Per aspera ad astra (strongman Koestrizer)

18.06.

Hip is feeling better and better. Bending over is not as much of a pain in the arse (see what I did there?) anymore. Worked on my tight right glute with a lacrosse ball and got a positive response even though it is not pleasent while doing it.

1 seated barbell Press
8 @ 40 kg
8 @ 50 kg
8 @ 55 kg
8 @ 60 kg
8 @ 60 kg
7 @ 60 kg
11 @ 40 kg
16 @ 40 kg

2 lat pull down
About 6-9 sets with a 20 count as Rest

Notes:

  • this bores me. I hate these pseudo workouts and can’t focus at all.
  • had a bad day
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19.06.

Bit of lacrosse ball work in the morning.
A few stretches before the workout.

1a upper back good morning (ssb)
3 x 10 @ 22 kg

1b atg squat, hands wide (ssb)
3 x 10 @ 22 kg

1c regular good morning (ssb)
3 x 10 @ 22 kg

1a-c without racking the bar

2 step ups (No weight)
2 x 10 per leg

3 sl hip thrusts
2 x 12 per leg

4 laying leg curls
2 x 12 focusing in squezing the glutes

5 elevated trap bar deadlift
2 x 10 @ 66 kg

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21.06

Body is trashed. I will need next week as well to get back. Probably also professional help but that is hard to access right now. Funnily I don’t need it for my hip but my t-spine.

1 Bench press
10 @ 60 kg (feet up)
10 @ 80 kg - WAY harder than it should be. Felt like 100 kg should.
8 @ 80 kg
8 @ 80 kg
8 @ 80 kg
I heard e-sports and chess are considered sports… Probably time to make the switch

2 spoto press
5 @ 60 kg
5 @ 60 kg
5 @ 60 kg
5 @ 60 kg
5 @ 60 kg

3 TRX row (slow and controlled)
5 x 10

3 db bench press, slight incline
8 @ 35 kg
7 @ 35 kg

4 band pull aparts
5 x 20-25

Notes: (or maybe self talk?)

  • mentally I feel right now like I have made a step back to half a year ago
    BUT:
  • I know that life is very stressful and emotionally harder to handle for me than usually. I know that I will get healthy again. I knwo that I can streighten my mind and go back to the kind of progress I had before my comp. I know that a month of bad training won’t matter all that much in the big picture. I know that my injuries are a joke to some of the things people in here go through or even some athletes I know personally (like my boss).
    I KNOW all of that. Seeing it ans keeping it in mind ist difficult but I will sort that stuff out, it is going to be fine.
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God no. If you want to get into a real sport get into cribbage!

Even after a brief google search I don’t exactly know what that is :smiley:

I also realized that you need to be somewhat smart for chess and fast for e-sports. So I guess it is back to rehab and (re)building strength.

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What is your injury? I must’ve missed it in the last handful of posts.

I’ve also never actually played cribbage, so I couldn’t even begin to describe it haha.

Currently I have two injuries actually. One happened last week when I injured my right hip doing pause squats.
The other one is a problem with my t-spine. This one is reaccuring and goes back quite some time. This flare up however ist rather bad. I am not sure what is the problem but my physio (well my ex-physio) said that some of my vertabrae of the t-spine keep dislocating. The last time I was there he relocated, I think two vertabrae and 2 ribs.
While this sounds shocking to someone who has never experiend something similiar, it really isn’t that bad. Although my physio was always pretty confused about in how little pain I seemed to be in. While this is unpleasent, it is kind of an easy fix if you havea good physio or chiropracter around.
This however poses a problem. My ex physio is someone I knew for years (the father of one of my best friends). Although his schedule was busy he always found ways to fit me in or just told me to come before he opens/ closes. I also payed half of what everyone else was paying. Nowadays I live in the most expensive city of this country and you have to wait crazy amounts of time for an appointment which also costs a lot (if you are not send by your doctor).

Tldr: I know I will fix the hip on my own. The t-spine however I would love to get some treatment on. If it doesn’t happen though, I already know from experience that it isn’t the end of the world.
I will get through.

Ahh I see, tough break dude.

