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Monday, 30 January 2006: Bench accessory

Got a flying start with 75 kg/166 lbs on the incline, but didn’t quite get to the champagne. Can’t complain about the way the incline is progressing… less than two months ago, I struggled to get 5x5 @ 70 kg/155 lbs.

Wednesday, 1 February 2006: ME Squat

Hit 120 kg/265 lbs on the regular squat, a modest 20 kg/44 lbs PR. The depth wasn’t quite as convincing as on the recent 125 kg/276 lbs cambered bar squat, but based on the video (3.5M) and the photo to the left it seems to be right around the mark. Any verdicts?

Increased strength and better back health are surely factors behind the recent jump in squat results, but I believe the use of a belt and a new approach to squatting technique should receive the real accolades. Before getting a belt to push the abs into, I didn’t pay much attention to tightening the midsection and, as a result, squatted without tensing much anything. A year ago, I started using a belt for dynamic effort squatting, but haven’t belted up for max effort work before Michael Hope suggested I do. The result is a whole new level of stability on both belted and non-belted squats. I have also abandoned the foolish project of trying to emulate equipped squatting while training raw. Sitting back with vertical shins throughout the lift just doesn’t make much sense when the only support you’re getting is that provided by the Mickey Mouse underwear. Allowing the knees to come forward a bit keeps me straighter under the bar and feels much more natural. This might have more than a little to do with the fact that I always squatted ass to the grass with a close stance before converting to powerlifting. My body knows how to squat if I allow it to. One of the most evident side-effects of these changes is that I no longer dip forward as heavily as I used to.

I am hoping that these changes will provide me with a good base for bumping up the weights over then next few months, back willing.

Saturday, 4 February 2006: ME Bench

A flop. My biceps, primarily the left one, got really strained on the dumbell benches. I felt some strain already during last week’s workout, but this time it was bad. My best guess is that the strain stems from the lowering of the dumbells to the floor, essentially an eccentric concentration curl with 41 kg/90 lbs, after each set. After a very poor and painful performance on the dumbell benches, I went ahead with the plan and loaded up 10 kg/22 lbs more on the speed bench with chains than last time. This, 60 kg/133 lbs, is closer to the generic 60% of max that is recommended for a raw intermediate bencher. Felt the biceps, increasingly also the right one, at the bottom of each rep. Felt like I wasn’t able to fully open the throttle, but the set times were decent, even if a tad too slow, as gleaned from the video. Put sets seven through nine on this week’s video summary (3.5M). As for the biceps pain? Rest, sauna, massage and an anti-inflammatory cream. Not the first time I get these kind of overuse symptoms.

Friday, 27 January 2006: DE Squat

Only had time for one workout this week. Horrendous!

Preworkout cafe latte flanked by a postworkout whey-maltodextrin shake. The latte has come to largely replace the filthy expensive commercial energy drinks as the buzz of choice in the preworkout ritual.

Wednesday, 18 January 2006: ME Squat

During the standard heavy bag work, I hyperextended the left knee with a badly timed front kick that missed the swinging bar by a millimeter or so. As the pain set in, my first reaction was that I just popped my knee. Nice. After a ten minute rest or so, I could stand on it and decided to try the planned squat workout. My knee locked itself a couple of times as I was just standing on it, so I figure I overstretched the ligaments a bit.

What followed was one crazy squat workout. Måns has been talking about doing some training closer to home making this the last chance to find out my squat max with the Westside camber bar. This 30 kg/66 lbs curvaceous bar is not the rackable kind and going all out in the monolift without a spotter is a bit too hardcore for me. Going all out in the monolift with a single spotter, using a bar that is notorious for transfering much of the load to the lower back, is hardcore enough for a back case that is known to be prone to losing his squat forward. Måns is an accomplished spotter who has never failed me, but I had a feeling I rather just make it up with whatever I put on the bar.

I had no idea where I was heading bad knee and all, but a tight rep at 120 kg/265 lbs was already way beyond what I thought I could do with this challenging bar. I figured I was still good for another 5 kg/11 lbs and loaded the bar to 125 kg/276 lbs. Compared to the recent manta ray max, the bar forced me forward quite a bit but I got up. Don’t think I would have been able to do more on this day, but couldn’t have been more satisfied… There wouldn’t have been time to find out either as the time was now 11:56pm, four minutes before closing time. Weights off bar, lights off and then run out into the moon-lit snow in full training gear. A fun end to a fun session.

