Last Lift In ‘05

Mediocre workout tonight: little Push press, high pull, pull ups, dips. It is hard to focus in a crap gym. It doesn’t help that, as my wife pointed out, it was “Meat Market Saturday” at the gym. What’s that, you don’t have someone to kiss when the ball drop, no prob. Just pop on over to Gold’s Gym and pick up an iron bunny for your evening. Not into iron bunnies, we have iron jack rabbits too. Take your pick. innocent.gif Anyway, grippity grip grip Wrist day Wrist curl 3X6 115 Reverse – still nursing a sore wrist from last time. 3X15 45 Levering and wrist roller to follow. I will work up the standard “New Years Resolution” post later.

What A Difference A Deadlift Makes

As you may have guessed, I deadlift last night. It went fairly well. I did double overhand up to 300. Then I started tacking on fives each set. I ended up doing way more reps than I ever intended. I knocked out three reps per set of 325, 335, 345, 355. Then I got one rep at 365. In doing so the bar spun in my hand and tore some sin off. Nothing painful, just outer stuff. Fortunately for me I have been sanding my calluses down a little bit almost everyday. That could have been ugly if I hadn’t. As it was it just did my sanding for that day. I also managed to finish a workout that I haven’t finished in a few weeks; deadlift, front squat, good morning. Try it. If you go hard, you will find your lower back screaming by the time you are done.

Grip
Plat pinch – after last times Pr I wanted to give it another shot, see if i could repeat. As soon as I grabbed the plates I knew it wasn’t the same. Just holding two tens I could feel my thumb tiring. I don’t know if it was the fact I held those heavy deads to work over the grip or what but my thumbs were spent. I couldn’t even nail three tens with my right hand, honestly, two was a challenge. I wanted to do two handed but my gym only has two 35s and I couldn’t find one of them. Since I won’t make it to the gym sat or Sun I’m gonna hit my pony clamp hard tonight or tomorrow.

Finger curl
3X10 145 this went really well. Each time I would walk up to it I would wonder if I could even pick it up, I felt so exhausted. Once I pulled, it felt like nothing, really mind of matter.

New Year’s resolution – I don’t normally do those but this year I think I will. It won’t be just a resolution though, it will be a plan. I have been working it over in my head. I will post it here this weekend.

Recovery

I took last night as a recovery night. No gym. I’m glad, got some R&R in. I did some light sledge work in the morning, nothing worth documenting. I did head over to Gripfaq.com and review Scotts definition of levering. I had not been doing any front or back levering so I worked that it. I am much stronger at back than front.

Who Wants To Cuddle, I Mean Huddle

The title comes from an Emeniem song in the Longest Yard Soundtrack. I love that movie.

Did a little pushpress and high pulls last night. I then went retro and did some EZ curls and tricep extensions. I haven’t done that in a long time.

Grip
Wrist curls: 100 3X8
Reverse Wrist Curls : 70 3X6

I think I over did it with the reverse wrist curls. The wrists are a little stiff. I’m gonna try a light levering workout this morning to try and loosen them before work.

That’s it for now.

Hit It And Quit It

This post is named for my tw new MP3 Playlists, maybe I’ll post them later. I spent part of my day off coming up with them. Hit it is metal, quit it is pop. It is als stolen from James Brown. What can I say, I alck origianlity.

Hit the squat. Despite Climbers well intended admonishments I wore my chucks. Sorry dude, I swear I will lear to do the olympic squat in some healed shoes. I’m not blowing you off.
Anyway, I nailed some deep squats. 3X3 365. Only problem is that I have been lazing around the house for the last couple days. I have been hunching a bit when I sit, out of lazyness. I could feel my back bend right where I slouch as I came up on the last couple reps. Good way to end up with a herniated disc. So remember kids, posture is important.

Grip
I actualy picked up my gripper today for like the first time in almost a week. nailed quick ten reps in each hand with the trainer. Then got three on the #1 with my right and about one and a half with my left. I was a little suprised by the difference but I think it was a rest thing.

