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743

So I’ve been considering what I want to do fitness wise over the last week or so and my goals are kind of in a few different buckets.

Bucket 1

Strength

I’ve had the same goals for a long time regarding strength (1500 total, roughly 4:5:600) and make occasional progress but put almost no effort into it last year. I’m in a great place to do so right now though, I’ve had a good stretch of lifting, I have time, and I don’t have a ton of distractions. I don’t plan on setting hard numbers here because this goal is the least important to me, but getting closer to 500 on squat, and 550 on deads would be great. Realistically, one rep maxes mean a lot less to me than they did when I set those goals years ago.

Bucket 2

Conditioning

This is something I’ve consistently neglected with the exception of a few years, a decade or more ago. I’ve recently been adding in a few more workouts that push conditioning and acquired a peloton which gives me plenty of opportunity to get it done. The better conditioning I get the better I feel generally and the better I perform. I don’t have specific benchmarks but improving on Grace and getting higher outputs on the bike for longer times seem like good indicators of progress.

Bucket 3

Consistency/doing the work

2 years ago I set myself the goal to exercise 150 times during the year, I stopped tracking but definitely hit that goal. It turns out doing the work is effective, even without the smartest training regimen. I’m going to attempt to get at least 4000 minutes on the bike this year (roughly 2x30 min, 1x20, per week) and continue lifting 4ish times a week.

Currently not planning on getting on a program for lifting but that could very well change. Looking to keep the structure something like 3-4 weeks of varied intensity followed by a week of bodybuilding/conditioning work as the deload. Hoping to end the year leaner, stronger, and more capable.

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744

Got my bloodwork back, had very slightly elevated cholesterol (been eating a ton of meat the past 10 or so weeks) and slightly low white blood cell (had been sick). Dr seems to think everything else is perfectly fine and doesn’t think the aforementioned topics warrant another visit before next year. I’ll likely just substitute the large amounts of ground beef I’ve been eating at lunch for ground chicken, or maybe a mixture of the two. Good news.

Got my 50 pushups in last night, 20 in so far today, shooting for 100+, and did a 30 min peloton ride this afternoon, averaged 147 watts, which is my best (of 2) 30 min efforts so far. I’m pretty surprised about my performance on the bike so far, I think it’s better than I expected. However, my cardio isn’t actually my problem it’s my leg conditioning. I had a hard time pushing through the residual soreness from my leg workout 48 hours prior, I was breathing hard but wan’t limited by it. I assume, like with all things, that leg conditioning will come with more work.

Ended the day with 30 min of Yoga and 90 more pushups, 110 total

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745

Feeling exhausted, not sure if it’s the TDAP shot I got at lunch, the peloton, the pushups, or just life but I’m tired, in any case. Step count has actually decreased a bit (per my plan) to about 9k on average this month, shooting for 8+ during the winter months and don’t have any intention of dropping steps because of fatigue.

30 pushups
Shoulder warmup
Band hammer curl: 3x12
Rope curl: 35 2x12
SA band pulldown: 2x10
Deadlift: 135 x 5, 225 x 5, 275 3x10
Axle deadstop rows: 120 x 10, 210 3x10

The deadlifts sucked, I haven’t pulled 10 on a straight bar in a long time, I remember why. Not sure what my progression will look like but potentially something like 4 x 8 at 295 next week. I owe at least 70 pushups tonight, the sore arm from the vaccine isn’t helping motivate but I’ll get them done. Tomorrow is likely going to be 50 pushups and shoulders, we’re dropping the doggo off for her first day at doggy daycare tomorrow, so I might actually go into the office for a few hours.

Off to eat some more and lay down while hacking out the final bits of a project.

Ending the day at 125 pushups across 5 sets, not planning on doing more until after shoulder day tomorrow. 385 in 4 days, feeling big but sore

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746

Going to revisit this video before my next deadlift session, I found it while perusing your log @FlatsFarmer, so thanks!

Cues to remember:

  1. Brace harder, pull the upper back tight
  2. “Fuck the bar”, drive the hips through in an explosive movement

I think I’ll probably stick to a higher rep scheme for the most part this month but may mix in a few technical singles in, too.

