Archives for general (page 12)

Down with a flu again, the kind where you feel like you have a temperature, only you don’t. The kind you don’t want to train with. The kind you get after sitting for 5½ hours listening to The Lostprophets, Slipknot and Metallica on an exceptionally chilly May evening in Helsinki.

The first two bands weren’t worth another short training break. Not that they are not good bands but their music, especially Slipknot’s act with three frantic drummers on stage, warped into a mess of sounds echoing over each other. Metallica was another story. Their powerful riffs and Hetfield’s strong vocals sounded great even in the unmerciful acoustic environment provided by the Olympic Stadium. After seeing them pound away at Master of Puppets my appreciation for their skill level went through the roof. Having 50,000 guys and girls in black around you, one percent of Finland’s population, go wild also helps. Although my hair style might lead you to believe otherwise, I am not much of a headbanger. Too bad, it would have kept me warmer than the limited stomping and twitching I did.

For the last day or so, my pages have been slow to load. Downloading my training clips also takes forever and a day. This has to do with my web host loosing one of their main connections. You will have to bear with this for another two days or so until the host has their new line operational.

Edit 1 June: The hosting company now has their new line up and running, meaning speed should be mostly back up. If you tried to download the ball benching clip from the previous workout earlier but gave up after facing a torturous 1 KB/s download, the coast should now be clear.

Same melody as last week: still very sore from DE bench day. I could go in and do some delts and rehab, but since I also have an appointment at the back clinic tomorrow I figure it is more sensible to stay fresh for that. Instead I take you over to the news room for the latest links.

Remember the video clip of Marko Patteri squatting hands free? Here’s pictures of two guys doing a tandem squat using a single belt courtesy of Ålands Kraftsportklubb, Finland.

Was also reading Scott Bird’s fitness blog and found a tidbit about Bruce Lee’s back injury, like mine, stemming from a good morning. Apparently it was done with his bodyweight of 135 lbs without a warm-up. One site went so far as to draw a direct causal chain between this injury and his early departure.

This was the cause of the back injury, led to his constant use of painkillers & eventually contributed to his death by drug overdose.

Don’t know why it has been hiding from me for so long, but finally discovered Jan Baggerud Larsen’s Laserdonut Swiss Ball & Powerlifting Lunacy site. Watch Inzerman save the day, read words of wisdom from JM Blakley on weight gain or discover an experiment that attempts to combine plyometric depth jumps with the use of the Swiss ball to see if the instability of the ball will increase the sympathetic neuromotoric synergism between the two lumbomechanical modalities. Be forewarned, there is a lot of other wacky stuff there as well, some of which may be little over the top depending on your taste.

Finally, redefining the meaning of raw, here is a picture of weightlifter Pisarenko squatting courtesy of Tom Goegebuer. Another pic here.

The circle closes. It’s been a full year since I started this blog on May 14th, 2003. 169 entries. Not counting the month I spent in China, this makes for an average of one post every other day. Let me tell you, this is a lot of work. If it weren’t for the fact that the number of regular readers is steadily increasing and several of you have been very supportive via e-mail, this would be a good opportunity to lay down the pen. God knows, I could use some more sleep. It’s not like I don’t have zillions of other things to do either.

To me, this project still appears meaningful, valuable even, as a lasting contemplative record of the powerlifting experience of a genetically average drug-free lifter. Potentially, this blog could have turned out to be either totally dry or soaked in monotony. “Today I did 5 sets of X, 3 sets of Y and failed on one set of P. Felt good.” Repeat 169 times. Sleepy yet? In order to be interesting, a blog of this kind needs to look outside the immediate workout, to touch on larger issues that are relevant to a larger readership. It is at this intersection between theory and practice that the strength of this genre lies. Analysing sticking points against tangible data is very different from just complaining about them in general, as is trying different forms of therapy (trigger points, adjustments and stability training) on a real world injury instead of just discussing what can go wrong in the back and what can be done to fix it. The diary format also makes the process very transparent for the reader (charts help though). Hype doesn’t last long in this kind of writing.

I don’t profess to be a master of this genre, but quite honestly, I think this blog has of late actually become borderline readable. It might have something to do with me maturing as a web writer and becoming more willing to reveal a life behind the mere technicalities of the sets and reps. Or perhaps, it is because just writing down sets and reps now appears boring even to myself…

With the level of continuous effort needed to keep up writing month after month, I would not continue doing this if there weren’t anything in it for me. As I started this journey, I wrote that

[a]lthough I hope someone out there will find this an interesting read, I am doing this as much for myself. I’m new to blogging, but I have this stubborn idea that this is an effective way of self-reflection, more so than simply scribbling in the training diary.

I am researching things more thoroughly than I would if I were not trying to explain things to others and am thus learning a great deal in the process. I am leaving behind a gold mine of information on my training and my thoughts that would otherwise soon be forgotten and thus rendered useless. I am receiving very valuable feedback from some of you readers, that has proven invaluable in removing some of the blinders that I erect around myself and has prompted me to explore new avenues.

I think I better stop here before I end up debating the existence of God or something equally metaphysical. I guess I just wanted to express my amazement that there are actually people out there who seem to enjoy reading my blurbs, some of which I have had the great pleasure of getting to know via e-mail. Thanks to you I am willing to continue this project for the time being (no warranties though).

But before I go, here is a quick list of things I am planning to do during the next few months: diet, incorporate stability training on a more thorough scale, try chains, start to do GPP and renovate Toffe’s Gym to make it more suitable for powerlifting training. I hope you will enjoy participating in the ride as much as I am eager to find out what this next year has in store for me.

NOTE: I am back blogging this to the correct date. The two workouts that I have done since will appear after I get back from a short two-day trip. The short of it is that the rehab is going great!

Although he is not (yet? hehe) doing strictly powerlifting, Scott Bird’s fitness blog is well worth a read. With cameras having become standard gym equipment for many, chances are you might also find something of interest on his front page.

I’m back from a great vacation in Tuscany that was capped off with a very happy event (official announcement). After an overdose of medieval culture and a suitable amount of wine tasting, I am now really looking forward to getting back to training again tomorrow. It will be back to Westside for the bench. Not yet sure how I will tackle my squat/deadlift training, depends on how my back feels. I forgot my precious tennis ball at home, with the result that my trigger points stiffened up quite a bit. Sleeping in beds of varying quality didn’t help much either. Luckily, Sanna’s elbow came to the rescue after it became obvious that tennis balls are a scarce commodity in the Tuscan countryside.

Finnish law now prohibits talking in mobile phones without the use of hands free devices while driving. Hopefully hands will still be allowed while squatting, cause this clip of Marko Patteri squatting 200 kg/442 lbs hands free is plain insane. Imagine a skinny lifter trying this…

To my great joy, I have seen an increase in correspondence from people who are reading my blog. The most memorable one yet was from a powerlifter from the 1970s, who told me this blog made him start training again. I am deeply honored.

In a more recent e-mail, Justin Godin informs me that he just started his own powerlifting journal. Like me back in May 2003, he is making the switch from bodybuilding oriented training to pure powerlifting and he is doing it Westside style. I for one will be very interested in reading this one and sincerely hope that it will stick around contrary to the blog by Chris McClinch that I had so much hope for (no update since December).

Finally, part II of Dave Tate’s The Education of a Powerlifter is out at T-mag.

Stumbled upon this clip (1.4M) of strongman Clint Darden doing Seated GMs for 5 @ 165 kg/365 lbs. Ouch!

Finally put together a script for the bench program I began on Friday.

The flu broke out. I think I will still be able to continue training as normal unless it gets worse.