Plate pinch- one handed
right 3 tens for just a sec
left 3 tens, not at all
right to left and back with two tens. Easy
right with 3 tens for about ten seconds
left with 3 tens, just barely cleared the ground
right 3 tens, got it for a quick twenty count before it exploded
left 3 tens, full ten count HUGE PR Holy crap, I have been dreaming abut doing that.

finger curl 4X8 135

yeah boooooooyyyyyyyy!

that is all

Book Review: Bill Romanowski Has Something To Sell

Just finish Romo last night. It is supposed t be a candid look back at his career. Being, possibly, one of the most hated men in football makes him a unique historical character. He offers apologise for misbehaviour. Although sincere enough, not truly heartfelt. It is quite obvious that Bill views time on the football field as an entirely different life altogether. If you are not there for the pain and glory, then go somewhere else. With that he feels, apologize are unneccessary. He does address some of his other issues. Drug use, supplementation and training. In the end , there is nothing that could actually criminally implicate him. Just the fact that he tried everything under the sun, but none of it when it was banned. It becomes his story on how you should live your life, especially if you are an athlete. He goes out of his way to give us the laundry list of supplements he used, the weird therapies he tried and to tell us how he always made sure it was legal and offered it to his teammates. Then he suggest in more than one case that if you are any kind of an athlete you need to try similar. He does a little name dropping, but he did actually work with some of the best in the business. He tries to give you insight into the personalities of the business. Inevitably all the nice, good people worked with him. The bad guys never did. It finishes with what I expected from page ten. Without flipping to the back I began to tell my wife over and over, “I figure he is either starting a fitness company or a supplement company”. Bing! One of the book’s indexes tells you just that. Bill has started a supplement company. He thinks you could benefit from his years of experience and his personal line of products. He does stop short of actually telling you to buy his supps. He just tells you what supps you need to take then casually mentions that he has a small company that could provide just that. It’s not a bad book but he should have started the sale pitch earlier and let it die so I could enjoy the story.

Slow Poster

I did hit grip the other night, I just haven’t gotten around to posting. The gym is closed today and was only open really early yestaerday, so I chose to sleep instead. It was a choice, I don’t regret.

reverse wrist curl 65 3X8
wrist curl 105 3X8

I have not been doing my levering like I should. It has mostly been a time thing. I will get back after it shortly.

Off Night

Definitly had an off night. I was kinda looking forward to going. Once I hit a few heavyish deads I just didn’t want to be there anymore. I couldn’t focus at all. I couldn’t get my head into it. I tried to work on my front squat form but was quickly frustrated. I especially got tired of squat rack curl boy looking at me with a dazed and confused look while I did this.
I did have some good luck with the plate pinch. I was able to pinch three tens for about a ten count three or so times. at ten they would explode out of my hand like I had hidden a firecracker in them. Didn’t even bother with finger curls. I just was not focused at all.

For some reason the question of why I lift weights kept running through my head. The immediate answer was, and has been, because I like to. Tonight it was not enough. About a year ago I decided that the thing for me was to be a powerlifter. I was quickly disillusioned with this. Since then I have experimented with a few different things but not really found myself truly enamoured to any of them. I feel like I need to pick a direction so i can at least focus my workouts.

I’m sure this will come up again. This is pretty typical me.

Feel The Burn

I was feeling it yesterday and still am today. My legs are furious with me. It’s cool though.
I went to the gym last night and got some good standng chest presses in. I’m still working on the oeverhead squat but it is gettingmuch better. Thanks to a recommendation from oneof Pavel’s books I made some big improvements.

Farmer holds: this was a new one for me at the gym. Basically I thieved two ez curl bars and loaded them up. Then I would try to stand up with them. I found this especially hard because the bars are thin. I really had to try and crush it to keep it from tilting and swinging. I’m not sure how many reps I did but I did at least five good ones with 162 (assuming and ez curl bar is 22).

Finger curls: After the experence with the farmer holds, I decided to reall focus on closing the hand all the way up. I felt like my hand was cramping right up the center at the base. 3X10 135

Plate Pinch. 2 tens backand forth for five sets of twenty per hand. Too easy. I couldn’t seem to even pick up three tens. I tried four 5s and found that impossible too. I settled on three fives for a while. That seemed hard than two tens.

I will be taking tonight off as my legs are not ready for another round yet.

Muhahaha

I had a great squat workout. 5X5 315. I consider that pretty respectable. It was a real challenge and I really thought I was gonna lose my cookies a couple times. I couldn’t move right on to straight legged deadlifts like I wanted. So I hit grip first

Finger Curls: 2X12, 1X12, 1X8 135
Plate pinches: 3X20 two tens with one hand. This got boring so I started just counting to twenty and passing it to the other hand and back and forth for like three more sets per hand.

I did some nice straight legged deads and a couple overhead squats with an 18lb aerobic bar.

I did some more when I got home
Levering 3X20″ each hand 3X25″ negatives with each hand
Rotations 2X5X8″ each hand 180 degree rotations

I think that covers it. I’m feeling really good. I have some sore muscles and the like but my energy level has returned. It is a good day.