Archives for workouts (page 18)

First swing at the rehab and core training program I got from the physiotherapist yesterday. The first movement had me shaking 3 kg/7 lbs dumbells rapidly up and down while spreading the arms. Contrary to what the major shoulder burn might suggest, the whole point is to activate the core stabilizers by causing the balance to rapidly shift. Just look at my midsection in today’s video clip (5.8M) and you’ll see what I mean.

I then found myself balancing on a swiss ball, which again forces the core muscles (usually defined as the multifidus and the transverse abdominis) to switch on and off to keep the body upright on the unstable surface. The ball proved to be much firmer than the one I tried this on yesterday causing me to avoid the anticipated nasty falls. Wasn’t much of a challenge at all [sigh]. Walk outs, the next exercise, was quite the opposite. Walking out with feet on a suitably low ball while trying to keep a neutral spine (not bent forward nor backward) and then alternately raising hands and feet off the ground was heavy work. Five reps later I did not know whether to make my 96 kg/212 lbs of bodyweight, my weak core muscles or my injured back the fall guy. Also started thinking ahead about how it would feel doing this with a 50 kg/111 lbs plate across the back…

Then it was on to lower body ab twists with feet on the ball. After frying my abs with walk outs, 20 reps to each side was easy. Still, with no support from the arms folded over the chest, I did feel like I was about to tip over at any time. Next, I did static holds with arms on the ball by first tipping the ball right, then left and finally back (can’t go forward) for a 15 second hold at each position. Me shake, ball shake. Big shake.

Neural mobilization (aka neural flossing), a controversial method to maintain or restore the mobility of the neural tissue in relation to its surroundings developed by David Butler of Australia, was next. If I sit with my back firmly against the wall I cannot extend my legs fully. But if I clasp my arms behind my neck and bend forward at the upper back I can. Sanna has been craving Butler’s book for the expanding health care section of our library for some time now, so will probably read up on this at some point.

A quick ten reps of non-banana back extensions and that was that. Capped of with some partner assisted hamstring stretching (my back wouldn’t accept it for the right leg though), gluteus stretching and quad stretching.

Overall, this was an interesting workout. The dumbell shaking aggravated my cramp, but the subsequent ones felt really good and actually helped normalize my posture again. Leaving the gym, I had a dull pain smack in the middle of the lower back. Writing this I can definitively feel more pain than before the workout, but this is probably to be expected. Will repeat this workout on Sunday, perhaps even on Friday in conjunction with my speed benching if I am not sore. Ciao!

Back to Westside for the squat/dead workouts as well. Preliminary, I am striving to at least do the max effort day while keeping the dynamic day as an option if my back is up to it. I think I might be able to box squat, which I find easier on the back than normal squatting. After my back completely locked itself up last time I did freeweight squatting in March, I figured I would play it safe and do Smith squat for a while before starting to work with Mikesell. Indeed, Smith squats served me well one month after I ripped my back.

Smith squat I did. But not for long. Felt some acute discomfort already at 60 kg/133 lbs. Taking what I perceived to be the rational path, I aborted the squatting and started hauling 10 kg/22 lbs plates up to the second floor for my makeshift reverse hypers. Could feel my gluteus and back tightening up at this point, so I dashed down to the locker room for my trusty tennis ball. After doing a quick perverse looking trigger point massage for the gluteus, I felt ready to begin. Went well. Before I knew it I had completed the workout that is by now becoming my fallback routine, the Happy Back Workout&reg, when I am hurting. Armed with a set of fully loaded batteries, my friend and occasional training partner Måns made my digital camera sing and filmed all exercises (VIDEO 3.2M).

Mixed up my protein shake and headed for the sauna. While drying myself I happened to catch a glimpse of my shoulders in the mirror, and noticed that my shoulder girdle appeared to be slanting to the right. The more my body cooled down, the more the pain in the lower back increased. Sitting on the bus, I decided that this was the last straw as I refuse to be hurting five months after my initial injury without a battle. As soon as I got home I booked an appointment to a private highly regarded back clinic, Selkäcenter, for tomorrow afternoon. By this time my body was already slanting heavily to the right indicative of what I think is a protective cramp caused by my body trying to protect the old injury, which I now believe is probably not quite healed. Challenges abound.