This was an interesting day for Måns as well, as he tested his bench max for the first time. 115 kg/254 lbs with feet on the bench and a minimal arch was not shabby to say the least.

Anyway, here’s the video (2.4M) of today’s squatting action.

Sunday, 22 January 2006: ME Bench

Last time, I got 5 sets of 5 reps with the 36 kg/80 lbs dumbells on the dumbell bench. This means it was time to move up one notch again. Unfortunately, the next dumbells are a whopping 41 kg/90 lbs as there is only one 38.5 kg/85 lbs dumbell in the rack. To ease the transition, I have decided to forego the max effort bench movement in favor of beginning the workout with the dumbell benching. Even so, I only did two sets today as I landed at 3 and 2 reps respectively. An additional rep was annoyingly close on both sets, but just didn’t get it.

Next up was speed benching. After having completed a couple of waves with straight weight (only plates on the bar), it is time to roll in the chains. It’s been a while. There’s plenty of chain at Metal Gym, but I was content with loading the bar with the two chains recommended for people, like yours truly, who can only bench 201-300 pounds. A single chain weighs 5 kg/11 lbs according to the digital scale at Metal, the whole package of two chains, carabiner and feeder chain weighed 12.4 kg/27 lbs. This means a tad over 20 kg/44 lbs chain weight at lockout in addition to the 50 kg/111 lbs on the bar.

As you all know, three reps should be accomplished within three seconds when speed benching Westside style. This is where a camera comes in real handy to assess the appropriateness of the load. I then use my video editing software to precisely determine the time from where the bar starts to descend on the first rep to when it stops after the third rep. I taped sets 4 through 9 and got the following times:

Right on the money. I put sets 4 to 6 on today’s video clip (2.4M) together with the best dumbell bench set. Not that I was very happy with the dumbells.

After two good squat PRs and a lot of heavy pressing, it was time to deload the spine. As per the correspondence with Michael Hope, I plan to do a deload every few weeks.

Wednesday, 11 January 2006: Deload squat

Did some speed box squats with the Westside camber bar, then went for a rep max on the GHR with Måns doing the counting. It was painful, but did 27 non-stop reps with decent form. Let’s just say that hamstrings have never been my weak point. Followed up with some leg extensions to counter the humongous hamstring pump.

Saturday, 14 January 2006: Deload bench

As I lay down on the stability ball with the 23.5 kg/52 lbs dumbells, I knew what I was aiming for. I buried the 24 reps I did in December with the 21.5 kg/48 lbs dumbells with a good 29 reps. Deload week is fun.

Friday, 6 January 2006: ME Squat

Still had a bit of residue low back stiffness from Wednesday’s accessory work. Takin’ it easy. Or so I thought. Once I had belted up and blasted up 90 kg/199 lbs, I felt ready for more, comfy manta ray and all. I was working with a close stance, going down all the way, trying to hit the quads hard. The 117.5 kg/260 lbs I put up on the 13″ box two weeks ago gave me confidence that I might hit something decent. Got 100 kg/221 lbs and loaded up 110 kg/243 lbs. It felt like an aeon, or an episode of Twin Peaks by the very least, as I struggled to straighten up. For a second, it felt like I was going to get my face buried in the floor, but then I got it. Couldn’t ask for more right now.

Here’s the video (1.8M), fully in color.

Sunday, 8 January 2006: ME Bench

Look at that guy… is he… Dear Lord! Well yes, he is. Attempted 107.5 kg/234 lbs on the floor press twice. The first time I managed to pin it, the second I actually got it all the way, but only after I lifted the back of a hip that forms one of the fleshy parts on which a person sits off the ground. Needless to say, this PR doesn’t count… or… wait… it was a decline PR!!

The dumbell bench went great though, got 5x5 on my first go at the 36 kg/80 lbs dumbells.

