Not a bad week! Keep it up.
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Thank you, I’m trying to consistently put the effort in and think of it long term.
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Seriously great gains recently Caesium, Keep it up.
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Training review Jan 17- March 17
So looking at the goals I set before Christmas I’ve fallen a bit short. I think realistically they were a bit high, particularly the pressing ones. Since then I’ve changed how I think about training a little bit. I don’t really care that much about my 1RM; if I’m not competing in powerlifting then I think it’s safer and more productive to aim for a 3-5RM. It was obvious I wasn’t going to overhead press 60kg by March pretty much the day after I set the goal but at least unobtainable goals gave me something to chase.
Despite all this I’m happy with my squat progress. The best squat I listed at the start of this log was 5x72.5, now after six months I’ve done 5x100 and in three months gone from aiming for 100kg for one rep to hitting it for five. Overhead press and bench press have been similar. Deadlift has been a bit problematic for me but there’s still been progress so I’m trying to stay positive. I think it’s important to look at the big picture, if I add 20kg a year to my squat over five years that’s gonna see me squatting around five plates.
Nutrition could still be improved and it’s an ongoing battle. I need to keep telling myself to put the same effort in outside the gym as in it. I could say a lot more about this but it simply needs to be better.
Future training
For the next three weeks I’m going to do basically Texas method just for a change and to keep me ticking over. I’ll start with fairly low weights and build myself up.
For the next ten weeks after that I’m going to follow the first 5/3/1 full body template from beyond. The only changes I’m going to make to this is swapping 5/3/1 deadlift for the six week program by Tim Henriques using a max of 110kg and maybe add some direct ab work in. I’ve thought about this a fair bit and I think it’ll be good to try. Providing I don’t get injured, which is unlikely, I’ve very little to lose and potentially some to learn. It’ll be a change from higher rep deadlifts and put more emphasis on heavier low rep sets. After running that for six weeks I’ll take a full deload and do a cycle of either the full body template with 5/3/1 deadlifts or full body full boring with all deadlifts double overhand.
I’d like to attend a kickboxing class or do some sort of decent conditioning at least once a week but I’m not going to try and set lots of small goals like before, it doesn’t really work. Diet wise I’m just going to try and eat clean and often and not over analyse things.
Like I said before I’m not that interested in my 1RM anymore so my new goals reflect that and are the following:
Squat- 110kg for 5
Deadlift- 120kg for 5
Bench press- 80kg for 5
Overhead press- 50kg for 5
That’s it for now, apologies for the lengthy post to anyone who reads it all but I find it helpful to look back on and see how things have changed.
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Thank you mate, you two.
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You’ve built a good attitude to this. It’ll help you a ton. Good work so far too.
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Thank you, you and everyone else on here I follow have definitely helped.
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01/04/17
Seated overhead press superset with lat pull down:
5x10x20/ 5x10
Squat:
3x5x60
Deadlift:
3x60, 2x5x80
Took it easy and only had 30 minutes so I didn’t do much. Just something to get me moving really. Had a pain in my shoulder during the presses and it’s still there half an hour later as a dull ache.
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03/04/17
Texas Method
Bench press superset with squat:
10x20, 5x40, 5x5x55/ 10x20, 5x60, 5x5x70
Deadlift:
5x60, 5x90
Looks like nothing written down but this was actually pretty hard. I went first thing in the morning and only ate sausage roll beforehand so I felt pretty drained by deadlifts. I wanted to do an AMRAP set of dumbbell rows but ran out of time.
Took about 45 minutes.
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Bet everyone in the Gym thought you were a right twit using the Bench and Squat rack at the same time lol. Anyway good progress.
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It’s a tiny little gym tucked away in the corner of town with equipment twice as old as me so half the time, such as today, it’s just me in there. There’s three other fairly big ones in town. I only go to this one because it’s by far the nearest of two that’ll let me join for a month. It’s strange going from a super busy university gym where I can’t even go to the water fountain without losing whatever I’m using to this though.
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05/04/17
Seated overhead press:
3x10x20 (paused)
Split squats superset with lateral raises:
3x10xBW/ 3x10
Machine flyes superset with rear delt flyes: 3x10-15
Lat pull down superset with hamstring curls:
? x18, 15, 15/ 3x10
Just picked a random weight in middle of stack and went for max reps, doesn’t say how heavy it is. Went from wide to narrow grip.
Hanging leg raises: 3x8xBW
Did these where you rest your forearms on pads rather than hang from a bar. Found it really hard just to hold myself and was shaking like a leaf.
Today was a light recovery day and I had lots of time so I did a few extra fluff exercises for assistance. Nothing was particularly difficult other than the pull downs.
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I was watching Rio 2016 weightlifting highlights, and I noticed that all of their wrists are very bent back. Do you think it’s a trade with strict vs. Momentum based pressing?
Quite possibly, and they are probably conditioned to having strong bent wrists from all the cleans and front squats. @Destrength would know better.
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I’ve noticed that if I try to keep my wrists straight on push press, it hurts and the weight I can get overhead drops. But wrists have to be straight for strict. Just curious if you had noticed anything similar.
I haven’t push pressed or jerked for years, so no. Although, I think CT wrote something about the differences between strict/push/jerk.
Wrists get accustomed to it, though they get exposed to a lot less stress than you’d think. In the jerk/push press, you need the bar to be directly behind your head and that can be difficult mobility wise. You’ve got your elbows, shoulders, and wrists that have to work on getting there. When one lacks the mobility, others have to make up for it. In a good jerk though, the wrists, elbows, and shoulders are all in a pretty manageable range of motion.
Look at modern Weightlifting’s GOT (well, before he got popped RIP Ilya) His wrists are a tiny bit bent, but not a ton.
Also a lot of us do prehab work for our wrists. If someone were to check my log closely enough (or if I logged exactly) you’d find I do a good amount of wrist, shoulder, and elbow prehab work because all of those are at risk of exploding in Weightlifting.
Sometimes it isn’t always a good looking jerk, or healthy one, but it is good enough to get the weight over the head without getting red lighted in comp. Like this monster from France who probably should’ve had his lift red lighted for a couple reasons. Though I am fairly certain he’s double jointed to make that even possible.
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How on Earth does that not get red-lighted? I thought you needed to have your arms straight during the jerk portion?
What do you do for shoulder pre-hab besides the possible usual like band pull-aparts?
Lu Xiaojun raises, and seated dumbbell clean and presses, along with dips and pull ups from rings and pressing work.
Also you don’t need your arms to be straight, it’s that they have to be locked or as close as anatomically possible if your elbows don’t lock out like mine (though I am fairly certain you have to talk to the judges about it, haven’t been to a meet yet so I can’t confirm). He appears to be double jointed, so he gets an even more extreme lockout. People with double jointed elbows actually aren’t that uncommon in Weightlifting, and it’s really unsettling to watch, especially if they come from a program that doesn’t believe in a ton of upper body strength, because they look like they are going to dislocate their elbows. Dislocated elbows are a disgusting looking injury too, when it happens it looks like they broke their arm.
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I used to work with a double jointed guy, he could petty much dislocate both elbows at will.
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