PTO

Paid Time Off – yup

Hit the gym last night for my two Hall Monitor session. I figured I’d do what training I could, knowing full well that it wouldn’t be a full, Full session.

Trapbar deads, work up to 610 once. I went for two but I didn’t have it in me.
True Power squat, just cause, worked up to 405
Olympic squat 405
Walkouts 595 – not really a lot of weight just doing stuff here

snatches 60K a bunch
DARC swings – 100 16K
30lb dumbell curls  12
dips – 13 (since I missed it last time)
DARC swings 2 minutes (uknown count)
Situps 16Kkb 20

throw in some jumping rope, 3 X 2minutes and a some general playing with weights and you have it all.  i’m still tired. The weather is beautiful so I’ll get some walks in but no much else on the training front, at least until Monday.

and yes, I will enjoy my vacation.

oh, and stephens blog is is well under construction. All the pieces are there (or uploading as I type). There will be some tweaking to match the look he wants (he picked some really nice themes. It makes me want to look for a new theme) and his comfort and style for using the computer. I’ll keep everyone posted.

Lump

Well it was another beautiful Thursday morning yesterday. I wanted to get out and play. Unfortunately it was another beautiful Thursday just toying with my fragile emotions. Little drizzle here, little menacing cloud there. So I did Providence.

I was surprised. I expected to totally own it this time with the 16K bell. I didn’t I was slacking on the lunges and forget about the triple crush and abs rounds. I didn’t quit or anything, I just have no doubt that I sucked. I don’t know if it was poor recovery from Tuesday or what.

I have gym duty tonight. I’m gonna try and hit it pretty hard but I don’t expect to pull off the double workouts I have been doing. We’ll just see what happens. I’m thinking about shooting for high, high volume. I somehow banged my wrist up last night, I don’t think it will hold me back though.

Things are looking good on the trainingsyndicate front. It looks like some people are getting minorly increased traffic and it is helping. It looks like Stephen is gonna be the first ever trainingsyndicate blogger. I will get him set up this weekend and whenever he feels comfortable next week, I’ll advertise his adress here. It wasn’t a one time deal. That’s a standing offer to others too.

This week I wrap I wrap up a very ugly week at work, 12 hour days. Next week I have my first family visitors since I moved to Baltimore (roughly a year and a half ago). You can bet it’s a big deal. That means my training and posting will probably be a little off from the usual. Still I will get some gym outings in. I want to show off my training areas to my brother-in-law, another weightlifter.

Lift Strong Part III

It came yesterday. I haven’t had a chance to read anything in it but here is the table of contents:

1. Alwyn Cosgrove – The Cancer Diaries
2. Adam Campbell – How to spot and expert
3. Alan Aragon – Nutrition for general health is only as complicated as you make it
4. Bill Hartman – Training deficiencies for increased strength
5. Bob youngs – 7 considerations for goal setting
6. Brain Grasso – Art of coaching
7. Chad Waterbury – 369 method
8. Charles Staley – Why I don’t want to powerclean
9. Chris Mohr – Exercise for cancer patients
10. Chris Sugart – Display adaptability
11. Craig Ballantyne – Fat loss for busy men & women
12. Dan Jon – Training programs are great
13. Dave Tate – Back to the future
14. Dax Moy – Integrated movement
15. Doorman – Lifting the training veil
16. Eric Cressey – Build the athelete
17. Gray Cook & Brett Jones – Safe Strength
18. Harry Selkow – Quitting is not so easy
19. Jack Reape – Frequency
20. James Smith – Considerations of planning training
21. Jason C. Brown – Kettlebell Training for Sport
22. Jason Ferruggia – Optimal vs Reality
23. Jim – Smitty – Smith -COT
24. Jimmy smith – Management post breast cancer
25. Jo DeFranco – NFL linebacker in-season strength program
26. Joe Dowdell – Recovery & Regeneration
27. Joe Stankowski – Quest for the golden monkey
28. John Alvino – Themorgenesis and fat loss
29. John Berardi – Acid base nutrition
30. Julia Ladewski – Pre-season basketball training
31. Keith Scott – Self Assessment
32. Lee Taft – Olympic style lifting and explosive lifting mini-book
33. Lori Incledon -Anemia and athletic women
34. Lori Incledon – Scientific approach to changing body composistion
35. Lou Schuler – you’ll always be a busboy
36. Lyle McDonald – Abbreviated training
37. Mark Phillipi – Ed Coan program
38. Michael Stare DC – Fundamentals of optimal spine health
39. Mike Boyle – The lunge
40. Mike Mahler – High octane cardio
41. Mike Mejia – Hard gaining made easy
42. Mike Roberston – Goal setting
43. Mike Russell – The secret
44. Nick Grantham – Combat circuits
45. Patrick Beith – Complete 40 yard dash training
46. Pavel Tsatsouline – RKC ladder
47. Rachel Cosgrove – Best shape of your life
48. Robert Dos Remedios – 10 things I see in gyms today
49. Ryan Lee – Time saving workouts
50. Steve Shafley – Frugal training
51. Steven Holt – The routine that worked wonders
52. Susan Hill – the power to change
53. TC Luoma – Corn-fed blubber
54. TC Luoma – Heart of the matter
55. Todd Hamer – Coaching
56. Tony Gentilcore – The question
57. Tony Renolds – Level one workout
58. Zach Even-Esh – Outdoor fitness

