Another Strong Week

I hit a Squat PR of 290lb and a Deadlift PR of 425lb. I approached the Military Press with a new technique (initiating hip drive), but didn't have success with it. On Bench Press, I chose too heavy a weight for my work sets. Both lifts will go up soon. After my leg day, my right triceps was sore from contracting hard during Sumo Straight-Leg Deadlifts, which led to the poor performance on Bench and MP. I can proudly say I'm the strongest I've ever been, and I'm lucky enough to be able to say that every week.

I had shunned lifting singles, doubles, and triples in the past, thinking they were too draining and not an important part of lifting, but my perspective has changed. I feel it's important to lift heavy weights. As I heard with Squats recently, 'if you want big legs, you need to Squat heavy'. I'm taking that approach with all my lifts now.

My lower-to-mid back was pretty sore this week from the Sumo Deadlifts. I'll probably scale back the weight. I don't feel my form is ready for as heavy as I went. My Triceps had an out-of-this-world pump throughout the week. It's funny. I've had lots of problems getting my triceps to respond. Sets of 100 push-ups didn't make them grow, and neither did all the Skullcrushers or Push-Downs. I had tried a dozen different Triceps exercises. What was the answer? To weed out all of the exercises that didn't feel strong and powerful. I heard an argument for avoiding hinge-type rotating for Triceps exercises like Skullcrushers, and I agree with it. Your joints aren't very safe under a hinge opposed to a vertical press. So the exercise I settled on was Dips.

With Dips, I had done them on and off on the parallel bars. Oddly, I've found dips to be as hard if not harder than pull-ups. Granted, neither dips or pull-ups are hard for me, but they're the same difficulty, making my reps and poundage similar. I find them to be a bit draining, and they caused me to cut out some of my other exercises. I started doing Bench Dips, but soon found that they were entirely too unwieldy. I worked my way up to balancing 190lb on my thighs (4x45lb plates and a 10lb plate). They're too dangerous to perform regularly or with heavy weight. So I went back to parallel bar Dips with a refreshed respect for Dips, and I'm enjoying them again. They are my only Triceps exercise besides Decline Bench Press. Although, performing the Bent Press every training day has surely improved my Triceps.

Strength Training With Full Recovery

When I've approached my workout in the recent past, I was drained from the high volume and 6 day training week. I was not lifting my heaviest weights, and I had to struggle very hard to even lift as heavy as I did. Since then, I've settle down into strength training with only 2 days on a week back to back - lower body and upper body. I do about 3-10 sets of 5 per exercise, utilizing heavy weights.

I noticed immediately when I switched over to heavier weight that my body was taking a different type of damage and re-strengthening. I have been using body awareness as well recently. My training had tapered off, intentionally, more and more until where it now. I was surprised that while training 6 days a week, I could Deadlift on 4 of those days, and still be able to workout without much soreness. I was not lifting very heavy weight for myself though. Everything was approximately 50% my max (which is still 200lb in many cases).

When you attempt your routine without full recovery, you dig deep, and pour your heart into the lift. The weight moves, but a lot of the times it doesn't move. It's a horrible feeling to fail a lift. It can cause depression. It can cripple confidence. It can ruin many great things despite other accomplishments. Failing too often is fatal.

With full recovery, and having several days to recover gives the body a fair shot on your training day. That said, the first training day gets the most effort. My current routine has 1 upper body and 1 lower body training day a week. There are alternate workouts for both upper and lower body. I have an upper body for shoulders and arms,  and a day for lats. Both days hit chest and abs. For lower body I have a day for hamstrings and lower back, and another day for quads and calves.

My Squats are climbing steadily, breaking PRs as is my Bench Press and Military Press.

Book Released - GoblinCore - Fitness For 2013

Click to read or download.

Human Flag - 1 Month of Training

Upcoming Book

I'm very proud to announce that I'll be releasing a book titled Goblincore: Fitness for 2013. I will be releasing it free of charge, but I plan to charge for future books. Although I'm calling it a book, it is in fact short, coming in at 5000 words. I wrote the content late Saturday night. I had been planning this since I started my venture into fitness. All that's left is the photography. I finished the template for the .pdf today.