Soreness monster

It seems that ever since I have returned to the gym, I have been beaten up by the soreness monster. Dunno why, I’m gonna go back and review  my old logs a bit but once again, I’m pushing off my workout by a day to allow my body to recover. My legs feel like massive slabs of electricity. I don’t know if sitting all day has to do with it. Today I actually had to stand for about four hours, it doesn’t seem to have helped so I’m thinking no. I’m taking my vitamins, mult vit and fish oil. That has helped in the past. I’m seriously considering bringing back the protein shake. I haven’t used these in quite some time. I have been thinking about reintroducing it for a variety of reasons but have held off due to the calories.
I have noticed that I have been really hungry about 9 am, it has caused me to resort to eating some less than healthy things some days, other days I just lament the wait for lunch hour :-). I’m thinking about putting the protein there. That would leave me with Cut oats for breakfast, protein about 3 hours later, 3 hours later lunch, three hours later a piece of fruit and/or yogurt, then four hours later dinner. That seems like an aweful lot of food when I write it down.

 

Saturday is definitly off. At least I can garuntee this won’t happen next year.

D’oh, woohoo

So first the d’oh. I got word today that there is a 90% likelyhood I will not be able to participate in Gripmas. I won’t bore you with the details.

Woohoo
I did get a pretty decent Dumbarton workout in.

Squat – I’m playing with this a lot trying to find my groove again, I’m getting closer with each try.
135 X 3
225 X 3
315 X 3
405 X 1
405 X 1
405 X 1
405 X 1
405 X 2

Dumbell press
85 lbs 5 X 5
no wories here, going up to 90 next time. May not be too long before I have to ditch this exercise due to lack of sufficient dumbells

Romanian Deadlift 110 Kilos (apparently this is also 17.4 stone, I’ll never remember that)
242 lbs 5 X 5
These were killer. I’m not sure if I will be able to handle going up next time.

Dips
Bodyweight 6 X 6

Pull ups
Bodyweight X 2
bodyweight X 1
I really suck at these. I’m considering putting some kind of pull down in for a while.

Hammer DB curls
30lbs 6 X 6

1 arm barbell snatches, I  was just playing round with this.
20K (44 lbs) X 1 each hand
30K (66 lbs) X 1 each hand
40K (88 lbs) X 1 each hand
50K (110lbs) X 1 right hand only

Clean 10 minute test 60K (132 lbs) – 50 reps
This thing was a real killer for me. The reps don’t really add up to much, for me it was mostly a wind issue. I was good for about the first three sets of five then I  was sucking air big time. I don’t know if it actually counts as cardio but it was a good conditioning exercise. I could see myself doing this again and pressing for 55 reps, really it’s just a variation on kettlebells, or the other way round depending on how you look at it.

 

I’m still planning on hitting the gym Wednesday. We’ll just see what goes down this weekend.

Weekend

Not  a lot to post on the weekend

Saturday jog 2ish miles in 21:45. I started out feeling awesome, the best run feel I have had in a long time. Then, about mile 1 I started to feel it in the calves, it started to get real nasty as I took a lap around the park. I really had to grind it out ot make it home. I think I’m not too far from pulling off a 20 minute trip.

Not much today

Tomorrow, to the gym. This week It’ll be Monday and Wednesday. I may try to squeeze in a jog but that is questionable. I’ve got Gripmas coming this next weekend and I don’t want to give Chris too much of a head start 😛 .

I noticed everyone on gripboard has started working in their goals for next year. So, I started a list for myself. It’s not up anywhere that you all can see yet but soon enough. I’m working on a few other pages.

Technical Update: Kept my promise

This morning I find myself with some free time away from home but with a computer handy. I have finished copying posts from my old blog. I’m not going to copy the comments. I don’t have the free time and the manual copy process it tedious, to say the least.  All the posts are here. I have double checked all my links and they seem to be ok and pointing to active sites. I’ve got some other longer term stuff I’m working on including trying tot categorize all the old posts (which isn’t a huge priority and may never happen).

This page is starting to take the shape I wanted. If there is something that doesn’t work, bugs you or could be better, this would be a good time to mention it. I’m looking for some projects for it.

Ad Hoc

I tried to go to the gym yesterday but it was closed. Kinda annoying.

In an effort to do something productive, I knocked together a little something at home.

35lb block weight
4 10s
2″ Dumbell Deadlift
L 100lbs R 120lbs
3″ Dumbell Deadlift
L 50lbs R 60lbs

Also, I got a call from Luke to go by for training today, unfortunately I’m booked. In fact as the holiday season is unfolding, I’m booked clear through January. So I’ll have to do the best with what I can make.

Eat Turkey

It’s thanksgiving, my favorite holiday. I hope you are all enjoying your turkey.

