Archives for workouts (page 7)

140 kg/309 again, but these attempts looked worse than last week. The preparation for this session sucked too, as a freelance project forced me to work non-stop Sunday to Wednesday. I ate sparingly, slept an average of three hours a night (skipped the night totally between Tuesday and Wednesday to meet the deadline) and had way too many energy drinks to keep me going. Mentally, the effects of this rumba made me fail even before I stepped into the gym.

After now having finished the 10 week Coan-Phillipi deadlift program, I have nothing but good to say about it. Even if I didn’t quite make my target, it did serve it’s original purpose of making me get back into the deadlift which I had some serious issues with following my back injury. Given how hard the first 130 kg/287 lbs attempts were, I also think I overestimated my current max when beginning the program. All in all, this gives a good foundation to build on and I am now only 10 kg/22 lbs from my PR as a powerlifter.

With the blog now finally up to speed again, I regret to announce that I will now let it rest for another month as I have decided not to bring my laptop with me to our summer cottage. For once in my life, I will try to have a computer-free vacation, but rest assured that there will be an update of my summer training and continued renovation attempts at Toffe’s Gym. Have a great summer folks!!! Update in four to five weeks.

Friday, 10 June 2005: Coan-Phillipi deadlift, week 9

Something funky happened to my right shoulder on Monday as I was playing around with Rufus. There was no real stress on the shoulder as it happened, but it left me with a lot of pain trying to move the arm backwards (forward rotation was easier). It did not feel like a serious problem and indeed, come Friday it felt stable enough for the coveted 140 kg/309 lbs attempt. I got it up to my knees four times to the point where my formless deadlift has me standing with straight legs waiting for the Romanian deadlift finish, but no further. Close. I had really hoped to break 140 kg today leaving me for a true max attempt on the Coan “meet day”, but will now be gunning for it again next week. Needless to say, skipped any attempts at benching this week as I don’t want to risk a shoulder injury.

Wednesday, 1 June 2005: Coan-Phillipi deadlift, week 9

Up to 135 kg/298 lbs. Actually, the program would have had me do 137.5 kg/304 lbs, but I eased out the slope a bit from the prescribed 2 @ 125 kg/276 lbs, 2 @ 130 kg/287 lbs, 137.5/304 lbs, 140 kg/309 lbs to 2 @ 125, 2 @ 130, 135, 140 since I found a 7.5 kg/17 lbs increase between weeks 7 and 8 a bit too much. Not a major change, but makes things appear a bit more friendly coming back from a serious back injury.

Måns was on hand with his new digital camera and I had mine, so for the first time I present thee with two simultaneous angles of my dead (1.8M). Perhaps things looked a tiny bit better than last week (God knows I tried hard), but still nowhere near good. Up it came though, 140 kg/309 lbs next!

Wednesday, 25 May 2005: Coan-Phillipi deadlift, week 8

Empowered by Alberto’s recent suggestions on my horrendous deadlift form, I tried sinking lower to bring in more leg drive while firing the hip drive as soon as the bar passed the knees. Suddenly the deadlift felt much safer with the realisation that the upper-body-parallel-to-the-floor style is not what the deadlift should be. I made a lot of progress this day… or so I thought until I reviewed the video (1.8M). I had good form at low weights, but it was back to the usual dark arts with the heavier weights. In fact, the heavier the bar got, the more I wanted to stiff-leg it even when my brain vainly fired off stern orders not to. Synaptic failure. I can blame having a nasty groove programmed in deep, but this may just have more than a little to do with my pathetically weak legs. Will need to do something about that and see if can’t get my body to follow my brain better then. Meanwhile, I wither in this zen like state produced by a deadlift which has no form.

Below is the first rep of my 130 kg/287 lbs pull. Hopefully those who like to link to my image and video content from various discussion forums, will for once note that this sequence is not an example of proper deadlift form but rather the polar opposite of it. Surprisingly often I find people citing some video of mine as a good example of a particular exercise even when I expressely state in the blog entry itself that I have a technique problem (my Zercher squat videos are particularly famous in this regard). That said, I don’t mind linking and mostly it is done well, but please do try to get the context right.

Monday, 16 May 2005: Coan-Phillipi deadlift, week 7

The deadlift fairy must have waived her magic wand at my sore back. Or perhaps carrying Rufus, now 6.5 kg/14 lbs, around in his Baby Björn carrier has been therapeutic. Whatever the cause, come Monday I felt 100% ready to go again and the workout did not prove this feeling wrong as I easily pulled the target reps on the deadlift. To be on the safe side, I did lighten up the accessories a bit, but also dropped the height of the pins on the good morning to slightly below the navel (near parallel).

This week of the Coan-Phillipi deadlift program equalled that of week 4 in weight, but with slightly less volume overall. Next week I will jump into the deep end with my first 130 kg/287 deadlift in a loooong while. I should be well prepared by now, but, still… tantalizingly scary.

Friday, 20 May 2005: Bench

Got myself a Hama mini tripod for the Canon PowerShot A80 digital camera. With flexible legs that bend in any direction, this tripod is the ultimate accessory for the gym photographer who wants to set up the camera without resorting to strategically placed pencils designed to give just the right tilt (they never do). Predictably enough, after having shot 68 training clips on a shoestring (more or less literally) I could not help myself. From the side, above, below… you name it. Die-hard readers might want to watch the output (4.3M) of this otherwise fairly lame benching session. Alarmingly close to powerlifting porn.

Monday, 9 May 2005: Bench

My sluggish brain didn’t really expect any miracles to happen so left the camera at home. Still, I ended up nailing 100 kg/221 lbs on the decline (usual makeshift setup) for a single with a royal pause on the chest. Always a little something for the PR matrix. Speaking of which, as you may or may not have noticed, it is now powered by my little GPLd PHP script tsampaPRtable. Now that updating the table is a breeze, it is time to raise the sails on the bench me thinks…

I was pressed for time, so supersetted the accessories.