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747

Shoulders, chest and upper back are all feeling the fatigue from the pushups. 385 through 4 days. Perfect time for a shoulder day

8 min walk
Shoulder warmup
OHP: bar x 10, 90 x 5, 135 x 5, 145 x 10, 155 x 8, 170 x 8 (pretty much an AMRAP)
Pullups: 3x5 (2 ng, 1 pronated)
Hang cleans: 135 x 8, 155 x 8, 185 x 7 (form was falling apart and I hit the safeties, which were too high, so I cut it one rep short of planned)
2 Rounds of:
lateral cable raises 20 x 10
face pulls: 50 x 15
front cable raises: 20 x 10

Pretty good session all things considered, 170 x 8 is near PR territory, I think. 185 x 7 on hang cleans almost certainly is, as I continue to use these I’ll track PRs more closely, form also needs to be addressed here. Lat stretching has done a lot for my front rack but I still don’t catch these cleanly very often. First time I’ve done 15 pullups/3 sets of them in a long time, feeling pretty solid. Delts are smoked, I did 15 pushups this morning and plan to get at least 35 more in but will wait a bit to recover before I start those.

Planning on doing a Peloton ride tonight, not sure if I’ll do 20 or 30 min, already did 80 min of therapy this morning which should count as “hard conditioning”

Ended up doing a 20 min low impact ride and doing 75 pushups for the day. Will probably do 30 min on the bike and 100-150 pushups tomorrow with no lifting

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748

It’s funny you did this. The other day I got to wondering how many push ups I could do. I stopped at 30 because I was worried about messing up my push day the following day :joy: I couldn’t have done too many more but 30 felt like a good stopping point!

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749

Pretty much what I did, I tried like 2 days later and got to 35 and called it my max for the competition I’m doing with a bunch of unfit schmucks but I definitely could’ve dug deeper.

FWIW, it doesn’t seem that the pushups are impacting my strength significantly, I’m not PRing but still hitting solid number, albeit with some extra soreness

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750

I could be imagining things but hasn’t @T3hPwnisher mwntioned body weight work could be done daily without impacting lifting, or am I crazy?

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751

I heard it but didn’t believe it for myself, being at a vastly inferior level of fitness, but despite doing almost no daily work over the last year and 0 pushups I’m doing just fine. Turns out he knows a thing or two.

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752

You got it! I refer to it as “daily work”. It gets done every day, no matter what. I’ve built it up to

50 chins, 50 dips, 50 pull aparts, 40 reverse hypers, 25-30 GHRs, 20 standing ab wheels, 25 band pull ups and some sort of neck work

But that’s the key: I built UP to that. The “trick” is to keep is VERY sub maximal. I don’t do any sets to failure, and I VERY slowly increased my reps to get to these numbers, and have since settled into them for about 6 months now.

It adds up though! 50 chins a day, every day, for a full year means an extra 18,250 chins. That’s going to cause some growth, haha.

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753

That probably makes what I’m doing a perversion of your concept of “daily work.” My pushup muscles are more well-trained than my pullup muscles, for example, so if I took my current approach and applied it to pullups my injury risk would probably be significantly higher. Will have to be more sensible about adding things, going forward, I added a seemingly trivial amount of ab work over the last two days and my abs are considering it non-trivial, ha.

18,250 chins.

Seeing that number makes it so much more obvious why this approach works so well.

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754

It all adds up! Haha. For me, it’s not about injury risk. That ship sailed SO long ago. It’s just about recovery. You don’t want to be stepping over dollars to pick up dimes. The daily work gets me extra volume, speeds up recovery, and supports my main training. If it starts actually taxing my recovery, it stops meeting it’s mark.

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755

That is a good way to frame it. I think my framing, about injury, is primarily because I’m extremely risk averse, most of the time, but also probably isn’t that different (or at least not diametrically opposed) to what you are saying. Lack of recovery correlates strongly with injury, probably in reality, definitely in my mind.

If it starts actually taxing my recovery, it stops meeting it’s mark.

That’s definitely something I’ll have to play with, do you have a mechanism that tracks when you are too taxed or is it primarily intuitive? My body is very good at lying to me, telling me I’m too tired, putting in the work almost always proves my body wrong but I’m not sure I can delineate improper recovery and just normal malaise.

756

Results are what I go by. If I’m getting bigger and stronger, I’m recovering. If I’m not, I’m not recovering. From there, it’s a question of why. Often “overtraining” turns out to be “undereating”, but in situations where the latter cannot be resolved, the former has to be addressed.

