275 at 90 or to hell with you

[PMDL]

blowdpanis told me to start a log here and stef told me I was a competitor even though I only do powerlifting and strongman stuff a few times a year in the faget division cause I'm broken all the time. I mostly just show up to watch my wife dominate the women and most of the men up to the 90kg class.

Anyways I got a hair up my ass a few months back while training for the last meet I did to pull 600 lbs at under 90kg just to make it officially over 3x BW. So I figure I'll make it a round 275 (605 lbs) just to make it a concrete goal, and because 272.5 sounds much less manly.

I did a meet at the end of November where I couldn't squat cause of a torn quad and my bench just sucks anyway (even though I locked out 135 by the rules I got IPF rule nazi'd over a wrist wrap) but I did manage a 240 DL weighing 86.6 for a solid 2.78 xBW, so I figure I'm on the way.

I've given myself til the end of the year, sometime around Nov-Dec, to hit the goal, and I've loosely laid out a roadmap to get there. Next benchmark is 250 by the end of Feb or first of March. I should be good for it the way my numbers are going but I've learned not to get too cocky.

Random notes: I can't really back squat worth a damn right now so I'm using lighter front squats and heavier box squats, which don't aggravate the two lingering injuries in my legs for some reason. The box squats are right at hip-crease-below-knees, would pass a fair judge, red-lighted by a jerk judge depth. This means I have no real goals here for now, though that may change in another month or two as things heal and strength comes back.

Beyond the deadlift I have no real competitive goals for the other two lifts, since I'm a beat up SOB these days.

I've just started this particular four-week training cycle on Monday, so here's those workouts:

Monday the 4th

Front SQ, 65x5, 75x5, 85x8 @8
Incline BP, 85 2x5, 4x3
DB tricep extensions, 3x10

Incline treadmill, 13' steep
Bike, 12' easy tempo ride

Front squats made the quad tingle a bit, but it passed. DB extensions made the R elbow tendinitis flare up pretty badly so I had to cut those a little short.

Wednesday the 6th

DL, 100x5, 140x5 (first three hooked), 160x5 (first three hooked), 187.5x8 @8
Chins, +10kg 2x5, 2x3
BB curlz w/ fat gripz, 2x6

Warmup was feeling a bit dodgy all over on the DLs, even though the main set at 187.5 flew up. I'd have gotten 12+ reps with that set had I pushed it out. Big improvement from 185 last cycle.

After that I was pretty well tanked. Chins felt far too heavy, so I cut them back. They were probably due a deload anyway, what with this being the start of a new cycle. Did a few sets of fatbar curlz just to round it out, and I was done.

Had planned an interval bike ride, but I wasn't about to add that on with a sub-par workout performance. No biggie.

Friday the 8th

Box SQ, 105x5, 115x5, 125x5 @8
BP, 72.5x5, 82.5x5, 95x8 @8-9
Close-grips w/ fat bar, 60x8, 65x8, 70x8

Bike intervals, 8x20:40
Inclined as hell treadmill for 10 minutes

Energy much better today. Box Squats are still pain free, though I was getting some IT band twitches on my left side (not the hurt side fortunately). Gonna have to watch that, cause that's when the right quad tore.

This is the first time I've full-ROM flat-benched in a few years. I'm using Wendler's 531 numbers to program this and being very conservative with the 1RM value. I'm hoping that the higher reps and keeping the form very very tight will let me improve on this a little without wrecking up my shoulders. This may end up being a very bad idea but I want to see what happens.

[PMDL]

Monday the 11th

Power Cleans, 60x3, 70x3, 80x3, 90x3, 95x3
GMs, 60x8, 70x8, 80x8, 90x8
Chins, +10x3, +20x3, +30x3, +35x2, +20 2x5
Pullups, 1x10
Back raises/hypers, 1x25

Weight's still hanging on at 89kg.

I had to ghetto up the cleans since the actual platform was being used. We've got bumper plates but I had to do the controlled drop on all these reps. They felt strong regardless.

[PMDL]

Just for the sake of having it on paper, I wrote down my tentative plan to pull 275/605 lbs before the end of the year.

