Conditioning. Week 4. Tempo Run

Tempo Run - 1 mile @ 11:38

Ended up pushing a little too hard, and matched the pace from the interval runs.  Need to pull back a little bit.

Conditioning. Week 1. Tempo Run

Tempo Run - 1 mile @ ~12:35

No problems here.  Easy, sub-pace run.

Hybrid Training. Week 0. Heavy Lower and Tempo Run

Friday:
BW - 229

Squats -
up to 305X2
then 255X6, 6

RDL - up to 225X5, 5, 5

Hanging Legs -
BicyleX10
Knee RaiseX10
Bent Leg RaiseX10

Sunday:
Tempo Run - 1.3 miles @ 20 min.

Squats all moved well.

I was very, very careful with the RDLs as I've aggravated my low back issues being too aggressive with them in the past.  I walked them out instead of picking them up, and I was facing a mirror so I could keep an eye on my chest position.  After the 2nd set, I felt a kind of pulsing feeling around where I've had issues, so I did one more set and quit while I was ahead.  No lingering back issues afterwards.

In the past, I've tried to jump right into full, straight-leg hanging leg raises and been frustrated.  So I'm going to do a bit more of a progression here and try to work up to a quality straight-leg raise.

The tempo runs are supposed to be "slightly sub-pace," and varying between under- and over-distance.  I haven't done any running besides intervals since June of 2014, and until this week, I hadn't even done intervals since August of '15.  So I don't know what my pace is, and under-distance is my max without walking.  I decided to get in the water "a toe at a time," and just did a loop around the park with the slowest possible gait that wasn't walking.  Frankly, that I did it without having to stop and walk seems like an achievement.

My plan for this day right now is to alternate increasing the distance with increasing the speed.  The "race pace" I will likely shoot for is a basic 10 min. mile.  My best ever 1 mile time is 7:58.  That was in 2012 @ ~205 BW.  So I will work first on getting to 2 miles at a non-stop shuffle alternated with getting my mile pace closer to 10.  Then I will put those together, and when I can get 2 miles in 21-25 minutes, I will start on increasing distance at that pace.

Full Body. Week 4. Timed-Mile

Timed-Mile - 8:49

Windy as hell today.  Time came in about where it was last week.

Full Body. Week 3. Timed Mile

Timed Mile - 8:47

Got it under 9, now I just need to get it under 8.  I ate a slice of cheese pizza during my warm-up walk, and I felt great during the run.  No urgent desire to stop and walk, had to hold myself back out of the gate, and was able to crank up the speed for the last 1/4 mile.

Full Body. Week 2. Timed Mile

Timed Mile - 9:42

Managed a non-stop run this time.  Purposefully started off slow and tried to push the pace after the 1/2 way point.  Still didn't make the same time as when I ran hard and walked the middle 1/4 mile.

Full Body. Week 1. Timed Mile

Timed Mile - 9:17

Shaved over a minute off my last two times.  I got off to a too fast start though, and had to walk a 1/2 block after the first 1/2 mile, so it's even more amazing that the time came in so well.

Full-Body. Trial Week.

BW - 208

Pause Squats -
BarX10
95X5
135X3
185X3
225X2
255X2, 2, 2

Bench -
BarX20
95X5
135X3
155X2
185X1
155X15

Complex - 95X2, 2, 2, 2, 2
(Clean, Front Squat, Push-Press, Front Squat)

Next Day:
One-Mile Run - under 11:00

My knee was bothering me the last few days so I took time off from training.  It was still feeling wonky, but I felt like it was time to get back in the gym and see what was what.

My plan for May has been to do three days of full body training in the gym with complexes as finishers, and two-three days of starting to ramp up conditioning now that the weather's better.  I haven't done complexes in two or three years, so I wanted to take a week to try some stuff out.

My bench day programming seemed like a good place to start.  With pause squats not having a bounce at the bottom, I knew I'd feel safer on them.  Everything went well here.

On bench, I'm backing down to a lower section of my tiered programming for hitting 225, but with no back-off sets.  15 reps with 155 is actually my calculated target for 225, so that's kind of nice to have there even though I didn't quite make is to 225 in my last strength phase.

This complex had mixed results.  I have zero Oly training, so I knew the cleans would be more like reverse-grip cheat curls and I'm fine with that.  Going from front squat rack position into the press position was awkward, and getting the bar back to the floor after the 2nd front squat was REALLY awkward.  Both were kind of rough on my wrists.  I may ask one of the Oly guys at the gym for advice, or I may switch out one or both front squats for overhead squats.

The next day I did a mile run; my second of the season.  Last week, I came in about 10:45.  I was under 11:00 this time as well, but my time-keeping was off so I don't know exactly.  My knee was a bit tender at first, but after about a 1/3 mile or so, it got warm and felt good.  I'm still WAY over my best ever, sub-8:00 mile times, but this is just an acclimation period.

