Was a shrug at the thigh level. Just insane!

Bloody good effort.

Nice lift

Nice work, Flaps.

Went in for tissue/physio there. Good grief my traps are not happy muscles. Far too tight and over active. Shoulder is a mess of tension and sub-optimal mechanics.


Nothing I didn't know before.

Meanwhile, back in the real world away from lifting small cars

4 x 8 min ergs last night, stroke rate 26, 5 min rest.

1.55.2 split average

Holy smokes. That's some pace for that amount of time.

They are old man scores to be honest

One of our juniors can sit on a 1:40 average split for 30 mins.

Thanks. You should get a tim tam, they work really well.

Jesus, they're a couple of hundred quid at least!

What does a massage cost?

Don't be bringing logic into this!

Started DLs this morning with paused deficit DLs to try and get things moving well. More focus on chest up, which made the reps a bit more difficult, but happy enough with the form.

Top set of 180x3.

Was shattered during this morning's squat/DL session. Not fatigued or feeling sub par, just absolutely gassed and wrecked after each set.

Squat: 120x5, 130x3, 140x4,4,3
Tempo squat: 100x8. 3 sets
Deficit DL: 120x8, 3 sets
Snatch grip DL: 100x8, 3 sets
DM farmer walks/abs

Bailed on my final squat. Annoyed, should have had it but bitched out rather than meat-head my way through it.
Messed around with farmers walks at the end with 40kg DBs (and wraps). Might try go heavy with these and see if they help my conditioning at all!

Pretty sure I’ve said this before but would really like to do regular farmers walks into my training. I did look at buying some small ones but not sure how much weight I can move on them

Couple of good sessions this weekend.

Saturday
Did my heavy set of bench then did 155x1 after. It was hard but a good working weight. Probably 8.5 RPE. Happy with that considering I’d done a max set before that.
Also did 5x5 pause squats with 135. Felt light but it’s going up 5kg each week.

Sunday is my accessory day and I got a massive pump
Did sets of 10 with 105 high bar squat
Leg extensions.
Pull ups
Db shoulder press
Barbell curls.

Yeah, it's something I think would be helpful. The DBs in my gym only go up to 50kg, which isn't that much really. With a proper farmer walk impliment you can get serious weight up.

There are a couple of guys in my gym (who are notorious for awful DL form) who I've seen doing farmer walks with the trap bar. It's not really feasible though. Takes up pretty much all the floor space that people need for benches or other floor work, as it's so wide. I had to suggest that maybe it wasn't really going to work when the gym was full.* At least with DBs you can keep to a narrower track to one side out of the way.

*Strange how some people need to be told things that are really obvious, but they don't want to know about it.


-----


Had a good shoulder/upper session yesterday.
OHP: worked up to a couple of singles at 70.
Seated pin OHP
Bench
Unilateral lat and side/rear delt stuff.


I've decided to knock off doing shrugs for a while. My upper traps are very overactive and I've some work to do to get them to chill out and improve my scapular motion for OH work. Hammering the traps probably won't help.

Keep your hips down. Final warning.

But I thought I did a bit better than previously.

They’re still shooting up a little too fast.

Will have to dial the weight back even more for a few weeks.

Footage from my first competition this year.

Deadlift https://youtu.be/sR1ck-GSJuM

Log press https://youtu.be/fbaXt0FTUjs

Atlas stones https://youtu.be/GxTXACnBsRI

Farmers walk https://youtu.be/OfwwHGEBUPk

Class.
What were the weights of each?

Out of curiosity, what height/weight are you?

I’m 5’11” and weighed in at 295lbs/134kg at that show.

Deadlift 515lbs
Log 200lbs
Farmers 500lb
Stones went from 175lbs-275lbs

That’s awesome.

Was the log press strict? Doesn’t seem to be much leg drive

It was a strict press.

That explains it

Meant to ask that, too. Some meets allow a push press. Probably the ones where you've to clean it off the floor.

It’s quite unusual for it to be a strict press out of the rack. Suited me though, my strict press is better than my push press. It also fucks those sneaky bastards that are really good at split jerk/push jerk.

Strict press probably favours old strong bastards as well. Takes away the speed/power advantage that younger guys probably have.

Coincidentally I was half watching a video while making dinner the other day where Clarence Kennedy was trying to learn how to log press. He couldn't get the sequence right and kept doing a squat jerk. Couldn't get away from his Oly lifting instincts.

Haven't seen it done with the split jerk before.

His Instagram handle is pretty funny.

He trains at lightning fitness in CT where I did my competition. Very strong and technical, but probably a little to small to win Worlds.

He's quite short compared to the Shaw/Thor type freakshows, isn't he?
Mind you, Licis is a good bit shorter than those guys as well. Eddie Hall, too.

He’s only 5,10” and 280lb. Hall and Licis are around 6’3” and 60-100lbs heavier.

Jesus, didn't realise that he was that much smaller. Shows to show how freakishly big the tall guys are.

At my next show on January 18th there will some high end super heavy weights trying to qualify for one of the Arnold competitions. The weights are insane.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... /htmlview#

Ran a 22min 48sec park run on Saturday morning on quite a tight course, which I was pretty happy with given I’ve really let my diet go and been out drinking too much recently, to the extent that I weighed in at 105.5kgs on Friday morning.
Big focus to get my weight down to double digits pre-Xmas which I’m hoping will shave a minute or so off my park run time.

That's fast for that weight. Fair play.

The dream would be to someday go under 20mins but I’d need to lose a serious amount of lard before that is achievable.
I’m currently recovering from a dislocated shoulder from a match 7 or 8 weeks ago and I’d made a promise to myself to spend this time boosting my cardio engine given I can’t do my normal weights routine or swim.

Indulged myself with a 2 hour session this morning and a later start to work. Fair bit of chatting between sets, but happy with the form and how comfortable everything felt. Gave myself plenty of time to limber up and build up to my working sets, meant everything moved nicely.

Bench: 80x5, 90x3,3,3, 100x1,1,1
Tempo bench: 75x8,8,8
DB incline: 30x10 / Pull up: BWx8, 3 sets
SA cable rows
Cable flies / cable lat pull overs

The SA cable rows are interesting. Just going quite light but really focusing on form. Start with my shoulder very much protracted, then retract it back into a good position, and then do the row. More like 12 sets of 1 than 1 set of 12, resetting each time. Feels good for emphasising that scapular retraction with good form.
Interestingly, I could really feel it when unracking the heavy bench if my shoulder posture wasn't optimal. Just a slight momentary twinge of discomfort as I lifted off the rack and settled into the starting position. Other times I got set up that bit tighter, and didn't feel a thing lifting off. The latter invariably lead to better quality reps.