A Fresh Start

[MazdaMatt]

Today:

Squat 215... easy not much to say
Bench 110... This is frustrating because it is really easy, but my shoulder fucking hurts. I finished everything fine, but I probably have a face like I'm benching 210.
Dead 260... Was heavy, but went pretty easy, all-in-all.

I am fucking destroyed right now. My body makes me want to just lie on the floor and die. I guess this is just what it feels like to deadlift monday and friday.

Nutrition today: 2 eggs, pint of milk, bowl of cereal for breakfast. 10am I had a pint of milk with 24g protein powder and turkey/cheese sammich on some oversized bavarian multigrain... mmmm.... lunch I had a double bacon deluxe burger and a liter (2pints) of milk before cutting the grass and going to the gym. Just got home, having antoher pint of milk which will be followed by a tall, stiff, cold rye and coke.

This was a perfect week of weight traniing for me. Nutrition was 90% quality but I'd give it 75% quantity. I just lost my appetite at one point on each of my rest days. Sleep was decent for the past two nights. Overall happy.

[grizzlybuck]

Good job Matt, I know the feeling about looking like I'm dying on a less than heavy weight. I've been doing SS for 3 weeks now and was just able to DL for the first time yesterday, groin pull/tweak, but my real problem is a balky right shoulder, not helped by a less than stellar left elbow. My press nearly stalled at 75lbs Sunday, but yesterday felt good and easy at 80 until the last two reps of set 3, when the shoulder cried out, or was that me, in pain, I finished but it was a bear.

BP still moving ok at 150 last time out, squats up to 205 and first DL workout at 195 was easy and still adding 10# to the bar and may add 20# on DL, so I have a feeling that my "lower" body work will REALLY get ahead of my upper body stuff, ah well I'll start microloading them sooner and just keep putting weight on the bar.

[MazdaMatt]

Really pay attention to press technique. It is an amazing phenomenon, but doing it right makes the bar go up! One weakness that I had to overcome was when I thought I MIGHT fail a press rep, i would not commit to getting my head under the bar. Who wants to put something heavy that you're likely to drop over your head? But if you just do it, you'll be surprised what you can press.

[MazdaMatt]

Yesterday:
Sq 220
OHP 105
PC 155 (oops, was supposed to be 150)

This was a hard workout. Too much labour and beer this weekend, not enough proper rest and food. Still managed everything fine. Upping the PC's by 10 instead of 5 was an accident and it made things pretty hard. I will repeat this as I was sloppy.

I took 4 slices of pizza and a pound of giant wings (not much bone weight, awesome wings ) to work yesterday... i ate it all by lunch time and I starved from noon to 5:30 when I got home and ate food pre-gym. So I was basically doing everything possible to set myself up for a bad gym visit.

I think I'm losing hip drive as the weight goes up. Squatting more down-up... I'm sure it will sort out when I go rested and fed.

I was thinking... since my bench sucks due to shoulder, I'd like to add dips next visit to see if i can get a little more work into my pecs. No sense letting my chest under-develope because my shoulder hurts.

[MazdaMatt]

I did some thinking... that's sometimes a good thing.

1) I have an injured shoulder, so I can not bench much. So I have decided that on Bench day I'm going to add dips as assitance to try to get some more work out of my pecs instead of limiting them by my shoulder. I think I can do dips without the shoulder pain of bench.

2) I have noticed a tendancy in my deadlifts for the bar to drift closer to below-the-shoulder instead of being under my shoulder blades like it should be. I think my ability to lift with my legs and back is outweighing my ability to pull the bar in for efficiency. So on non-deadlift days I am going to add pullups/chinups/widegrip-pullups as assistance.

I have not decided on rep schemes or details of either and I'd prefer to feel them out at the gym than theorize what's the best method. I chose dips on bench day to "finish" the pecs and I chose on pullups on non-deadlift day because deadlifts already fully work the lats.

Thoughts?

[Jamie J. Skibicki]

I would do the pull ups and dips something like 8-10 for 3 sets. If you can't get those unweighted, pick a number that you can get for all 3 and do that, increase each time you do them.

Example lets say you can do 8 at once, but your sets look like 8,6,5.
Do 6,6,6 and then try for 7,7,7 next time.

If you can do more than 8, just weight them.

FOr dips, make sure you keep active shoulders (not letting your shoulders ride up to your ears). Dips are exactly easy on your shoulders, so be careful with those.

[MazdaMatt]

Thanks for the tips... my only motivation for trying to figure them out at the gym is that I am terribly gassed at the end of my workouts lately. Yesterday I tried a set of wide pullups, a set of chinups, then a set of regular pullups. I always go from dead hang with fully up-ward extended shoulders and I use no body momentum. I think I got 4,3,1. The chin-ups were chin-over and the pullups were only eyes-over. Each rest was about 1 minute.

So I guess that step one is to decide which variation I should be doing. I think that I have read that rip recommends chins for newbs because it involves more muscles - is this reasonable? I am looking at whatever is going to better help my pull-back on deadlifts.

As for dips, I can do those with reasonable reps. It has been a while, but I was doing 5,5,5 with 25lbs back when I was doing progressive fives before I dropped all assistance to begin this training log. Yes, they are hard on shoulders for some people, but I think that they don't aggrivate the specific sore spot that I'm dealing with. I'll find out tomorrow! I will do 3 sets to fail-or-8 and i will report back with results to forumulate a plan.

[PVC]

So I guess that step one is to decide which variation I should be doing. I think that I have read that rip recommends chins for newbs because it involves more muscles - is this reasonable? I am looking at whatever is going to better help my pull-back on deadlifts.

I agree that you should only focus on doing one or the other since you will improve faster. If you can do 15 chin ups, you can definitely do a good number of pull ups as well, and vice versa. In terms of your training it truly doesn't matter which one you choose. At all. I chose chin ups because I want huge guns, and I'm sure many people choose chins for the same reason. Some PT tests require you to do pullups, not chinups, so some people will choose those for that reason. But if you don't have to do them for a test, it doesn't matter what you choose.

[MazdaMatt]

Thanks for the input. I'll probably go with chins because I never seem to be able to pullup correctly... even when I'm fresh I can't get the bar easily below my chin, nevermind to my chest as some people consider to be proper... and I haven't worked a bicep in months.

[MazdaMatt]

Skipped gym yesterday in favour of going to "the hill" to support the girlfriend's efforts on hill sprints. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Near my house there is a park that is accessed by a VERY steep hill. It is closed in the winter because no vehicle could possibly climb it, or safely descend. This is an excellent place for sprint training.

In an effort to get her away from slow torturous cardio I suggested that she do 1/4 hill sprints. It takes about 15 seconds for her to do 1/4 of the hill and it is brutal on her. I helped her clean up her running technique a bit and she did 8 sprints. I did 4 cuz I didn't want the calorie burn or the sore legs for today's gym.

Anyway, gym tonight.