5/3/1 Full-Body: Cycle 5. Week 3. Squat

Saturday:
BW - 199

Squat -
BarX10
95X5, 5
135X5
185X5
210X3
235X5

Front Squats -
95X10, 10, 10

T-Bar Rows -
BarX15
25X10
75X5
100X3
75X15

Dips - BWX10, 6, 5, 5, 5

Sunday:
Timed-Mile - 8:49

Kind of an 80% session, I guess.  Squats felt slower than I would have hoped, but 235X5 is pretty much dead-center-average for what I've hit the last 5 weeks.

Fronts felt solid.  Still playing with my grip trying to find a fingers under grip that's both stable and comfortable enough not to be a distraction.  I was planning on starting BBB with 115 for sets of 10, but I believe I will start with this weight at least until my grip is more settled.

Used Paul Carter's over-warm-up method on rows this time to great success.  I was struggling to get 75X10 just working up to it, and with the over-warm-up here the 15 rep set was solid.

Dips were okay.  It's still just a matter of being gassed by the end of the session, and still having the discipline to not only work through all 5 sets, but to keep pausing each rep at the bottom.

Fell off the conditioning band-wagon a bit since I've been back from vacation.  Had a tight schedule this week, but I made myself go out at sunset last night and run a mile.

5/3/1 Full-Body: Cycle 4. Week 3. Timed Mile

LRB Diet - Week 9

Timed Mile - 8:20

5/3/1 Full-Body: Cycle 4. Week 2. Carries

Sunday:

LRB Diet - Week 9

BW - ???

AM:
Steady-state - 20 minutes

PM:
Wife Carries - 1/4 mileX2

When I started lifting, my wife would sometimes ask me what my goal was, and I would joke that I thought a man should be able to carry his woman for 2 miles over un-even terrain.  I even did a cycle of farmer's carries once with that in mind, but that fell away as I tried to stay focused on the basics. 

Recently, she asked me how far I thought I could carry her now, and partially inspired by a recent CNP article on Tom Hardy, I decided to try some piggy-backs.  I have a 1-mile route in my neighborhood I often use for conditioning, and I thought I would go for a 1/2 mile carry.  Luckily, the route is easily broken down into 1/4 miles, because that's all I could manage.  We then walked another 1/4 mile until I felt recovered, and I did another 1/4 mile carry.

The good news/bad news is that no one part of my body felt much more fatigued than any other.  This was a whole body effort, and pretty much everything was giving out at once rather than having one "weak link."  That both reinforces my confidence that I'm keeping my training well-balanced, and that I still have loads of room for improvement in every area.  With that said, it's now a day later, and my biceps are more sore than they've been in a long time, so this obviously provides a different type/degree of stress than all the rowing and chinning I do.

If the wife is willing, I may start alternating this with hill-sprints as regular conditioning.  It's also pretty fun and pretty funny.  There is a bar right where we stopped yesterday, and I collapsed onto a bar stool and treated myself to a giant ice-water, and a gin-and-tonic for my troubles.

5/3/1 Full-Body: Cycle 4. Week 1. Timed Mile

LRB Diet - Week 8

Yesterday:
Timed Mile - 9 minutes

Today I woke up looking as lean as I have on the entire diet.  Never got around to buying a scale, so I still can't say where my "true" weight has been, and my gym weight has been hovering steady in the 197-199 range.

At this point, I'm shooting for the LRB food template, but falling back to the LRB Shake Diet in a pinch.  This is mainly on work-day mornings, when I will have a Met-RX MRS instead of taking the time to cook real food.

5/3/1 Full-Body: Cycle 2. Week 3. Timed Mile

LRB Diet - Day 21

Timed Mile - 8 minutes

My 2nd best time ever at this distance, and I just ran it because I wanted to get something in with a tight weekend schedule.  This was earlier in the morning, probably within an hour of a breakfast of egg whites and steel-cut oatmeal.  I lept out of the gate, then reigned myself in to conserve some energy, but once that pace was locked in, I didn't waver the rest of the run.  Everything just felt awesome for some reason.

5/3/1 Log: Cycle 2. Week 2. Incline

BW - 198

Incline (steep) -
BarX10
65X5
95X3
110X3
130X3
145X3

DB Rows - worked up to a heavy set of 20

Lying Leg Curls - 5 sets of 10-15

Swiss-Ball Crunches - 5 sets of 20-25

1 mile run - 9:30

Used the steep fixed incline bench today.  So  much more like an overloaded front press than the shallower bench.  Hoped to get 5 reps on the top set, but 3 was a grinder, but projected higher than my previous session on this particular bench so all good.

UB: Reps Week 1. Bench

Sunday:

Timed Mile - 10:38

Monday:

Defranco Shoulder Mobility

Bench -
BarX15X2
65X10
105X6
135X3
160X1
135X12, 4, 4, 3, 2, 2, 3 (30 total reps)

Chin-ups - Gym BW 210X7, 3

Presses - 95X5, 85X5, 65X5, BarX7, BarX10

Decided to do a light one-mile run between lifting days.  Just went for something easy; I even walked a bit after the initial quarter mile.  Had to keep my focus to keep my pace down though.  When I run by myself, my instinct is too just take off.