Monday, 2 January 2006: DE SQ

Moved up slightly in weight on the dynamic effort box work, but still going light. Went “light” on the GHR as well, but the puny 2.5 kg/6 lbs plate I adorned my forehead with turned out to be a bit too much and I could feel a bit of stiffness set in. Not a show stopper, but a clear warning. Heeded.

Wednesday, 4 January 2006: Bench accessory

As Måns, who has been blogging his bodybuilding adventures at Old School Iron since November, put it, I had a very good day on the incline today. It was a pinch, but I got my 5x5 @ 72.5 kg/160 lbs, a huge improvement over last time. We also did something interesting on the seated row by strapping ourselves to the machine with a belt. Well, Måns did. I had to use the dip belt to accomodate both my well-developed midsection and me…

2006 and the world is still in one piece. A new year is always a juncture, but I can see no major changes to how business is run here at Under the Bar. Like last year, here is a look back at my powerlifting year 2005.

An unforgettable 4kg moment

The birth of Rufus on February 19th was the definitive highlight of the year that impacted my training in many ways.

For one thing, I started posting weekly workout summaries. I have liked that a lot, and despite it not always being enough to keep the ball rolling, I feel it helps structure the blog. More containers are not always better. The weekly workout summary remains standing at least thus far. Blogging is rewarding, even more so when I no longer feel the urgent need to get every workout online as soon as it happens. A guy setting a modest PR in a gym somewhere in the middle of the night can hardly be classified as breaking news, can it? Even so, I will try harder this year to keep relatively up to date, backblogging is neither cool nor my idea of stressfree blogging. Speaking of which, The Guide to Stress-Free Blogging in 2005 by Benjamin Adam is a good read for any blogger who feels there is more to life than a blog (scroll down, only available via the Wayback Machine since the original domain has been unplugged).

I also had less time to train. The victim of this was largely dedicated grip work, one of the hallmarks of the preceding year. Training was also increasingly done on a sleep deficit. Not always because Rufus didn’t sleep, he actually slept fairly well, but because I still felt I needed some time of my own. The only place to take that time was to deduct it from my sleep. Despite some pushes towards sleeping a regular seven or eight hours, sleep deficit has been a dominant theme throughout the year (as in three to four hour nights). When I finally started training at the, dare I say legendary, Metal Gym in late September, we agreed that I would mainly train between 22pm and midnight. This way I could catch as much of Rufus’s waking hours as possible. This arrangement has generally been great, but the downside is that I am not home before twenty minutes past midnight (if Måns drives me home) or 1am (if I take the nightbus). I need to get up at 6am to 6.30am to get to work in time since I have to commute through much of Helsinki to get to the school. You do the math.

Luckily, there is much more to life than powerlifting. While time has not been plentiful for neither lifting nor blogging, this past year saw me exercise my full right to the state-subsidized paternity leave. I was home eighteen days after Rufus saw daylight and the whole of November. In the year 2006, Under the Bar is sure to become toddlerfied as we have agreed that I will stay home full-time for a year beginning this fall. I have no illusions about that not being very much like a full-time job, but I couldn’t be waiting for it any more eagerly! That of course means Sanna is off to work. That might also mean that I get to train at a bit more sensible hours. Perhaps that will be the time when I start mingling with the elite lifters of the evening shift. If that doesn’t put fire under my cushion, nothing will.

“…the pain is still with me”

The year began on an optimistic note. After sustaining a major lateral shift of the hip in August 2004, I had slowly began the climb back up towards where my progress was abruptly cut short due to a good morning injury in December 2003. In late March, I embarked on the very low-back intensive 10-week Coan-Phillipi deadlift program with a view to smash 140 kg/309 lbs, a mere 5 kg/11 lbs from my conventional deadlift PR set in November 2003. In spite of horrendous deadlifting form, I got through the program. I never got 140 kg/309 lbs, but did reach a satisfactory 135 kg/298 lbs that I documented with my first dual angle videoclip (1.8M).

