of the soles of my feet and the mat was harder than ever. We lead off this another variation of countering an attempt at a rear overarm bear hug. As with last week, the first part involved wedging the forearms just before the wrists over the attacker's wrists. Then raising one arm and dropping the other. This accomplished two things, the first is one of the principles we teach about separating the attacker's hands at different levels and directions. It locks up the brain which is trying to make two different limbs resist in two different directions. The second thing was that the attacker's hands are simply too far apart to grip each other. Then the defender backs out behind the attacker's upper raised hand. In this maneuver the defender might bring their right arm up and then step back with the right foot, ducking under the attacker's right arm and driving a left elbow, vertical fist, or hammer fist into the right rib cage or just above the hip. One takes the starch out of the lungs and the other caves in the whole upper half of the body causing a drop and lurch to the right.

We then embarked on a series of really painful counters involving lateral or parallel forearm sawing against the triceps and ulnar nerve. Just really feels bad. It didn't leave bruises on me, but my right upper arm is still throbbing.

The attacker grabs the defender in a right cross wrist hold. The defender brings up their right hand and around as they step backward with their right foot. The defender then rotates their hips clockwise while extending their left upper arm forward at the attacker's elbow putting a momentarily sharp painful bar on that elbow. It made mine sound like knuckles got cracked. The defender then brings their left forearm up to the attacker's triceps and start sawing back and forth at a 90 degree angle to the arm. It rolls the two heads back and forth against the humerus and all you can think of is dropping forward in a bow at the waist to escape the pain. The move also simply takes advantage of the effect of down force and gravity that impels the attacker downward as well. This also works well when the forearm is sawed up and down the upper arm. The direction the attacker is taken is different. They get hauled to the right and down.

The same technique works well on a straight punch. The defender deflects the punch down and across to their right side. The right hand hooks, not grabs, the attacker's right wrist and then the arm gets barred and the triceps attacked in the same way.

The last one involved someone resisting an arm bar while proned out on their stomach. In this case, the resistance is overcome by kneeling on the triceps. As bad as the other stuff hurt this was pain from another planet. Instant arm bar.

[Mark E. Hurling]

hamburgerfan, you were sure right about the Master's Division. I've been researching every raw PL association I can find and Gordon Santee was also dead on.

“When you get older, it’s a privilege of lifting because most of your competition is either injured or dead,” he said, laughing.

Especially in the heavier weight divisions it would appear.

[Oldman]

My goals for the meet are DL: 445, SQ: 335, BP: 270.

You'll get these lifts, no doubt, Mark!

[Mark E. Hurling]

Weight: 250

With the encouragement I get from so many here, it reinforces my determination.

5 minutes warm up on the bike. (5-3-1 week)

Deadlifts: 295-5, 335-3, 370-1.

Rolling Triceps: 40 for 5 sets of 12. I was surprised I did this well after getting my triceps trashed yesterday. While they ached on every-single-rep they didn't fail.

Hammer Curls: 45 for 5 sets of 12. Fried my grip to where I could barely grip the steering wheel on the way home. Arms feel like they got 50 PSI added to them at the air pump.

An interesting day all around. The guy next to me was about my age and was also deadlifting. He struck up a conversation with me as I was doing my warmup sets about how he was coming back to DL's after 20 years. He was going for a top set of 195 with 5. This lead to form issues he was curious about. I had decided to experiment with sumo and discovered that I didn't like the way the bar came our from my shins as I broke the plates off the floor. So I suggested he check in here and do some reading. But being a nice guy, incongruous as that sounds, I showed him mid foot set up on the bar, head down and neck in neutral, and keeping the bar close to the shins. Then this lead to him mentioning that he was primarily into MA and of course that side barred into a comparison of what he and I did. He's Machado BJJ follower, so being polite I just kept to how we in mushin ryu are mainly a stand up art with kempo mixed in. As it so happened he was 60 and his name was Mark too. Man the world is a small and funny place sometimes.