Chasing 605

[PMDL]

Day 2 - 1/13/10

Front Squat - 1RM: 127

70 x 3 reps @ 7 RPE - 55% of 1RM
80 x 3 reps @ 7 RPE - 63% of 1RM
90 x 6 reps @ 8 RPE - 71% of 1RM

Incline Bench - 1RM: 115

85 x 5 reps x 4 sets @ 8 RPE - 74% of 1RM
85 x 4 reps x 2 sets @ 8 RPE - 74% of 1RM

Finished up with 5 sets of pushdowns. Too damn tired and stale-feeling for any cardio.

[PMDL]

Day 3 - 1/15/10

Deadlift - 1RM: 250 kg
155 kg x 3 reps @ 7 RPE - 62% of 1RM
177.5 kg x 3 reps @ 7 RPE - 71% of 1RM
200 kg x 6 reps @ 8 RPE - 80% of 1RM

Chinups - 1RM: 135 kg
100 kg x 5 reps @ 8 RPE - 74% of 1RM
100 kg x 5 reps @ 9 RPE - 74% of 1RM
100 kg x 5 reps @ 10 RPE - 74% of 1RM

Finished out with fat bar curls for lots of triples and one rest-pause set at the top.

200x6 was an 8, but definitely a hard 8 pushing the border of a 9. I would have gotten at least one more rep without question and 2-3 more would have been very likely. I'm pleased, given these are b being done completely raw, without even a belt on. I'm not sure I was putting up these kinds of unbelted numbers a few years ago at my strongest, so this is definitely a good sign.

Tried to play with some hook gripping on the way up, but there's some kind of weird puffiness or sprain or something in my right ring finger and it's been making grip on that side tricky for the last several weeks. It doesn't mix well with hooking.

Something about this workout is really wiping me out. The top sets of deadlifts are fine; they're tough, but nothing that feels like it should be knocking me out. I just have no gas in the tank after, so my chin-fagging suffers and I definitely don't feel like any cardio. Oh well.

[PMDL]

Day 1 - 1/18/10

Box Squat - 1RM: 163 kg

110 kg x 3 reps @ 7 RPE - 68% of 1RM
120 kg x 3 reps @ 8 RPE - 74% of 1RM
130 kg x 3 reps @ 8 RPE - 80% of 1RM

Bench Press - 1RM: 125 kg

77.5 kg x 3 reps @ 7 RPE - 62% of 1RM
90 kg x 3 reps @ 7 RPE - 72% of 1RM
100 kg x 6 reps @ 8 RPE - 80% of 1RM

Followed up with about five close-grip triples with the fatbar, up to 95kg.

Kinda hungover/tired from yesterday so I didn't feel all that motivated going in, but it ended up okay. Shoulders are both holding up fine on the benching. I'm doing a ton of band pull-aparts and face pulls in between sets and making sure to stretch and tennis-ball the capsules when I get home. The higher reps and focusing on keeping very tight and very strict form probably isn't hurting anything either.

[PMDL]

Day 2 - 1/20/10

Power Clean - 1RM: 109 kg

80 kg x 2 reps @ 7 RPE - 74% of 1RM
85 kg x 2 reps @ 7 RPE - 78% of 1RM
90 kg x 2 reps @ 8 RPE - 83% of 1RM
95 kg x 2 reps @ 8 RPE - 87% of 1RM
100 kg x 2 reps @ 9 RPE - 92% of 1RM

Chinups - 1RM: 137 kg

100 kg x 3 reps @ 6 RPE - 73% of 1RM
110 kg x 3 reps @ 7 RPE - 80% of 1RM
120 kg x 2 reps @ 9 RPE - 88% of 1RM
130 kg x 2 reps (1+1 rest-pause) @ 10 RPE - 95% of 1RM

Finished up with one set of 30 on the back hyper.

Diet must be okay, I was 88.2 in the chucks.

All this pulling is beating up my poor hands. That whatever it is in my right ring finger seems to be getting a little better, finally. But then I managed to rip a big chunk of skin off my right pinky on the cleans, and it was bleeding pretty bad for half the workout.

[khal]

How old are you?

Also could you talk a bit more about how you accumulated these injuries?