Time to face it. My bench is stuck. Has been since New Year’s Eve, when I blasted up 97.5 kg/215 lbs thus ending a nice upward streak that saw me add 22.5 kg/50 lbs to my bench in seven months since my bench journey began in May. Ironically, New Year’s Eve was also saw the beginning of the competition to guess how much I would bench by June 2nd, 2004. Having benched that same 97.5 kg/215 lbs a few times since but no more, it seems that the $15 US dollar Amazon gift certificate will go to my fiancée who had the most conservative guess of 112.5 kg/249 lbs. With some luck I might be able to eke a little closer to that, but I am having a hard time seeing how I could boost my bench that much in 4 weeks. Especially in light of the fact that my attempt to better my floor press PR of 100 kg/221 lbs failed miserably today (VIDEO, 1 M).

Actually, it was not that miserable. 95 kg/210 lbs came up easily enough and 100 kg/221 lbs would probably too if it weren’t for the fact that I spent a couple of seconds hovering the 102.5 kg/227 lbs just slightly off the floor first. At least I have not grown weaker, even though I have started benching with a slightly wider grip (pinkies at rings instead of a little on the inside).

So what do I make of this? Am I crying every night when I go to bed because my bench has grown stubborn? In the final analysis, this is the name of the game. Constant rapid improvement just does not happen 24/7, year in year out. If it would, even if just in my case, I would be outbenching Gene Rychlak in a few years, with no bench shirt, no drugs and long arms to boot. Instead there are periods of progress and periods of consolidation, even occasionally regress. When I began powerlifting a year ago I would have been thrilled with the thought of being able to bench 100 kg/221 lbs only one year later. Come to think of it, I still am. I need to work through this dry season, strengthen what I can, enjoy lifting and… booom! There will be rain. And that, will make me feel better than I would if progress was something that came on a silver platter.

There might be no silver platter, but there is always the infamous silver lining, which is that I will be able to try a lot of new things in my quest for a bigger bench. I expect chains and triple max attempts on the JM Press to enter the scene at any time. My newfound motto is this: “when in dire times, be grateful for the hand that comes from above”. Amen.

The ABB Adrenalin stack preworkout drink has reappeared on the gym shelves after having been sold out for a few weeks. I took this to be a good omen for today’s bench max attempt. It was then that I noticed that the color of the bottle was much darker than before… and it now read Adrenalyn stack. Don’t know what’s up with that. A faulty omen?

With my system fueled by the liquified omen of dubious nature, I went straight to business. After only a few sets, I could tell that my groove and bench touch were crap. Perhaps a sign of overtraining after all? Started feeling that I would be quite content with just finally breaking the 100 kg/221 lbs barrier that has eluded me since late December. It came up… but just a bit.

Determined to at least set some PR today, I continued with close-grip two-board presses. Did get 100 kg/221 lbs on these ones bettering my record from December with 5 kg/11 lbs. Yay, a little something to add to my progress chart that has seen little updates recently as my back has been raising trouble for my squat/dead exercises and the Prilepin bench program has had me bench sub-max weights for some seven weeks. Then did forward incline dumbell curls, which I also added to today’s video (2.9M).

This was the last workout before heading for Italian Tuscany on Wednesday. Preliminary, my next workout should be 3 May. Around those times we should find out if my bench still sucks after I have gotten some much needed rest. My assistance exercise results have consistently showed improvement on the Prilepin program, so at least something has grown stronger…

Thought I would finally take a clip of my makeshift reverse hyper setup, but ran out of batteries. Reached for my spares, only to discover that I had needed them for my MiniDisc recorder. The last sparks could only provide me with a quick picture of how I attach the weights to my ankles. Next time perhaps.

Today was something of a public relations day as no less than three people were curious about the reverse hypers. I also met one of the few powerlifters who frequent this gym in the metro and we had an interesting albeit short talk on our respective progress. But best of all, the King of Squats himself, Brent Mikesell, agreed to help me with my squatting technique! This interchange will take place as soon as I feel ready to squat again (hopefully in May) and will be based on clips of my squatting sessions. I am both deeply honored and flattered by his enthusiastic willingness to help this squat novice for a very modest sum. Brent’s heart must be even bigger than his enormous world record squat of 1074.8 lbs/487.5 kg!

The workout itself was a slightly heavier re-run of the previous one. My lower back felt so great after it, that I decided to stick to it for now. Squats again soon…

Easter came and went. Ate some eggs and painted a few innocent ones with gangsta rabbits and acid chickens, while Sanna kept her artistic integrity keeping to witches and… wine labels. With a plane booked for Florence next week’s Wednesday, I decided that this would be the last workout of the Prilepin bench program (still three workouts short). I will take a full week off benching, and then go for a new max before resting on my laurels in rural Italy for ten days. After that it is back to Westside benching for the time being. The voices in my head thus told me that it would be ok to round today’s 5x3 @ 78 kg/172 lbs (80%) up to 80 kg/177 lbs. Also went a little heavier on the JMs. Was a good one considering my food and sleep overloaded state of being.