The head provider at my GF’s office actually does a lot of cases like yours, putting folks ribs back in place and such. At first I was like wtf? but after she explained it to me it’s not so bad sounding haha.

Best of luck man, hope you can get back to baseline sooner than later.

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Wtf when I read that about your vertabrae and ribs i thought take care man, it’s not worth the risc.
And then @mr.v3lv3t comes ind saying it’s all normal.
Just sounds crazy mate. Hope you’ll get over it soon.

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The cracking back in part is not at all bad or painful.

I just came back from the physio. They had a free spot because someone cancelled their appointment. 40€ for a treatment would have been okay… had it been a success.
The woman have it her all but admitted that all technique can only geht you so far and that she was just to light and weak to manipulate my body. My bad that I didn’t specify what I need in telephone. I’ll try to get an appointment somewhere next week or so.

22.06.

Today I did some cleans and snatches to practise for my license test on Tuesday. Not what I would have chosen to train right now but I needed to have some practise. All done with 40 kg

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22.06.

Man second “workout” today! :smiley: Had a five hour drive today because tomorrow my gf takes part in the women’s German strongman championships! :muscle:.
Realized two things: the hotel gym is tiny but surprisingly nice with a rack, oly bar and plates (only 120 kg bar weight possible but whatever), dip station, few dbs, landmine, bench machine, leg curl and cardio stuff. For a hotel that’s nice.
Second thing: I won’t train at all until wednesday, so I thought I’d do a quick light training (reha in mind still).

1a leg curls
3 x 15

1b good mornings
3 x 15 @ 20 kg (empty bar)

2a sldl (beltless, doh)
10 @ 60 kg
10 @ 80 kg
10 @ 90 kg
8 @ 110 kg (grip slipped a bit. So I racked)
3 @ 80 kg (5 sec pause at bottom)

2b sl hip thrusts
4 x 10 per leg

3a bird dogs on bench
2 x 10 per Side

3b fat man pull ups on dip station
2 x 10

Notes:

  • Back and hips are still banged Up but seemingly didn’t react negatively to this little workout. Even though it all was light and everything it did involve some kind of deadlift!
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Thought I’d do a quick little write up:
Yesterday I was at the German strongman national championships for the women and masters class. The event took place in Bad Salzungen and was integrated into a city fair, which made for a pretty cool venue. I was there to support my girlfriend who competed. This was her 3rd contest and the heaviest so far. Also Herbert, head of the Kraftsportfreunde Bayern, competed in the masters class. The contest ended early for him though, when he broke his foot on the tire flip.

The events for the women were:

  1. axle clean and press for max reps in 60 sec. You could chose between 50 and 60 kg and on the day they even offered 40 kg because one of the women was so unsure if she would get 50 kg. However once you have called your weight, there was no changing in case you can’t do it.
  2. tire flip and log (an actual one, not a strongman log) drag. 4 flips with a 200 kg tire and a 15 meter drag with 110 kg.
  3. axle deadlift with tires for max weight. This was set up as a rising bar event and each athlete had 4 attempts. Lowest call possible was 100 kg
  4. farmer’s walk for max. distance with 60 kg each hand. Turns at 15 meter
  5. loading race: 60 kg sandbag, 60 kg keg, 60 kg atlas stone, 100 kg atlas stone.

Event 1
In training Julia (my gf) has succesfully done multiple singles with 61 kg on the axle c&p. However the axle in competition was a lot different from ours and she wasn’t able to do a clean like she usually does.She had to try it with a continental clean but she has never practised those and never wears a belt. She gave it her very all and had two falls, which looked brutal (couple bruises and hurt her left quad, which hopefully won’t turn out to be too serious of an injury) but ultimately she didn’t get it into rack position.

  • Well you live and learn. I think it was the right call and she thinks so as well. You have got to take a risk sometimes. These things happen in competition.

Event 2:
The flip and drag medley. Unfortunately weather didn’t play nice that day and the event had to be stopped midway thorugh and was continued after the deadlift for the guys and girls who couldn’t perform because the ground got too slippery.
Julia did well in this event but her quad was bugging her on the drag part. I was very pleased with her performance and think she did great here!
This event took some victims among the masters. A lot couldn’t finish their course. Herbert got unlucky and broke his foot and another competitior tore his biceps.