Amazingly enough, my injuries never resulted from lack of recovery. I actually tended to get them when I was best recovered. And that makes total sense to me: when I am at my best, I can push my hardest, exceed my limits, and then my wings of max will melt. When I am slogging it out, I can’t push hard enough to hurt myself.

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757

Makes sense, the answer to the question I didn’t ask, seems to be “do the work anyway and see what the results are.”

My brain (Daedalus), is telling me not to fly too close but why else would I have wings?

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758

Did a 30 min ride, medium level of effort, only a few parts that were hard but it got me breathing and sweating.

Also got in the easiest 5 minute core workout peloton had and 140 pushups, moves me to 600 through 6 days. Squats tomorrow and a reduced amount of push-ups.

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759

Upper feeling a bit beat today, likely will skip the pushups or maybe do just one set and add in a stretching and/or another core class from Peloton this evening.

8 min warmup walk
A lot of shoulder warmup, much tighter than normal, goblet squats, hip stretching
Pullups: 2x4, 1x1 (super wide on this one but joints felt a bit sore in all of them)
Duffalo squat: bar x 10, 105 x 5, 145 x 5, 195 x 5, 235 x 5 (shoes + sleeves), 235 x 3 (+belt), 265 x 10, 285 x 8, 315 x 11
Calf raises: 90 x 20, 140 x 20, 90 x 30 ss with RDL
RDL: 135 x 10, 185 x 10, 275 3 x 5
Back extensions: 3x10 ss with quads
Quad extensions: 90 x 20, 130 x 15, 190 x 15

Really solid workout, gave myself 3ish minutes of rest between hard squat sets but everything else was moving pretty quickly. Plan was to get 6+ at 315, made it to 4 and it felt rough, pushed to 6 then started taking 2-4 breaths between reps and that helped a ton. Hit 10, which was my goal and decided I’d do one more, actually moved well but couldn’t keep the lie up, definitely have more in me.

First week of my volume block felt good, planning on upping intensity a bit next week (4x8 or similar), then doing more intensity (still 6+ reps per set) + a widowmaker for week 3, which should lead nicely into my trip (which is now going to be in Philly instead of PR, which i’m pretty disappointed about but such is life).

Peloton seems not to adversely impact my squats but that relationship doesn’t seem to be bilateral but that’s okay, I don’t need to be an amazing pelotoner, just a consistent one.

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760

Did 20 pushups last night and 10 min of lower stretching.

Got almost 10k steps on snowy trails today, did 60 pushups and 10 min of easy peloton classes (core/upper stretching). Was tough not going harder today but I felt beat, think it was the right call. Benching tomorrow.

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761

Did some training in a snowy field with the dog this morning which was mostly successful and a bit tiring, think she’ll be a good dog.

20 min “low impact peloton” @ 130 watts
Shoulder warmup
Axle bench: 120 x 10, 210 2x5, 230 x 8, 240 x 8, 250 x 8, 270 x 13
Tri rope pulldown: 35 2x15
Band overhead/extension: 2x12
Band flies: 2x10
Band lat pulldowns: 2x10

The accessory was done around the bench (not after) but figure order doesn’t really matter much. I have misplaced/lost one wrist wrap, I didn’t notice until I got to 210, looked for it for a few minutes but to no avail. The amount that shook me was odd, become too reliant on those, I ended up going more conservative than planned but got up for a strong final set which I am pretty pleased with. Probably had 1/2 more in me but went full ADD after rep 12 and lifted my head to look at the weight tree to see if I was doing 270 or 275.

Legs were still smoked from squats so I did an easy ride, think I’ll eventually build capacity here but I’m not pushing it. Will bang out 50 or so pushups and probably some stretching before the night is over.

75 pushups, no stretching, chest feels like a balloon.

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762

Feeling like I burning through food at the moment, belt is in a hole but weight is the same. Waited til about 4:30 before making myself deadlift

Shoulder warmup
Rope hammer curls: 35 2x15
Band curls: 3x10
Band pulldown:3x10
Axle dead stop row: 120 4x10
Deadlifts: 135 2x5, 225 2x3, 275 x 8, 285 x 8, 295 x 8, 315 x 12

Lower back is feeling good, doing back extensions and regular rdls is helping I think, there is normally pain when laying down and that’s all but subsided. Deadlifts are feeling pretty solid at this point, only issue was with 285 I tried to use straps but didn’t get my brace set so used way too much lower back. Ended up doing double overhand on the rest of the sets, with chalk for 315. Will upload the 315 tonight and get pushups and stretching done

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