Archives for workouts (page 11)

Well… the weights were still pathetic, but heavier than last week. Pounded the midsection hard with weighted everything, including hyperextensions off the swiss ball and heavy barbell side bends. Bravely continued to up the weight on the deadlift. Perhaps, perhaps… wet dreams of ME SQ/DL and so on.

Today’s music was Finnish death metal band Norther’s Mirror of Darkness and today’s lesson learned that if you bounce a barbell off pads it is liable to come right back up and hit you in the forehead.

VIDEO (6.1M)

The change in bench technique still feels awkward, but progress towards my short-term goal of 4x6 @ 90 kg/199 lbs continued with 5,5,3,3 @ 85 kg/188 lbs - a big improvement over last week’s mediocre session. Increased the weight on the decline to 85 kg/188 lbs, but narrowly failed to reach the 3x5 goal (VIDEO 2.9M). Don’t know if it was the flat or decline, but the workout left me with some strain on the inside of my left arm. Probably nothing the sauna, some light massage and rest won’t fix, but it remains to be seen if my body can cope with the twice-weekly heavy full-range pressing. Speaking of saunas, the good thing about living in Finland is that saunas are routinely part of a normal apartment like ours - there are approximately 1.8 million saunas to the 5.2 inhabitants (one sauna per every three persons!). I heat up ours about five times a week now and hardly a day goes by when I don’t reflect on how lucky I am to have one at finger’s reach. Nothing like a 90 ‘C/194 ‘F sauna after a strenuous workout. If progress stops I can always blame it on the vitamin B supplement I “occasionally” ingest after the sauna.

Time to get serious about the modified Blakley assist day. Sleep has not been plentiful this week, and thus took a nap followed by a bottle of Nitric Force in an attempt to redeem the three hours of nocturnal rest I had yesterday. Alert enough.

Used this workout to get a feeler for what suitable starting weights would be as I didn’t have the foggiest on how much I could move on the reverse grip bench or seated press. The reverse bench felt surprisingly natural, but I could definitively feel a degree of wrist strain using my normal bench grip width. After two easy 80 kg/177 lbs lifts, my sleep deprived brain, surging with artificial caffeine energy, convinced me I had just done an easy rep with 90 kg/199 lbs. With unfailing logic, I thus loaded two plates on the bar. Before I knew it, the bar and I were locked in a cold embrace, unable to part. Then following three repper with 82.5 kg/182 lbs (lost my groove, but six reps is doubtful) makes me think good starting weights for the reverse bench is 90 kg/199 lbs for the single and 77.5 kg/171 lbs for the 4x6.

Decided to do the seated press in traditional Westside style, i.e. off pins set at chin height with back support. This makes for less eccentric strain on the muscles since the bar can be semi-dropped down, while allowing for maximum explosivity by relaxing in between reps. After a decent six rep set with 60 kg/133 lbs, I wanted to see how many reps I’d get with 70 kg/155 lbs. The answer was two; a bit better than I’d thought off hand. Next week I will begin the sets with 62.5 kg/138 lbs. Wrapped up with some lat and cuff work, then home to sleep. My main goal next week is definitively to sleep more and give Sanna more time. The workload has been pretty severe for the last couple of weeks, but should ease up a little now.

VIDEO (3 M)

The sudden relapse into lumbago after several months of hard rehab work made me lose a lot of the enthusiasm I had. After a hiatus of two months, I now seem to have regained faith. It was a joy to blast the back with hyperextensions off a swiss ball with a barbell on the back (clip to come at some point), and even worked up to 10 @ 70 kg/155 lbs on the, gulp, deadlift! As I’ve noted before, the key appears to do slow reps. Will slowly try to build up the weights from here and see what happens. So far everything is dandy. Wrapped up with some heavy ab work and also fell in love with the incline sit-up board. Just what my hip flexors need.

Four hours of sleep on top of five the night before - not precisely the prerequisites for an astounding bench session. The warm-up weights felt jarring and the actual work sets were no better. Bailed out after two mediocre first sets on the bench. As dictated by the new routine, I next did 3x5 of declines. Laying head down on an incline bench with feet wrapped around the end beams on the rack proved to be a great setup. Will pile on a bit more iron on these next week when I will hopefully be a bit less zombie-like.