Saturday, 7 May 2005: Coan/Phillipi deadlift, week 6

Saturday is obviously the worst day to train in Helsinki. After having looked at a digital camera candidate for Måns at the computer outlet Verkkokauppa.com we headed over to Töölö Gym since the neighbourhood gym is no more. Arriving at their door at 5.30pm, we were surprised to notice that they would be closing in thirty minutes. We jumped into Måns’s car with the auspicious register plate (YAK) and headed over to Hot Gym, a place we vaguely recalled as being open 24h. We were greeted by very hot looking neon lights… and a sign that told us the gym is open on weekends to key card holders only. With Metal Gym being at the other end of Helsinki (besides, I didn’t quite feel up to doing my puny deads at the Finnish powerlifting mecca) the Yak mobile next took us to City Gym, a basement gym located in front of the Radisson Sas Royal Hotel . Turned out they closed at 7pm, so we were on for forty minutes.

Gym panorama from City Gym, Helsinki, Finland (click image for full view)

We’ve visited City Gym once before, in the early 90s. I vividly recalled how impressed we were with the modified row machine (modified rows were our life then more or less). Besides that, my memory of the place was rather faint. Seven euros, and perhaps two minutes, later I was walking around looking for a suitable place to do week 6 of the Coan/Phillipi deadlift program. There was no power rack to be found (goodbye good mornings off pins!), but they had two squat racks with a deadlift-friendly area in front of them. My back had been feeling rather stiff for most of the week, perhaps not totally unrelated to a certain early morning deadlift session, but decided to give the old pull a try anyway. I got through the workout OK, but by midnight I could tell it hadn’t done my back any good. The next day, I was feeling a burning pain in my low back. Shouldn’t have done that, shouldn’t have done that. I couldn’t help but worry that this spelled the end to this deadlift cycle. Had I done too much after all?

Monday, 30 April 2005: Coan/Phillipi deadlift, week 5

Deadlifts at 7am at the school gym is precisely the kind of activity you should not do, at least if you listen to spine expert Stuart McGill who advises everyone to avoid bending exercise in the first hour or two after rising.

[T]he intervertebral discs are highly hydrated upon rising from bed, the annulus is subjected to much higher stresses during bending under these conditions, and the end plates fail at lower compressive loads as well. Thus, performing spine-bending manouvers at this time of the day is unwise. [..] Because the discs generally lose 90% of the fluid that they will lose over the course of a day within the first hour after rising from bed, we suggest simply avoiding this period for exercise (that is, bending exercise) either for rehabilitation or performance training.
McGill, Stuart (2002): Low Back Disorders, Human Kinetics: pp. 220.

Truth be told, I wouldn’t even have considered pulling this early if it weren’t for the fact that this was a restorative workout with light weights. Still, the lifts were really slow and tedious which probably derive as much from prolonged sleep-deprivation as from the early hour. Feeling like Tin man, I decided to decimate the workout a bit stopping after the power shrugs that were now introduced into the routine. After all, rest is rest.

Friday, 22 April 2005: Coan/Phillipi deadlift, week 4

This was the last workout in the four week lower back conditioning phase on the Coan/Phillipi deadlift program. I wouldn’t say it’s killing, but doing stiff-legged deadlifts, bent over rows, lat pulldowns and good mornings in circuit fashion certainly gives you that fuzzy burning feeling. Today’s heaviest deadlift double at 125 kg/276 lbs was not killingly heavy either, but I could definitively tell it was the heaviest weight I’ve worked with since the injury, save for that one foolish pull with a rounded back. The weights are going to drop slightly for the next two weeks, but then it will be revealed who’s going to inherit the earth as the weights will quickly ramp up to 140 kg/309 lbs.

I had the camera with me today and taped the deads plus the first accessory circuit. Looking at the footage (4.6M) you probably couldn’t tell, but I actually had a printed out copy of Mike Robertson’s excellent T-mag article Precision Pulling with me as reference for form. The place to give me a hard time about my pulling technique is the comment form below. Before anyone comments on this, let me just say that I will slowly start to drop lower on the good mornings after this gentle start. Only had time for two circuits as I had a shirt to iron in the dressing room for an evening meeting at the school.

Wednesday, 13 April 2005: Coan/Phillipi deadlift, week 3

Coan/Phillipi week 3. The moment of truth is drawing closer; will my lower back be able to handle this beating and will I be able to conquer my fears of repeat injury? The odds in favor of not chickening out look good in light of the stupidly heavy pull I did three months after the injury. I still regret doing that pull and wouldn’t be too surprised if it was a contributing factor to the complications that only made my injury worse. So far things are good. 120 kg/265 lbs was decently easy and the accessories are still on the lighter side. Heck, 80 kg/177 lbs on the stiff-legs is what I routinely pull off a shaky balance board.

Friday, 15 April 2005: Bench

Rufus, now two months old, usually likes to kick the new day into gear anytime between 4.30 and 5.30am. That’s when dad gets out of bed to change his diaper and socialize with the broadly smiling chap. Since I’m up and Sanna needs to get up to breastfeed him anyway, I’ve begun arriving at work way before the 8am when the pupils arrive. This way I don’t need to hang around as much in the late afternoon when my helping hand at home is needed the most. I guess training at 7am is just a logical next step however twisted a thought it may be for a morning person such as yours truly. In the end, I was pleased with a 90 kg/199 lbs bench double. Nothing fantastic about it, but given the ghastly hour I had expected much worse.