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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.

Folks, welcome to the new server. After a long break, Under the Bar is back stronger than ever (you can’t argue with a server that blows my laptop out of the water). I have been training as usual, whatever that means right now, and will be bringing this blog back up to speed over the next few days. [technospeak]What is annoying is that the dns for the new server has yet to resolve at my end - turns out the time to live is set to three days at my old host. One day to go. Based on server logs, much of the world is already here though.[/technospeak]

Friday, 8 April 2005: Coan/Phillipi deadlift, week 2

As the twin duo Flu and Fever kept me home from work on Monday and Tuesday, the Wednesday deadlift session landed on Friday instead. I was in a severe hurry and had to cut out one circuit on the accessories, but made up for that by increasing the weight a bit across the board. The plan is to gradually move the accessory poundage up to a serious level.

Sunday, 10 April 2005: Incline bench

As I already wrote in a comment, I’m just happy to get to the gym twice a week now Rufus and all. Not expecting too much salvation for my sleep deprived soul, I have settled for a simple enough bench template: rotate flat benches, declines and inclines back to back while alternating between 1RM workouts and 3-5RM workouts. Flat 1RM, decline 3-5RM, incline 1RM, flat 3-5RM and so on… To work on my sticking point, the primary exercise is followed by floor presses and various basic accessories (like dips… long time no see). Did declines last week, so today it was inclines.

I’m not precisely known for reclining on an incline. I easily pushed up my fungus clad PR back from late 2003, 80 kg/177 lbs, but then no more. Måns to the rescue. Dips, speed floor presses and rope pulls. End of an era. You see, this was the last workout at the neighbourhood gym as they will be closing shop in late April. To honor its memory, here’s a video (3.2MB) of today’s action. Nothing special, but better than any cerial commercial on the planet.

Wednesday, 30 March 2005: Coan/Phillipi deadlift, week 1

Seven weeks after the big bang, I am quite content with being able to train twice a week. Time is now a scarce commodity and, besides, I’m not precisely Duracell Bunny (or Energizer Bunny for you American folks) incarnated anyway. Nevertheless, it is time to resume some direction in training even if it is full steam ahead in the heretical direction. You see, I am going to deadlift big time.

Sixteen months after the big hiccup I have no problems with maxing out on the box squat, but I do have some post-injury fears to conquer on the deadlift. Back injuries are notorious for leaving many patients scared of reinjury to the point that they keep protecting their back even when healed. Good idea or not, I’m going to fight fire with fire and bury myself in the deadlift for the next eleven weeks. I hope to come out the other end with re-established confidence and a bit more iron on the bar so that I can slowly start to work my way past previous PRs. I’ve settled on the Coan/Phillipi deadlift program that has a nice mix of various intensity levels, speed pulls and a good array of time proven assistance exercises. With an estimated whoppin’ 1RM of 130 kg/287 lbs at the moment, I’m setting my target at 140 kg/309 lbs. Did a script for the routine, here’s how it looks for me (kilograms, pounds).

I had to squeeze the inaugural workout of the new routine in between teaching and a parents’s meeting. Nearly didn’t make it (hey, I can shower in 30 seconds!). I was thankful the routine calls for doing the accessories in circuit fashion… Started with very conservative weight choices to ease into the greatly increased volume, but will be raising them progressively over the next couple of workouts.

Sunday, 2 April 2005: Bench

Unlike the deadlift, I have no program here yet. I am still waiting for Sebastian Burns’s final assessment of my bench and am starting to think that my mail has been zapped by the evil Yahoo spamfilter. I could continue with the recent single day bench approach which I liked, but on the other hand I have been thinking about selecting a few full range movements (perhaps wide-grip bench, decline bench, close-grip bench and dumbell bench) and rotate those back-to-back with every other week being a max effort and the rest a 3-5RM or perhaps 5x5. I’d combine this with a floor press cycle and suitable accessory work. That said, Burns will want me to do boards no doubt. Did some paused close-grip benches followed by dumbell benches today. Wrapped up with some cuff and bodybuilding work (just for fun of course). Also snapped a picture of a poster ad for Tempo Fitness rye bread on my way out of the neighborhood gym. Rye bread is a huge thing here in Finland so there’s room even for the fitness kind…

Thursday, 24 March 2005: Squat/Deadlift

It’s no secret that I am a sushiopath in both life and powerlifting. On this first day of my Easter holiday, I “just happened” to steer Rufus’s pram past the newly opened Ichiban Sushi located right next to the University of Helsinki. After also stocking up on an expansion kit for Carcassonne from the neighboring board-game store, I headed home with my take away box to soy up for a quick workout. I did low box squats last week, so this time it was deadlifts again. I focused on pulling the weight off the floor as quickly as possible and stopped short of a true max.

Sunday, 26 March 2005

The neighborhood gym was closed today due to Easter (guess that’s as good a reason as any). Måns and I therefore contemplated other centrally located gym options and finally levitated to Töölö Gym. Boasting 2000 square meters of gym space, the largest gym in Helsinki has a lot of goodies. Among them were decline benches and modified row pulleys, but could not, unsurprisingly, spot any GHRs or reverse hypers. As I’ve only done declines off a makeshift setup they were the order of the day. I was feeling royally sleep deprived and was not too surprised when 100 kg/221 lbs got stuck on the chest. Nice gym though.

No gangsta rabbits this year… but someone clearly had a dozen eggs too many.