Events 3:
The deadlift is like a mutual weakness of ours, although she has better technique, max weights are not her strength (yet) in the deadlift.
We called 100 kg as her first attempt, which was easy. 110 kg was no problem either. 120 kg went fine, which was a PR for her! 130 kg as her last attempt wouldn’t budge though.
Some other women were incredibly strong here. The second best women pulled 180 kg! The events was won by Sandra “Sunny” Bradley (winner of last year’s arnold classic amateur event, will compete as a pro this year) with a very easy 200 kg pull at 80 kg bodyweight. The masters had a bit higher bar with bigger tires and the best won with a 330 kg pull.

Event 4
The farmer’s for max distance. Julia fought like a lioness for every meter. This was super impressive and she even got some comments from the commentator about how great of a fighter she is. Very proud!
She went something over 70 meter with 60 kg each hand! Which was definitely a huge PR. Sunny won and just stopped after 200m (!) gently placing the implements in place for the next woman. That got some laughs :smiley:

Event 5
The loading medley. Julia struggled a litle bit with the sandbag as we weren’t practising it enough. But hse gutted it out of course. The keg was no problem at all, she has done heavier kegs before. The 60 kg stone was a PR and went up very nice. She didn’t attempt the second stone. Also a great result in this discipline after a very very long day.

All in all I am very happy with Julia’s performance and am super proud of how well she handled everything and how hard she fought! Super impressive to me and there is probably a lot to be learnt for myself :wink:

Sunny went for a German record and loaded a 140 kg atlas stone at 80 kg bodyweight. FUCK that was impressive!
https://www.instagram.com/p/BkYZg5QBBzN/?taken-by=sunny_b_strongwoman

I won’t share videos of Julia as I am not sure if she is comfortable with that.

I personally had a great day, helping out some competitors, being there for my girl and enjoying the atmosphere and meeting some of the stronmen I already knew. Really cool contest.
I am proud as hell and I think Julia has a bright future in strength sports :slight_smile:

Edit: Julia placed 7th out of 9 and 6th in her weight class

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Great write up, thanks for taking the time to share. Congrats to your gf and massive respect for getting in there and giving it her all. Quality

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Thanks man, very happy you liked it!

1 Log lift (clean once)
6 x 5 @ 80 kg

2 strict ohp (no equipment)
5 x 10 @ 40 kg

3 lat pull down
12 @ 50 kg
12 @ 60 kg
10 @ 70 kg
8 @ 80 kg
10 @ 60 kg

4 chest supported tbar row
10 @ 45 kg
10 @ 35 kg
10 @ 20 kg
10 @ 15 kg

  • done as a big dropset

5 band pull aparts
3 x 15-20

Notes:

  • can’t decide how to feel about that. I was about to cry on my first set of log, as 80 kg felt like an empty bar when I last did log and now this felt heavy as fuck
  • in the other hand I should be grateful that I could atleast get some training in with all my injuries atm. So even if it wasn’t heavy, maybe I should see it as a start and be happy with it.
  • will get a recipe from my doctor for a few physio sessions. Hopefully I will get appointments soon and get someone who is able to actually help me.
  • I was really afraid going into this workout. Anxious and nervous. This was strange.
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Injuries suck. Except they’re going to happen. You’ll be OK. It may take a while for you to get fixed, but you’ll be OK.

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I am certain that I will. I know I complain a lot and I am sorry if I sound like a little cry baby. I tend to be very emotional in the case of lifting (which is very much out of character for me). I can’t help it though.
The pain is not at all a problem at all tbh. I am just upset about setbacks. That’s what I care about.

Thanks for taking the time, Mark

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I think most lifters have this in common. Dealing with the physical portion is the easy part, the mental side is much tougher.

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I agree 100%. The physical site of it is not really relevant for me. Although this is not a serious debiliating injury. It is one that sucks and that I know some people (who aren’t serious lifters) freak out about but I know that I’ll be okay and that’s about as much as I need to know to not care about the physical aspect.

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