Archives for general (page 13)

Still not fully recovered. Hopefully I can go for the bench max attempt on Friday, in case of which I will start my next training cycle at the end of week 2.

For what it is worth, the official Westside Barbell Club site has received a face lift. Louie’s articles are now bundled as pdf files. It has never been easier to join the crowd with piles of Westside article printouts under the bed.

I have been coughing and sneezing the whole weekend. It’s not the mother of all flus, more like the uncle of all flus interspersed with the occasional hot or cold spell. Now, Monday morning, I feel marginally better after loads of tea, vitamin C and esoteric herbal remedies. There is a remote chance that I will be able to go for a new bench PR on Wednesday as planned, but I am not getting my hopes up. This sucks as my previous flu was as recent as end of November.

Just got forwarded this link to Brad Appleton’s Stretching and Flexibility: Everything you never wanted to know. Although it seems to have been last modified in 1998, it looks solid and is based on sources I trust highly, most notably Thomas Kurz’s Stretching Scientifically, which, as I have mentioned, was the book that finally got me past those last inches into a full split cold in my martial arts heydays. Although this degree of flexibility is most likely detrimental to joint stability in powerlifting, you might want to read the link if you feel like Judd Biasiotto is pointing right at you:

From what I’ve observed over the years, most powerlifters are an accident waiting to happen. In fact, some lifters should be sporting a sign that reads “Accident in progress”. The reason for this is flexibility, or rather the conspicuous lack of it. Believe me, it would probably be easier to find a legitimate television evangelist than a powerlifter who can touch his toes without bending his knees.
Judd Biasiotto (1988): Power. World Class Enterprises; pp. 67.

I can.

While surfing Dr. Biasiotto’s web site I noticed that the main page has been hacked (screenshot) by someone calling themselves “chix0rs! the chick side of hax0rs” offering to take care of his web security from now on. Fired away an email to him just in case he hadn’t noticed. Web crime sucks big time!!

No miracles happened after the chest restoration work I did on Wednesday; my pecs being still slightly sore there was not much point in attempting to do a dynamic bench day today. Instead I staid home with the love of my life enjoying pizza with a few glasses of Chianti Ruffino. A great deal if you ask me!

I plan to continue this cultivated lifestyle throughout next week. The first four-week cycle of my three-day rotating Westside routine is now completed and my body is starting to feel a little run down, so I think it is time to ease on the gas a little. My usual medicine has been to stay out of the gym completely for a week, but this time I am considering doing a light week instead using sub-maximal loads for higher reps. The plan is to do two of these light workouts next week - one for the bench and one for the squat - and then jump right back into another four-week cycle with the workload raised somewhat (more sets). A toast for that!

Dave Tate has a guest forum over at T-mag where he will be answering questions for one week.

Forums seem to be mushrooming left, right and center with the more notable (and permanent) ones including Nazareth Barbell, Metal Militia, Deepsquatter and Ryan Kennelly. My first stop, along with the Finnish Westsidebar, is still the good ole’ Elite Fitness Systems Q&A where poor Tate can be pestered with questions every day of the year. Don’t look at me, I am innocent so far.

While waiting for a plump chicken and her greasy french fries companions to tuck in for training, I found this link describing 360 variations of the good morning achieved by manipulating type with back position (rounded/arched), knee position (straight/bent), stance width, bar used and contrast methods (chains, bands, weight releasers). I think they missed one category: hat/hatless. Also, I am wondering whether one should max out on all of these… which would take on the order of nine years given a ME SQ/DL training day every week of the year with 70% of those being GM’s (as recommended by the default Westside template). I bet you would see phenomenal increases between max attempts for the same exercise.

Get serious now boy. Speed bench + heavy extensions in a bit.

Fanfares please! My new three-week rotating Westside split has been unveiled. Hopefully it works better than it shines. I feel I got good gains with the previous basic Westside routine, but now it is time to up the intensity and jolt the mind with something fresh. The script in the side bar which let’s you know where I am in my training cycle has also been updated. I for one will need it to get my mental bearings since the workout order varies every week. Tomorrow is ME Squat/Dead day, that much I know.