So there you go, w have officially cracked the cover, now go out and get you copy of Lift Strong. I’ll try to post more as I read more.

trainingsyndicate.com

Well all, I started another website. Anvil or Hammer isn’t going anywhere. It will stay the same. In fact, if anything, it may become more focused. I try to keep Anvil or Hammer about my training but sometimes other things come up that I want to talk about. I have a new place for that stuff.

I built and began trainingsyndicate.com. It is a site that is all about training blogs. It is built around the idea of taking multiple blogs and reposting their contents (with permission) in one place where people can read them all. Of course, the idea is that readers might find some new blogs they would never seek out and those blogs would gain some traffic as a result. Either way, it has been a little project I have been pecking at for some time. This blog as well as some of the others you have seen me reference or comments from the writers of are all being syndicated there right now. So please consider giving it a read. If you have thoughts and opinions, I am happy to hear about it.

Technical update

Scott of Straight to the Bar pointed out to me that with the added comments these days, it might be easier for folks if I made a comment feed, so I did.

Comment Feed

Thanks Scott

EDIT: If anyone finds their previous feed broken (you shouldn’t) let me know.

Anvilorhammer is on the move

I’m changing hosts.
What does that mean to you? Hopefully, nothing. Probabl, some down time in the next couple days.

What does that mean for me? work

What does it mean in the long run….a lot 🙂

oops

Sorry folks. I muddling with other things closed down this site foe a couple hours. I didn’t realize what I had done. I apologize.

Technical update: New links in the left side bar

Let your eyes wander to the left. You should see the search box, a calendar and..oh..what’s this. The last five comments on this blog. Now you can see if anyone commented on and old thread without going back to look. I like it.

Technical Update: Email update

As much as I enjoy having everyone come by the site, in an effort to offer you the easiest way to keep up, I have added a link on the left toward that bottom that says Subscribe to Anvi or Hammer by email. I’ve used the service, it seems to be pretty reliable about sending the full article whenever I update. It doesn’t update you on comments as far as I can tell though. Please feel free to take advantage of it.

Another way to log

I started this log a while back as an attempt to keep a training journal. I stayed with it because I found that it worked exceptionally well for me. I’ve tried most of the usual approaches, buy a workout in a magazine and follow along, write it in a notebook in journal form, write it in just a set/rep breakdown and a couple others. I found that, for me, the blog allowed me to do either or both. It also kept a long term record so I could go back and look at my progress. If I wanted to I could even chart it. It offered me three things that a normal training journal didn’t typically give me:

1. I can’t lose it – well I can but it’s hard. When I was on gripboard this was especially true. When I took responsibility for myown space, it required a little more maintenance but I still like it
2. Tracks more than the bare minimum – a lot of times I would barely get my sets and reps written down, so I really had no idea if it felt good, if I wanted to increase next time and so on. In this format, I feel inclined to do a bit more of a narrative, partial because I feel there may be some kind of audience, who wasn’t there, that wants to know. In truth, it has been incredibly helpful to me when looking back at old workouts and planing my next one.
3. Accountability – I’m sure there are probably some posts that have never been read or aren’t read much. That is ok. I feel like there is someone who has their eye on it so I feel like if I skimp or cheat someone will know.

That said, this blog has a couple shortcomings. The greatest of which is that it’s not that easy to take into the gym so I have something telling me what I’m shooting for today and somewhere to record my totals. Not too long ago, I added a new element to my logging. It was actually started by my inability to see my domain from work but has worked out well so I keep it around.
Google Spreadsheets. I use a lot of google products and this is one that when it came out, I thought it looked useful but couldn’t figure out how. So I left it alone. I experimented with a couple different things and nothing took. Then, one day, I wanted something on paper to take with me to do my workout out. I actually did it in Excel first, which worked really well. Then I realized Excel didn’t quite have the portability I was looking for. So I popped it into Google Spreadsheets and that does the trick. I can work on it at home or the office. Shape it up and print it out.
I built into it formulas that point to each other and calculate pounds of kilos, whichever I don’t enter. It gives me space to record and a clear plan to work from. I haven’t yet closed the loop. I need to go back and record what I did but for now this is working.
I’m not trying to sell anyone on GSpreadsheets. As cool as it would be, I don’t work for them. It’s just another tool that has done the job for me and is available to whomever free of charge. The right tool for the job is very important.

My training spreadsheet

 

UPDATE: I’m trying my spreadsheet link again. I may have had to “Publish” it first for it to be available to see. When I did that, it changed the URL. Someone let me know if you still can’t see it. Also, it opens to the first page which is my blank page, if you click through the tabs, you can see some pages I actually have filled in.