PUSH 08/11-10
Military press
15xbar
8x25kg
5x30kg
5x35kg
5x40kg
5x45kg
5x50kg
5x55kg - Last rep was a grinder
max repx40kg
slight inc db bp
5x28kg
5x30kg
5x32kg
5x34kg
3x36kg - felt unstable at this point
max repx27kg
BB BP - had to wait a while to get a bench
5x60kg
5x65kg
5x70kg
5x75kg
5x80kg
5x85kg
?x90kg - don’t remember but this was the heaviest weight
max repx70kg
At this point I had a strong desire to do rack lifts - don’t know why.
Pushdown - did some external rotations in my rest periods
5x25kg
5x27,5kg
5x30kg
5x32,5kg
5x35kg - sucks to do turnarounds with on this exercise
maxz repx27,5kg
Thats it for today. Didn’t feel very motivated, but I guess thats because I have eaten waaaaay too many carbs yesterday. That always make my brain feel weird.
An extremely frustrating day for me! I called my training partner at 14.10 and asked him if he was ready to go soon. He replied that he would be ready soon. But after an hour I still hadn’t heard from him and couldn’t make contact with him over his cell. REALLY annoying! By the 1.5 hour mark I was ready to kill another human being if they as much as smiled at me.
When he finally was ready, after 2 hours - call that “soon” again, I exerted a bit of childish behavior, jokingly telling him how I wanted to physically hurt him for being a dick and splashing water on his cigarettes rendering them unsmokeable.
On top of that my spine felt a little achy - so I didn’t feel like I should go very high on exercises with a large spinal load.
Front Squat
15xBW
5x30kg
5x35kg
5x40kg
5x45kg
5x50kg
5x55kg
5x60kg
5x65kg
5x70kg
5x75kg
5x80kg
5x85kg
5x90kg - MFP - A bit tired so decided only to do one exercise but felt like I needed more sets
5x60kg
5x65kg
5x70kg
5x75kg
5x80kg
max repx70kg
My last meal before my workout was like 4 hours before and I clearly felt that!
BTW I taught my training partner the back squat today. Odd thing that he could Front squat properly but his knees went waaaaay too far forward when placing the bar on his back. Also he didn’t sit back properly. I remembered reading that box squat could be used to teach proper technique on this exercise, so I had him do 5 reps of box squat immidiatly followed by 5 reps of back squat. Worked like a charm.
Was a bit sick when I woke up this morning. Running nose and sneezing. Light sickness always make me feel a bit weaker and bit drained. Had a fantastic push session though.
Is it me or does eating 3-6 eggs everyday make you look a lot leaner? Possibly because of reduced sub-skin water retention?
PUSH
Military press
15xbar
5x25kg
5x30kg
5x35kg
5x40kg
5x45kg
5x50kg
5x55kg - not that hard, but bar started rolling in my hand. It’s a bit bent.
Flat BB BP
5x60kg
5x65kg
5x70kg
5x75kg
5x80kg
5x85kg
5x90kg
5x95kg - Easy! Probably because I haven’t done a max rep set yet.
5x97,5kg - 4. rep was on the edge og being a good rep and 5 was a little grinding.
max repx77,5kg
It’s a almost 1,5 years since my bench have been so high, and at that time I was about 30 pounds heavier. My body weight was 95kg at that time, compared to 82kg (measure taken this morning). I’m very happy about this:)
Max rep set for military press at 40kg
Tri set - 5 reps each
chest dip
lateral raise
plate tri extention
I felt a bit drained today. I know I really should do a neural activation workout, but I don’t know how to structure them. I don’t know “their rules” so to speak. Nevertheless I was determined to reduce the cns drain of todays workout, and planned to do so by stopping the exercise even at the slightest slow down, and I mean that literaly.
I was supposed to do legs, but when I did a set of bw squat I felt that my hams wasn’t ready for it. Took the next day in my rotation which was push.
PUSH
Military press
10xbar
5x25kg
5x30kg
5x35kg
5x40kg
5x45kg
5x50kg
3x55kg - very slight slowdown = stop
No max rep set either because they drain more cns energi than ramping sets
Flat BB BP
5x60kg - Experienced slight pain, but not so little I think I should work through it, in my right arm around the area were the lateral delt and the triceps meet. Felt like I had to do another set to find out more about the cause of the pain.