I've jsut finished novice progression and I am 19. I always hear about people acucmulating injuries in the pursuit of strength, so just curious how these happen so that I can learn from them.

Anyway, I thought I would post just to let you know people actually read these things. I know how hard it must be to post these entries every session if you start to feel no-one reads them. Thanks for your time!

[PMDL]

How old are you?

Also could you talk a bit more about how you accumulated these injuries?

I've jsut finished novice progression and I am 19. I always hear about people acucmulating injuries in the pursuit of strength, so just curious how these happen so that I can learn from them.

I just turned 30.

The shoulder injuries are easiest to talk about, since I actually know what caused them and how I could have prevented them. The biggest thing was being an idiot about benching too much, with poor workout design and little/no progression plans; and not doing enough upper back/scapular stability work to balance it out.

I'm pretty sure in retrospect that I originally hurt my shoulders when I was 20-21, but I never actually had any clue what was wrong until I was 26 and Eric Cressey gave me some feedback. So I reinjured them several times in between.

My ART guy told me that not only did I have a lot of scar tissue in both shoulders, but I had some biceps tendinitis as well. So really that whole area was pretty screwed up.

Moral of the story: don't neglect upper-back training, warmups for the shoulders and scapular retractors/depressors, and keep your bench tight. Invest in a tennis ball and a golf ball if you need it, and don't be scared to dig in and work on any trigger points or adhesions. That kind of stuff is the only reason I can keep lifting.

The lower body stuff is a different matter. I have an idea of what caused my recent quad tear, mainly to do with the excessive foam-rolling I was doing on my IT band, but that's just labcoating so I'm not gonna put that out there as the cause. All I know is that after not back-squatting for about 7 months (the torn adductor) and relying on front squats, I'd built my squat back up to 140(kg) x10 over about 6 weeks of linear progress. Then I switched to 5-rep sets to start meet training, and the damn thing blew with 150kg. The only thing that changed was the foam rolling (I was doing a ton), so who knows.

The torn adductor from last year, well, that was just me being stupid and playing around with "opening the hips" with too much weight and too little warming up. I even felt the thing warn me to stop, but like an idiot...

I've also got an old hamstring tear that likes to pop from time to time, but that seems to only be an issue when I get lazy and let my hamstrings get weak. When I keep them strong, they cooperate.

Most everything else is just the generally expected minor niggles that come up. It's normal for shit to get banged up, cut, torn, whatever else. You just have to roll with it and triage accordingly. Some things you can train through, some things you can't.

Some of it was just general ignorance, not knowing any better. Some of it was stupidity, by not stopping when all the signs were telling me to stop. Oh well, live and learn. I'm not back to 100% and doubt I will ever be again, but at least I can manage most of them enough to keep at it.

If we'd had things like Rip's novice workouts back in 1998, I'd have been a lot better off. Back when I started, the only 5x5 info I recall finding online was over on Deepsquatter's page, and it wasn't much more than a footnote. Your options were either the lame bodybuilding workout from Flex, Ed Coan's powerlifting workout, or Westside. Oh and then T-mag came along with all of Poliquin's A1/B1 workouts that they've been recycling ever since.

[PMDL]

Day 3 - 1/21/10

Front Squat - 1RM: 128 kg

75 kg x 5 reps @ 7 RPE - 58% of 1RM
85 kg x 3 reps @ 7 RPE - 66% of 1RM
95 kg x 5 reps @ 8 RPE - 74% of 1RM

Incline Bench - 1RM: 115 kg

85 kg x 5 reps x 5 sets @ 8 RPE - 74% of 1RM

Finished with weighted abs for two sets of 10 and one set of back raises/hypers for 30 reps.

Thought I was gonna black out on my main set of front squats. I unracked it, then had a pain in my shoulder so I racked it to get a better grip, then went light-headed, and kinda went out in space for the set. It happened so hell with it.

5x5 for the incline bench is the trigger to bump the weight. Not sure if I want to continue with the 5x3 to 5x5 progression, or switch to singles. Singles are more fun, but we'll see.

This is the last microcycle for this block, and I've got my next one drawn up here.