A month later, I visited the back clinic once more to assess my back health following the very strenous training bout. The therapist concluded that I had a minor protective lateral shift and cracked me straight. A mere four days after the visit, my back cramped up again during a workout (picture with lines added for emphasis). Based on what I now know this was inevitable, but I believe the manual upsetting of my spinal vertebrae made it happen sooner rather than later. I started doing the standard rehabilitation that I knew far too well by now. It cleared up some, even allowing me to max out on the squat. A month later, in late August, the full payload was delivered in the guise of a full-blown lateral shift. Limping into the back clinic once again, I was told that there was nothing structurally or neurologically wrong with my low back, i.e. no traces of the original good morning injury. That was the good news. The bad news was that my spine seems unable to handle the “abnormal levels of compression” it is subjected to under the bar causing acidic disc leakage to come into contact with the adjacent nerves, thus causing the shift. In a way, dealing with an injury that could be rehabilitated was more easier to grasp than the fact that my spine is simply not hardy enough for what I’m doing. Blame it on my years as a hobbyist programmer or whatever. Rehab seemed pointless, just took a whole month off lifting to heal physically and mentally.

Not ready to give up, I was back in the gym in late September. The logic seemed self-evident. The big weight exercises (squats, deads) is where the largest amount of compression is. Hence avoid them if the back feels at all stiff and instead strengthen the living hell out of the core/midsection region in the hopes that it will help keep stuff better in place. I spent nearly two months doing heavy midsection work, such as weighted side bends and reverse hypers with a good stretch, but despite some illusions to the contrary, I was slowly getting worse. I was able to do some light squatting, but by early November my back hurted too much to do even standing cable crunches.

That’s when it dawned on me to seek help at the Elite Fitness Systems’s rehabilitation QA. I ended up exchanging two rounds of questions with Michael Hope who pointed out what I now hope was the missing link: the spine is very compression resistant per se, it is when compression is combined with flexion (forward bending) that things go downhill fast. This suggested that squats, where there is little flexion but much compression, was the way to proceed, not all of those accessory exercises, even reverse hypers, that caused a lot of flexion with much smaller weights. He also suggested I take up heavy bag work to force my body out of the limited plane of motion provided by the lifts in the gym, which prompted me to take an extended tour down memory lane to my time as an avid martial artist. The rest, as they say, is history. On 26 December, stomach still filled with Christmas goodies, I finally broke my two year old box squat PR. Imagine how that felt.

Whether this means I am back on track towards becoming a real three-lift powerlifter remains to be seen. Let’s just say that 2006 began on a very optimistic note.

A short bench pressing story

Not going to go into frenzy over my benching in 2005. I have managed to dislodge a few assistance exercises out of the rut my bench has been stuck in, notably putting up 105 kg/232 lbs on the decline bench and the floor press. I also consulted briefly with Sebastian Burns of Metal Militia fame, who even graciously sent me one of his bench pressing DVDs for free. Tripling 170 kg/376 lbs off the six boards as part of a 27 seven set Metal Militia board pressing session was probably the most whacko thing I did during the whole year. The poor low-grade bar never recuperated from the bending. I still consider myself lucky for not injuring my unsuspecting wrists.

The aforementioned recurrent back trouble and sleep deficit are probably part of why my bench has been progressing so slowly. Still, I am more and more convinced that it has more to do with certain strength imbalances in my body, notably regarding the rear and front delts and the biceps. I began pounding my shoulders with 5x5 on the behind the neck press already before the Achieving Structural Balance craze swept over the known powerlifting blog universe in, but the test indicated my biceps were really sub-par and that the behind-the-neck press, external rotations and incline bench were barely adequate. I got the behind-the-necks up from 5x5 @ 50 kg/111 lbs in early July to 3x5 @ 57.5 kg/127 lbs in mid-August before the lateral shift put the breaks on my good gaining streak. The press-centric raw bench program I sewed together after my layoff sought to address the weak incline bench, weak shoulder strength and weak bicep strength. I have been doing some decent progress on that, but this might not be enough, especially not for the biceps. After things stall, I will consider turning my accessory bench day into a pure weakpoint session and skip all the crud. Shoulder pressing, back work, cuff work and more than a few sets of biceps work might make the cut better. On max effort day, it is also time to start maxing out on various forms of shoulder pressing much more frequently.