Almost forgot. Passed on the previous squat/dead workout to let my lower back adjust in peace after the mobilization. My back feels a lot better now, and I have to keep reminding myself that this is no time to start slacking on the trigger point massage. Free eggs for everyone!

Horrible groove today, but zig-zagging these weights up was not too terribly difficult. Trained fairly fast today… or should I say, at least a little faster than the usual turtle’s pace. Had a nice dinner to catch at 5pm with Sanna at Kabuki, hands down the best Japanese restaurant in Helsinki. We had a few reasons to overstuff ourselves with sushi and tonkatsu as Sanna today became a published cartoonist in a Swedish-language magazine, Astra Nova, and I secured a full-time teaching job for the next school year.

This was a good one. Skipped all fancy footwork and simply pyramided up on reverse-hypers, ball crunches and seated calf raises. Haven’t done reverse-hypers in a while, probably because I was pushing the limit on how much weight my dress belt could handle. Found a short piece of wire at the gym, which I used together with two ankle belts to wrap plates around my ankles. The only problem with this was that I twice managed to wrap them so thoroughly that it took me several minutes to unknot… Worked up to 30 kg/66 lbs doing them off a normal hyperextension/back raise, of course mounting it the “wrong” way (hands grabbing the feet support). Next week I might take a clip of these.

A really nice and back-friendly workout. Currently, reverse-hypers (even if not done on the real thing that allows the disks to open up at the bottom) and pull-throughs are my best recommendations for exercises to do when the back is not quite up to par. What they have in common is that both are heaviest at the top of the movement (legs in line with upper body). Compare this to good mornings, where the heaviest part is at the bottom (bent forward at the waist) where the lower back is at its most vulnerable. Both type of exercises have their place (force curves should be varied for optimal strength and stability), but when it comes to rehab I think it is wise to concentrate on those which are heaviest at the top, not the bottom. Just my 2 cents.

This was it. The heaviest regular bench session of the Prilepin bench program. Considering that it was only one percent heavier than week I, a whopping 1 kg/2.2 lbs difference, the reps were a little stiff. As usual, I got my act together by the third set, which was the best of them all (Video 1.5M). After that, it didn’t take more than a single rep of JM presses to reveal that my triceps were still fairly sore around the elbow from Monday’s close-grip bench session.

As Monday’s bench session was very light (6x3 @ 73%), the soreness can probably be blamed on the Tate presses. The Prilepin bench program recommends that assistance work is not done balls to the walls, especially the tricep exercises, to help avoid local overtraining on the weekly schedule. As I have infused some extra rest into this program by basing it on the Three-day rotating Westside split, I have generally gone to failure on all assistance exercises. If it turns out that I am getting overtrained, at least I know why. No major worries yet though.

In three weeks Sanna and I are heading for Tuscany to sample the local wine in the Italian spring. This means that I won’t quite be able to complete this cycle. Either I will just need to drop the last workout or then drop the whole last week and go for a new max before leaving. We will see how I feel. The trip is going to function as a much needed training break. After that I will probably go back to Westside benching again focusing on full range movements. Today I looked back at the power rack in a sudden flash of nostalgia: floor presses… hmmm…

Before heading home, I bought my second bottle of Eiselt’s Omega-3 capsules (29.90 euro for 300 capsule of 1000 mg - cheap for being in Finland). I have been popping 4000 mg split up into 2 servings daily for some time now. I can highly recommend this brand; the fish oil tastes so fresh and smooth that I like to explode them in my mouth before swallowing… yummy!

My lower back was feeling decent today. I even toyed with the idea of doing some zercher squats. Nipping this folly in the bud, I did some bent-legged pull-throughs instead. Of all the lower back/hamstring exercises I know, pull-throughs feel the most back friendly. There is none of that shearing pressure on the lower back, just a smooth balanced motion thanks to the cable.

I worked up to a new record; 10 @ 120 kg/265 lbs. Not too hard as I did not have to do any gruesome max effort exercise before it, such as squats or good mornings. The last set with the stack of the cable crossover pulley activated the pain on the left side, but up till then it was a smooth ride. Aggressively massaged the trigger points, and the pain moved aside allowing me to do some ab work. If this is indeed mostly referred pain due to trigger points, things should return to normal by tomorrow. Fingers crossed.