5x60kg - Only maximum accelerated reps hurt. I think it right were the delt attaches. I wonder what has caused this.
New things I’m doing wich could be the cause:
-Sudden increase in frequency from 3 times a week to 6 times: This will amplify the cause
-100 pull up workout: they are not listed for the exercise on exrx.net, but I don’t feel like I can totally exclude them as the cause, since they propably stretch the lateral delt. Also if I’m wrong and it is the triceps, they act as a dynamic stabilizer on this exercise.
-Deep chest dips with mini drop prescribed for the perfect rep, done after my pressing movement, which eqauls tired and less stable muscles. Maybe my drop is to far down? Anyway this I were I first felt this pain. It was at my last push session.
I will ditch the deep chest dips and see how things are going at the next push.
Even though I only had one proper BP set I got a good pump in my chest. Been eating very small meals today every hour. I need to explore this.
Felt a really drained today. I’m doing a group-project for my education, and I feel like I really have to pace the others all the time. So I guess that’s a factor and then I did a pull workout yesterday. Decided to give neural charge workouts a try. As far as I understand you have follow these rules when you struture them:
-No neural drain, only neural activation
–Therefore you should choose a weight that you can do several rounds with without fatigue. But not lighter than this.
-Explosive movements
-circuit fashion
-Don’t do the same activation workout too often
-Do until you feel like doing one more round. Then stop - don’t do it!
Jump Squat
Clean and press
Band pull w/ external rotation
This stuff actually works. I felt waaaay better after I did it.
I’m thinking I need to do something with my food plan. It’s clear to me that I need to set some RULES for what and how much energy I can eat in a day, or else I will simply not stop eating. I actually seldom feel hungry, but even though I don’t feel hungry I feel the need to eat constantly. For food planning I’ve tried to set an amount of calories I can eat in a day, and then stuffed food into this plan as I go along. But that really annoys me because I keep thinking about what I’m gonna have for the next meal until I start preparing it, so I may be better of planning exactly what food and how much of it I’m gonna have for the whole week. Then print it out and put it on my fridge or something like that.
Now that I’m thinking about it, I think that I will put other stuff on it too. Daily cleaning tasks, preparation for education and stuff like that.
I’ll be making it soon. I have some other stuff to do, so I think will write it on saturday. Then I will have plenty of time to put the plan into motion for monday.
Felt demotivated again today, I think I know what the reason is, but I consider it too private to post here - so I went for a quick and dirty leg workout.
LEGS
Front squat
15xbw
5x25kg
5x30kg
5x35kg
5x40kg
5x45kg
5x50kg
5x55kg
5x60kg
5x65kg
5x70kg
5x75kg
5x80kg
5x85kg
5x90kg
max repx70kg
Really low rest periods - My quads are still burning.
PUSH 20/11-2010
Military pres
12xbar
5x25kg
5x30kg
5x35kg
5x40kg
5x45kg
5x50kg
5x55kg - the bench for flat BP was occupied so I did the ramp one more time to keep the CNS activated
Flat BB BP
5x60kg
5x65kg
5x70kg
5x75kg
5x80kg
5x85kg
5x90kg
5x95kg
5x100kg - YEAH! All good reps too
max repx80kg
Stopped at this point due to the pain I explained in the previous post. I didn’t feel today, but I certainly dont’t want to make it worse.
I applied some light stretching to my lower body, in hope of making the pain go away FOREVER! The pain itself felt like cramps, but only in the tear drop, which is a little odd to me because the whole qaud usually cramp when they happen.
Been cleaning up my diet with some delicious BB recipes.
Tried for some inc BB BP but the adjustable bench really sucks for it.
flat BB BP
5x60kg
5x65kg
5x70kg
5x75kg
5x80kg
5x85kg
5x90kg
5x95kg
4x100kg - One rep worse than last workout. Maybe because I have now resumed my RC-diet.
max repx80kg
military press max rep @ 40kg
CG BP supersetted with Lateral raise (raise was always at 5x12kg)
CG BP
5x40kg
5x45kg
5x50kg
5x55kg
5x60kg
5x65kg
5x70kg
5x75kg
max repx60kg
Read the new CT article. Interresting stuff, I am not gonna do the more pescriptive part of it though. I have however learned a few important points:
-Reduce amount of volume for lats. I really feel the drain he is talking about.