On a more competitive note, the bench guessing competition has now ended. The event has definitively done its duty by giving me a lot to shoot for. If everything goes well I hope to be benching 105-110 kg/232-243 lbs within the next six to eight weeks. I am now going to continue dreaming in bed leaving you to ponder these guesses on what I will bench come June 2nd:

It’s that time of the year again when the Christmas tree needs to be disposed of. Instead of making a mess in the parking lot by throwing it down our balcony on the third floor, I pulled out the saw and massacred the tree. I then disposed the dismembered branches in the huge plastic bag my new chair came in. Good Lord! What did I do to our cozy friendly Christmas tree?! Ooops. Think its time to get off this training break before I break the spine of my favorite Vonnegut novel.

This will happen on Monday, when I will start to train according to the new three-day cycle. My lower back has been doing pretty well lately giving me high hopes of being able to do box squats on DE day again. Am also thinking about supplementing with creatine pyruvate. How else can I bench 132.5 kg/293 lbs come June 2nd?

Speaking of the bench guessing competition, it will still be open for another 24 hours or so. As long as the thread is not closed you may enter. We now have four entries ranging from a very doable 112.5 kg/249 lbs to a hefty 132.5 kg/293 lbs dream gain (for which I have been promised my very own gift certificate should I make it). Jay, if you are reading this, please send me your e-mail address otherwise I won’t be able to send you the gift certificate if you win.

Cleaned up the archives page a little and added a new category for videotaped workouts to make it easier to find all my videos at once. Now, if I only had my own digital camera I would make more of them since my ME and DE Bench videos have proved to be fairly popular.

Being in the midst of a pre-party hurricane when posting the previous entry, I neglected to mention that my left bicep tendon seems to be a little overstressed. I felt it a little doing curls on Sunday, but it really announced its presence to my nervous system after I finished the benches on Wednesday. Hence the shorter workout.

The sore point, located on the inner arm about two-thirds up towards the deltoid, feels knotty and jumpy. It could also be a local muscle spasm or something, I’m not the massage therapist in this family (she is currently on a few-day retreat so can’t get her diagnosis yet). No matter what it is, rest and massage is the ticket unless I insist on adding an arm injury to my lower back ligament sprain. I don’t think I do.

I seem to tolerate the standard four day/week Westside split fairly well, as long as I take some time off now and then to prevent my body from getting cranky or falling asunder …which is fine given that my records keep a climbin’. That being said, I have been thinking about changing things a little lately after having followed the same training routine without major modification since May. This might be the perfect time to try out a modified three day rotating Westside split proposed by Jim Wendler in the QA section of elitefts.com. It goes like this:

Besides providing some needed variation, this split could be good for easing into the DE Squat day again since it would allow my lower back more rest. I am also playing with the idea of gradually increasing the intensity of assistance work up to Westside standards by dropping the rest between sets to 15-30 seconds. I would be the first to acknowledge that I don’t get all that much work done during 60 minutes. In short, my plan is to gradually increase the intensity of workouts while increasing the rest time between them. Not a very novel concept, but hopefully it is all the more time proven.

The battle plan is this: take a rest week (haven’t done so since the end of September) and work out a new training routine based on this rotating split in the meantime. Depending on how my back feels, I will either be back in the gym on Friday doing a long-time-no-see DE Squat workout (in case of which I will start the split at the end of Week I) or the following Monday.

I remind thee honorably reader that there is still time to join the guessing competition about how much I will bench by June 2nd. Unless there are more participants, the Amazon.com gift certificate will automatically go to the Lone Ranger who voted for 117.5 kg/260 lbs. The rules are here, the polling booth here. Nostradamus?

With several projects in the pipeline before Christmas, I am trying to clear all lingering small things out of the way. In this spirit I offer thee a dynamic effort bench script (enter shirtless bench max and get recommendations for straight weight, chains and bands) and various three-week box squat cycles based on the article TNT II: More Tips-n-Tricks for Strength and Size by Dave Tate. Let me know if you find any errors or have suggestions for improvements.