It is always a pleasure to see some of you turn from yet another hit in the web logs into a reader with a name and, usually, a loaded barbell that you are not afraid to use. After some astute observations on my benching form, Mike had this to say about the subsequent video:

Just finished watching your video and wanted to send congrats about the PR. Your form from the side looks a lot like kennellys’. It seems your weak point is right where the transfer of shoulders to triceps takes over. I have a few exercises that will help this as it was once my weak point. Try Dips, Reverse Grip Bench, and seated front presses. Give these some serious work on your Blakely assistance day. Your lockout is very strong, which is quite evident on the 221 attempt.

In subsequent e-mails, he suggested close grip declines or flat benches as a second best replacement for dips (no dip stand at the school gym) and gave me this example routine:

I’ve decided to give this routine a shot. Felt it wise to take some extra rest following Monday’s maxing out, so just looked over the set up for the new exercises before proceeding to lat and biceps work. Declines on Monday. But before that I will of course attend the WPC World Bench Bash and the WPO Bench Bash For Cash here in Helsinki on Sunday.

The curse has been lifted!

I now understand precisely what Simmons means by “standing up on the shoulders”. The arch might not seem too severe, but since the butt is now only lightly touching the bench I only have two points of stable contact: feet on the ground and traps/neck on the bench. Getting into the new position was easy after a few practice swings, but once there I was a blowfish out of water.

Slowly worked up in weight, beginning with several sets with an empty bar, while keeping toes in the air to make sure I was only driving from the heels. I felt like I had zero explosiveness and missed my old groove more than a bit, but eventually found myself at 95 kg/210 lbs. Since it went up without too much effort, I figured I could just as well follow The way of the Fool and max out despite feeling like a monkey straddling a canyon.

Went up in 2.5 kg/5.5 lbs increments. A couple of sets later I was faced with the menacing 100 kg/221 lbs. The bar path was horrible, but quite easily muscled it to lockout. Continued on to a strenuous rep at 102.5 kg/227 lbs and then failed at 105 kg/232 (VIDEO 3MB). Whoa! Eye of the tiny Tiger!

In retrospect, I’d say that getting the weight further up on the back definitively makes the lift a bit easier. At the same time I am stronger than ever, which seems to tell me that the full implications of this little but significant change have yet to be realized. Give me some time to get comfortable in this position and re-calibrate my groove and you’ll see the weights jump a bit further. If I wouldn’t have done so many tiring sets before 105 kg/232 lbs I’m pretty sure at least that would have made it to the top. Tempting as it would be to switch back to Westside with all its max attempts, I will forge ahead with Blakley for the time being. If I keep the momentum going I’ll soon be repping with my former max. That would serve it right!

Wednesday rehab fell by the wayside of yet another extremely busy week. Spent the previous weekend at the summer cottage, so no rehab then either. Swift amends must be made.

Heavy eye lids notwithstanding, the recent surge in progress continued on the floor press with 4x6 @ 87.5 kg/193 lbs falling on the first attempt at this weight. It was stiffer, but it was not tight. Next week 90 kg/199 lbs will be up for auction. Then barely squashed 4x6 @ 42.5 kg/94 lbs on the triceps extensions. Meanwhile Måns entertained his lats with set after set of modified rows done against an incline bench. This looked like fun, so I jumped right into them for the lat work with the bench inclined to make it resemble a reverse bench press. Worked great and the back rest forced me to avoid the heavy lean I do on ordinary modified rows. Came up with the idea of doing rope pulls the same way. The extra support made it much easier to stay put with heavier weights than standing up; worked up to 3x6 @ 50 kg/111 lbs and then wrapped up with some quick curls. After a shower we drove over to good friend Pinto’s restaurant for a delicious exception to the normal post-workout shake.

VIDEO (1.6MB)

Phenomenal benching action today. Riding on the enthusiasm for the godly view and with camera man extraordinaire Måns dangling from the rack, I taped all the bench sets and capped off with a light set of JMs for the camera. The first three singles at 95 kg/210 lbs went up without much straining. Then did a fairly effortless 4x6 @ 82.5 kg/182 lbs to the tune of Rammstein’s latest offering Reise, Reise (not as powerful as Mutter, but does the job - how’s that for a one-line review). Talk about a convincing transformation! What I want to do now is simply continue raising the working weights, no matter how tempting it would be to see the obnoxious barrier broken. If I can ride this a little longer, 100 kg/221 lbs will become part of normal technique training sooner than I had hoped anyhow.