-Go with higher reps for lats
-I need to stop doing that one grinder rep I sometimes have on BP
-Combine neural charge with low volume lat/biceps
-lower body press upper body press in the same workout
-Emphasis on certain parts types of upper body pressing = bench/OH
-Lower pressing reps to 3. I was not ready for that before. I am now.
-I need to be really dedicated to learning proper auto-regulation if I don’t want to follow his set perscription and the volume progression of his program.
-I’m ditching the max rep set. I don’t really like this but I can only conclude that since he didn’t mention it, it’s only for peace of mind. Unless it’s part of the tricks he will be revealing in his next articles. But then again I have gained most of my strength and size with 5x5 with no grinders, so I should trust in CT.
-A whole new way of organising my workouts
So today I’m going to do a light lat/biceps workout. I’m doing pull ups even though they are draining, but I don’t have a pulldown machine. I’m not gonna count sets or reps, but I will focus on feel. I’m looking forward to see his article on monday now that the game has changed so much. In reality it hasn’t since the “game” is relying on ever orderly science, of which we don’t know enough to articulate, but our cognitive experience of the iron game will never be the same. I guess this is like religion in a way. We don’t know enough about certain parts of the world to understand and archieve what we want in life, so we look to dogma to help us under our way. Until pure science can provide me with better results, which it can’t (fuck you Casey Butt), I will be a religious fanatic, doing the bidding of the training god I currently believe in.
I’ll go hit the weights now.
BENCH EMPHASIS WORKOUT
So I tried this making a workout according to the guidelines in the new CT article. Took alot longer than I thought it would even though I only did one wave. Maybe becuase I had to do more sets for incline BB bench. It’s 6 months since I did it with a BB last time, so the tech was a bit off at first. I’m thinking all make a spread sheet to track the weight I did last time, so I’ll know where to start the potentiation sets. Here is a list of todays exercises as well as the heaviest weight used:
Military press 55kg - this took me totally by surprise becuase I’ve done it higher with 5 reps. Maybe my increased focus on rep style had me reduce the load a bit.
Inc BP 65kg - this will go higher next time, when my cns betters the recruitment pattern
flat BP 100kg
RDL 120kg
1 wave - forgot to finish with a set on the lower end though.
Did an OH emphasis workout on saturday took sunday off.
Later when the article from CT goes live, I will construct a program from for todays workout. I’m not training my legs again before I have seen a doctor though. Not with added resistance anyway.
Read the articles now, and here is the what I think is the most important NEW points for me:
How to effectively emphasis a certain type of press work (OH vs. bench)
I originally thought of it as choosing 2 types of either type of work, but learned that he actually meant micro- or double ramping.
Stick with the same exercises. Don’t even do close variations.
That’s it, since the other article pretty much covered all the important stuff.
So I’ll guess the I will pick
Military press
Low incline BB BP
Flat BB BP
Sumo DL
Front squat
for my exercises. I will start adding resistance to my legs as soon as the spontanius spurts of pain goes away. So I should probably record here that it happened 2 times last night when I was sleeping, and 1 time during the day. I’ll add in some BW work and stretching meanwhile.
I’m still set on using auto-regulation instead of the charts in the articles. How on earth could a chart predict that the best growth stimulus for me would be to add 5 pounds on my next cycle? It dosen’t take biorythems into account, which auto-regulation does. So instead of posting every set here in my log, I will post how the workout felt performance-wise. If I did extra waving on a movement and stuff like that. If I hit a PR on something, I will probably post that too, but I won’t let it become my focus. Focus should be on rep performance, and not numbers.
Sooo I guess I’m off to do a pressing workout with OH emphasis now.
Did the workout as descriped above. Great rep performance on military press. I’m still getting used to inc BB BP, but I saw some improvement since last time. I feel pretty weird doing flat BP after incline. I feel it alters my recruitment pattern, but it returned to normal the set before my MTW. With all the upper body pressing I´m gonna do I will have plenty of oppotunity to fix this.
Oh yeah, I did power snatches for the very first time today as my activation. I only had instruction from whatever videos I could find online, but I felt like it came pretty naturally to me after I had done the first couple of sets.