I just wanted to point out that turkey is very high in protein while being pretty reasonable in all other days, so enjoy it and eat up. You are feeding you muscles.

Pull

Off to the gym today

Warm up: Jump rope 5 minutes, I managed to get the first 2 minutes and 2 seconds all in one go, a record for me. My calves are still sore. I do it bunny hop style. I know that’s pretty amateur but I seem to trip inthe rope less than when I do it other ways.

Deadlift
120K X 2
170K X 2
215K X 2
220K X 0
215K (478 lbs) was a Pr for me and I should have probably left it alone but I wanted to try 220. Same as when I missed 215 last time, got it off the ground and it hung there.

Pushpress 80K (176lbs)
5 reps
5 reps
3 reps
5 reps – jerk
3 reps – jerk
After the third set, one of the local Olympic lifters had all he could stand of my form. He insisted I stop down standing power cleans and do a proper clean. He got me to dip a bit at least although I think it would be arguable if it was a clean. Then he got frustrated because I was trying to press out the weight rather than just dip and use the momentum. I tried to explain that I wanted to press it out but I think he thought I was crazy or stupid to say something like that.

Pull overs
95 lbs 5 X 5

Skull crushers
77 lbs 5 X 5

Standing curl
77lbs 5 X 5
both of the above two exercises felt light, we’ll see how the muscles feel tomorrow. This is only the second time I have semi seriously done curls in a very long time.

At this point I had front squat and kettlebells on my list but due to a variety of reasons, I dumped them in favor of playing with the bottom start squat.
Bottom squat
225 X 0
135 X 2
185 X 2
225 X 2
275 X 2
315 X 2
365 X 0
I’ve done this exercise before with Luke off the yoke. I have to say that I think it is easier to get set in the yoke but I’m not sure the exercise changes much after that. I think it’s a pretty direct comparison.

I’m not quite sure how the next two days will go. I’m not gonna sweat it either. I’ll lift Friday, other than that, I’m gonna enjoy the holiday.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the entire year.

Not much of a climb

I made it to the climbing gym yesterday. Unfortunately not much of anyone else had. I ended up goofing around in the bouldering are waiting for someone to show up. I was able to easily solve all the Vintros on sight. I did a coule V1s as well. I think a lot of their stuff is over rated. After a bout an hour, I started to give up and go home. Then people started to show up. So I stayed for another hour climbing. I managed to speed my way through my first route, a 5.6 that I had trouble with in the past (it helped that they fixed the spinner on it).I went on to start a 5.7. It seemed impossible. I dunno if that route was just not suited to me, way too far above my skill level or I was just tired from my bouldering, but I had to get a little push start and even then I couldn’t get 10 feet off the ground. I bailed on this and did a 5.6. I was doing great until the last couple move. The arms just quit. Even cheating I could hardly make it. After that I was done.

Off tonight, Gym tomorrow. I’m looking forward to deadlifts

Light Days

I took yesterday off from training, totally off. We went and saw JamesBond instead, good movie, I recommend it.

Today, the usualy walk. I also ran. For my twoish mile route, 21:30. I added a little more after that. I would guesstimate it at 1/2 to 3/4 miles. I finshed the whole thing at about 30 minutes.

Tomorrow, I’m planning on climbing. I’m glad for that, it will have been two weeks since my last climb. I just had trouble fitting it in. I find that incredibly frustrating.

I’ve been playing with grip stuff a tad. I did some easy levers with my 10lb sledge today and bent a timber tie. The levering seems easier than I recall. The bending, not so much. I figure I need to practice it as some bending will almost certainly be involved with Gripmas at Chris’s. Considering I can’t seem to bend 1/4″ steel right now, I think I’ll just have to count that a loss. I’m gonna keep playing with it. It would be nice to at least learn how to get back to blue level but I don’t see that as a realistic possibility.
I am excited for the upcoming Gripmas. I got the time off approval and all that kind of stuff done. I think I have sleeping arrangements made. I look forward to meeting all the farmstrength guys. I have no idea what all lifts Chris is gonna dream up for this. It would be pretty unreasonable of me to expect to place in the top few but I hope I can at least take one event.

 

Edit, I was playing around with Google Maps and Microsoft Paint and tried to conjure some kind of map of my route. It didn’t end well but here it is anyway:

The red route (the big loop) is my usual route. The blue route (the small loop)is what I added. The Loop out to the left is a path around the local park (the one with the soccer fields where I do sandbags) that doesn’t show up on a map.
You can also look at the orginal or the satellite version of the same.

Maybe someday I’ll be less graphically challenged.

Technical Update: Planned outage

FYI, I got an email from my host to let me know the page will be down the morning of November 19th. No big deal, they’ll be upgrading their servers. Just wanted to give you all fair notice.