Looking at the 3.3MB clip it seems like I spoke to soon on bar path; generally speaking I bench fairly straight up and down when using a wide grip, although the bar does move a little towards the head at lockout. I am generally satisfied with my elbow tucking (got the minimum 45 degrees between humerus and midline of body - good to see earlier work still bearing fruit). I don’t seem to be flaring the elbows a lot at lockout, but I do open the lift up a little. Won’t start to go into another excruciating analysis - I’ll wait until I’ve re-watched JMs Building the Perfect Beast - but I would highly appreciated any critical feedback any of my readers might have on my form. Very highly.

Even a two-day autumn holiday couldn’t keep me away from the customary Friday training at school. Had the unusual luxury of a training partner as Måns joined me. Fulfilling my usual oddball wishes, he climbed up on the rack to film the floor press sets from above. I’ve never taken clips from this angle before, but seeing the result I would argue that this is the best angle for assessing bar path. Turns out I press more towards the head than I thought. This is not necessarily a bad thing in itself as there are several schools of thought on what the optimal bar path is, but it does shatter the myth of me being a straight up and down presser, at least as far as the close-grip bench is concerned. With rapidly increasing gains - smashed the 85 kg/188 lbs on all four sets easily today - I will not play around with bar path at this point, but down the line this might turn out to be the ticket to some extra kilos. Also had the triceps extensions taped from the same angle and … well, suffice it to say that I am not a well-oiled repping machine just yet as evidenced by some rather frisky bar swaying.

Leaving the camera on autopilot on top of the rowing machine, Måns next stepped in to stabilize a set of modified rows with the 100 kg/221 lbs stack. Like last week, I still had to press very hard against the post to stay put, but the extra support did allow a decent nine reps without a painful calf cramp. A single set of lying cable curls and the time was unfortunately up. I leave the hardcore readers with this 3.9M clip.

Last week Scott inquired about the width of my close grip. After measuring it on the actual bar, I can now say that my current grip (middle fingers on the edge of the smooth part of the bar) is 36 cm/14″ between the index fingers with my usual close grip (index fingers on smooth) being 42.5 cm/16.6″. My wide grip measured a narrow 66.5 cm/25.9 ” between the index fingers - a light-year from the maximum competition grip of 81 cm/32″. Based on Ryan Kennelly’s formula (medium grip is 2″/5.1 cm in from wide grip and close grip 2″ further in), a 66.5 cm/25.9″ wide grip would yield a 55.6 cm/21.9″ medium grip and a 45.5 cm/17.9″ close grip. In a follow-up post aptly titled How close is close?, Scott also brought forward an interesting formula based on research presented by Rob Wagner in the June 2003 issue of Powerlifting USA:

Let me define a narrow and wide grip. In two separate studies, researchers determined narrow grip as the distance between your acromion processes (slide you hand down your trap and the bony bump you hit is the acromion). They then applied this measurement to the hand spacing (distance between index fingers) on the bar. Wide grip was two times the narrow grip distance. Both groups of researchers found that grips that were 1.65 to 2 times their narrow grip were the most effective strength wise. The way you can determine your grip is to measure the distance between your acromion processes. Now measure the distance between your index fingers when you bench. Divide the bench distance by the acromion distance and if your number is between 1.65 and 2.00 you are in an optimal position
[studies referenced: Clemons, J. & Aaron, C., Effect of grip width on the myoelectric activity of the prime movers in the bench press. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 11(2), 1997 / Wagner, L.L., Evans, S.A., Weir, J.P., Housh, T.J. & Johnson, G.O., The effect of grip width on bench press performance. International Journal of Sports Biomechanics 8(1), 1992]

Since I measured my acromion distance at 36 cm/14″ (FWIW, Sanna’s was 31 cm/12.1″), my wide grip fits well into the predicted ideal pressing width of 59-72 cm/23-28.1″. Enough number crunching for today, my head hurts.