Another good session last night. Small turn out in the shed, hopefully due to the State of Origin.
Squat: Hit a new PB with 8x135kg. Bloody hard work. This Sunday I will up to 140kg. My new goal is to hit 10 x 140kg as Rippetoe demonstrated in his youtube Video. I think just 8x will be hard enough this weekend.
Dead Lift: Here I just worked up to 120kg with sets of 5 then one successful rep at 170kg. Instead of being cautious I added another 10kg and went for the 180kg. No good, should have went for the extra 2.5kg. On Sunday I will just do 160kg x 5 and then have another attempt next Wednesday.
Press: Been a while since i did some pressing. I was also running out of time. just went up in 20kg intervals. Had to utilises push presses to get the 8x 80kg out.
It has been a while since I have posted. Really have not had that much to write about. I am still working on the x8 program. For the squat i am only doing 1x8, that is enough for now. I have set a new PB for deadlift so that makes me happy.
Sunday 6th
Did not get out to the shed with the group due to family commitments. When I did get to the shed Just did some presses and rack pulls.
Press: I did 3x8 at 50kg, these x8 eights really suck.
Rack Pull: Had a tender knee from the three hour karate class the day before. Didn't really feel comfortable putting the joint through the full range of movement for the Squat. I managed to load the bar up to 202.5kg. the bar i was using was a 22.5 bar. Any way, did 5x1. This has to be one of the best abb workouts ever. Come Tuesday my lower stomach was killing me. I am going to do more of these as the weeks go on.
Wednesday
Had another good session with the guys. Two gym records were beaten but unfortunately neither were buy myself. A new guy that we have working out with Brendon set a 500m time of 125kg and pulled 210kg off the floor. Fortunately I did post a new Pd for the Deadlift.
Squat: As stated before I have been just doing 1x8 for the squat. This not that hard to complete and I am ready to increase by 5kg, I just do not have a second set in me.
Deadlift: After watching some impressive DL from pete i decided to give all i had. Pete hit a new Pb of 130kg. My work sets were 8x60, 8x100, 5x120, 1x160 and 1x170kg. And the weird thing is it felts quite easy and I look forward next week at attempting 180kg. My in ability to achieve a good DL is more psychological than any thing else. I can think of any other reason for the discrepantly between my 1RM squat and DL. I think that the Rack pulls really helped me get over both the mental and physical stopping ponts.
Good session last night, 8 rep sets are still knocking me around. I am getting more of a burn but feeling less fatigued. This is maybe why I thought I had a new PB for deads in me. I tried 170kg but unfortunately failed.
Squats: Work set was 2x8 @ 120kg. I am surprised the difference in fatigue/burn feeling.
Bench: 2x8 @ 110kg. Just 10kg off my squat weight. But then I don't have to push my 140kg frame on the bench. Bloody hard work but felt good. With the second set I tried a different foot position. I tried bringing my feet more underneath my body and having only the ball of the foot on the ground. I found that this helped create more back arch and I felt more push from my leg in the lift. The only problem was that reps 6-8 I felt my hamstring on the verge of cramping.
Dead: Just worked up with the group through 60 – 100kg. As stated before I felt I had a lot in me so went straight to do a one rep max. With 170kg I managed to get the bar to the knee sticking point. Honestly I think I just didn't set up properly and lifted to much arse. Had a second attempt but my lower back said no.
But when 5 turn out to be 8 that is a different story. Last night was my first session of doing 3x8 instead of 3x5. What a difference, I even had trouble completing my warm up sets and boy am I sore today.
For my work set I still ended up doing sets of 5 but the weight was a lot less than normal. I look forward to seeing my progress over the next couple of weeks.
I was looking for a fight photo of Randy but how cool is that shot.
On a trip to the states in 2006 I sat in on a presentation be Randy Couture. He detailed his work out program getting him ready for that nights title fight against Tim Silvia. His program consisted of five minute blocks, the same as the rounds in the UFC. He stated that he got so used to it when running on a tread mill he could tell when it was five minutes. This is how my body felt last night, I am so conditioned to sets of 5 that I could feel a markable diffence when i pushed pass five even with my warm up sets. The first 5 reps were easy, 6 was ok but seven and eight were hard.
Olympic Cert.
On the weekend I sat through the Club Weightlifting and Sports power coach licence level 1. It was definitely one of the better coarse I have ever attended. The coarse was run by Lyn Jones, a driving force behind weightlifting for many years. His experience and depth of knowledge help to produce a rich coarse. Now Lyn is not exactly a spring chicken, when he started to quote things that happened in the 50's was the only hint of his age, his athleticism, agility and strength was of some of at least 20 years his junior. He should be the poster boy of what weigh training can do for you.
Lyn's assistant on the coarse Phil, who complete level 1 and 2 weightlifting under Lyn in Belfast of all places worked well to complement Lyns teaching. I was able to spend more time with Phil and some of his drills I will be including into my regular program.
The coarse was held at the ACTAS Strength and Conditioning centre in Lyneham, ACT. The Centre would have to be one of the best set up gyms in the ACT, unfortunately it is not open to the public. There were three power racks and six lifting platforms with quality bars and well set out plate racks. Another high lite of the gym was a tumbling mat that I geuss is more used for sprint training.
I also ment some great people over the weekend including Darren and Nadine from Crossfit Ignite. Nadine is one of the qualifiers traveling to the US represent Australia in the Crossfit Games.
I would recommend this coarse to any one.
Change to Program.
I am going to incorporate some more Oly lifting in with my Wednesday night strength session. I am also going to change my 3x5 to 3x8 for the next three months.
Monday Rest Day
Tuesday Metcon
Wednesday Strength 3x8 Plus some oly lifts and technique work
Thursday Rest Day
Friday WOD
Saturday Oly Lifting
Sunday Strength 3x8
Good session focused on Front Squat, Bench and Power cleans.
Front Squat: Hit a new PB of 90kg, I tried to go heavier but due to the strain on my wrist I tried the I dream of jenny position favoured by body builders. I haven't had much experience with this way of holding the bar, maybe not a good idea to use it when I am trying to beet my previous PB by 20kg. Any way I failed dramatically. Thanks to my spotters helping me out of the whole as I couldn't even drop the bar.
Bench: Played around a little here. work set was ment to be 3x5 110kg. Instead I did 1x5 110kg, 1x5 115kg PB. That really took all I had. I then tried to do max reps at 100kg and only got out 7.
Power Clean: Here i just played around successfully lifted 90kg but had no way in hell of lifting 100kg. Easy to get off the ground but could not engage the second lift.