The past year also saw the introduction of specialty bars into my training as I began training at Metal gym. For the squat, I got access to a real GHR (as much as I loved the original Soviet version), a reverse hyper, a Westside camber bar, a Manta Ray and whatnot. For the bench, it has been mainly about the two inch camber bar that I like a lot. The year 2006 will also see me start to leverage more chains at least for my benching. Need to get some speed under the hood.

“…building a power rack in a forest demands a surprising amount of work”.

The whole scale renovation of my forest gym, Toffe’s Gym, into an outdoor powerlifting haven was scheduled for the summer of 2004, but since the welder never showed up, it got pushed over the winter. Not wanting to waste any outdoor training time, the first thing I did upon arriving at the summer cottage was to contract a new welder for my power rack and bench. This involved dragging all the iron to them instead of them arriving to the iron, but in the end it was worth it. I posted an extensive review of this very extensive project with a ton of pictures and cost details.

The renovation at Toffe’s was not limited to “just” the power rack and heavy-duty bench. One of the things I did while waiting for the rack to be welded was to dig a weight pit, which later turned into a concrete version as I used left-over concrete from the rack project. I also built an adjustable heavy-duty squat box, as my original 13″ box has emigrated to Helsinki, and a decline attachement for my new bench that I posted a sweet PR with. Too bad it turned out that the decline bench press might be one of the worst exercises for my back. A rubber mat also found it’s way to Toffe’s as Måns and I returned in October for a legendary night-time outdoor session.

Purchases

The renovation project very nearly drained the treasure chambers, but did buy some powerlifting miscellanea as well. I began an ambitious project to read the main body of the literature behind the Westside system. I did a bit of reading during the summer, but fell woefully short of my goal to finish by the end of the year. Being able to catch up on reading with a sleeping son in the lap turned out to be a short-lived illusion. The new deadline to finish this reading project is end of 2006. This deadline is officially tentative.

I also got some videos and DVDs, most notably both EliteFTS Exercise Indexes and the Westside Barbell Reactive Method and Special Strengths tapes. On the equipment side, I got myself a set of weight releasers for the bench that I’ve only used once so far… Still, the best thing of all was the 20GB iPod friends and family gave me for my birthday in September. Being able to carry around my full metal collection in the pocket has not been bad for training inspiration.

Concluding thoughts

There’s a lot of other things I could say, such as mentioning that I saw the insides of quite a lot of new gyms in 2005 or that the year came with an even bigger explosion of new lifting blogs that I didn’t have much time to read or that… This is where the train stops. If you want the full monty, you can always read the yearly archive for 2005. Having made peace with the past, it is now time to look forward. Hope you will enjoy the ride!

Monday, 26 December 2005: ME squat

The lone squatter entered the gym followed by his spotter sidekick. Lightly brushing by the heavy bag hanging in the entrance, he stops to gaze fiercely upon the squat bar. The bar patrons are long gone, it is nearly midnight. “An empty bar…”, the sidekick can vividly see the speech bubble forming, “… this bar ain’t big enough for my old and new squat PR”. After removing his long johns, after all, it is winter, he straddles the box and rides off towards higher and higher weights. The belt goes on, no bullets this time. It doesn’t take a bald bandit to see that the bar is putty on his shoulders. After 105 kg/232 lbs forms a clear silhouette against the moon shining in through the side window, the lone squatter loads the bar to 117.5 kg/260 lbs. He breaks sweat, but it doesn’t challenge his manhood. The spotter sidekick rejoices, but the lone squatter remains calm as a dead chinchilla. He knows it was meant to be, although it took a good two years to hunt it down. The uneasiness he has felt for so long is starting to melt like butter under the red Mexican sun. The hope he had been given made his cause just, but the story is not yet a happy one. As long as there are more PRs to arrest, the lone squatter will be out there.

VIDEO (2.3MB), published with permission from Ano Turtiainen.

Wednesday, 28 December 2005: ME Bench

Even more amazing than the fact that I finally got a new squat PR after two years of back trouble must be the lack of subsequent back pain. Unheard of. Feeling good, I had no trouble arching in under the cambered bar. Put up a 5 kg/11 lbs PR by reaching 95 kg/210 lbs. Life, life, life is good.