So the numbers Paul Carter lays out in this plan call for the work-sets to be 63% of your 1RM*1.05.  For my bench, that comes out to about 130lbs.  This is one of the rare examples where I have consciously made an ego-driven change to my programming.   It just seems dumb to put a 25, 10, 5, and 2.5 lb. plate on each side for this instead of just throwing full plates on there on working on that weight for this cycle.  Also, 135 projects as my 15 rep max, same as what I'm doing on Squats.

The results were interesting.  It was easier than the Squats (have I mentioned I'm a poor squatter?), but not as easy after the first set as the rows.  Could be because I upped the weight slightly over the recommended %?  I also cut those later sets shorter than I may have needed to because, ya know, the weight is hovering over my chest with no partner to catch it.  Anyway, with the 30 second rests (it's 60 for Squats) this was a bit of a romp.  Pretty fun.

UB: Conditioning - Review

I've finished the 6-week conditioning block from Paul Carter's Ultimate Beastdom - How to get What Constitutes Strong (WCS).

This program calls for 3-4 days of hard conditioning a week, 1-2 sessions of steady-state, and only two sessions of weight lifting with the goal being to stimulate strength maintenance.

Here were my results for the 3 types of hard conditioning:
Timed Mile - 7:58; previous best was 9:12.
Hammer&Tire - 15 minutes Tabata-style (30 seconds/10seconds); previous best was 5 rounds of 40 swings with 45 second rests for 10 minutes.
30 yd. Incline Sprints - 20 sprints in 18:30; previous best was 8 sprints in 10:00.

In the gym, I didn't miss a single lift, although my last round of singles on OHP were very slow.  Additionally, I actually set a 1 Rep PR in the Squat, but that's due to having missed my one previous attempt with that weight due to form issues.  Still, it was nice to get the lift on the books.

Additionally, I actually set a Chin-Up PR with 12 reps at a gym BW of 205.

It took me a while to get in the correct mind-set for this cycle as I kept looking forward to my gym sessions, and leaving the conditioning as an afterthought.  Once I flipped that, I started having a lot more fun with the program.  Also, the 45 minute walks I did for steady-state were very nice.  I wake up much earlier on the weekends than my wife, and it was nice to just go for a walk in the morning once or twice a week in that time.

The Mile was something that had been in my programming for a few weeks when I was doing Defranco stuff, but since then had only been used for an occasional steady-state finisher after a lifting session.  It was really cool to come back to it for 6-weeks to try and bring it up.  I was able to plot a simple mile around my neighborhood with easy 1/4 mile markers, and it was great to be able to walk out the front door, and be back home with my conditioning workout done all in less than 15 minutes.  This will definitely be another tool that I try to incorporate several times a year going forward.

Sledge hammer swings have been a mainstay of my programming for awhile, as they always made sense as a way to get some good conditioning in while giving the legs a break, they fit in well after a Bench or Press sessions, and they make me feel like a badass afterwards.  However Paul's use of Tabata timing in this was very different from what I had been doing, and very kick-my-ass as well.  Prior to this block, I'd treated them more like core work.  By that I mean I would do sets of moderately high "reps," and then rest for 30-60 seconds before doing another "set."  The 30 seconds of swinging, 10 seconds of resting protocol on this cycle was much harder conditioning wise.  I do want to say, that it didn't seem to be as much of a grip workout as the longer rounds of swings however, and that is also good to know.

The sprints are something I'd been working to try and incorporate for awhile.  I hadn't really gotten serious about them because what I wanted to do were the holy hill-sprints advocated so heavily by Carter, Wendler, and others.  However being car-less, and living in the flat city of Chicago had made this un-feasible for realistically incorporating them into my life.  Both my gym and my home have stretches of street/side-walk nearby that are at a steady incline, so I finally opted to just do 30 yard sprints there.  They seemed hard enough to start out, and hard enough to progress on (I failed to make my goal on one week of this program), that I've decided they're acceptable.  They will continue to be a mainstay for me.

I had a lot of fun on this program, and I learned a lot about myself.  The only bummer is that I now have 3 different conditioning drills I really like, plus there's a Prowler at the gym now, and I'm going to have a hard time deciding which drills I want to include in non-conditioning cycles going forward.  Probably I will go with the Prowler next time since I haven't done any programming with it yet, and want to get a baseline set.  After that, it's going to be really difficult to choose!

One other thought:  I still look back fondly on 531, and plan to go back to that after I finish out the final block of this programming.  However, I don't see any reason that the template Paul uses here can't be used as another template for 531.  Top end strength, conditioning, rep strength, right?  I'm thinking it would be set up as such:

Top Strength - 4 days/week, Press, Dead, Bench, Squat.  531 sets/reps for those movements for 6 weeks with no deload, so a week of 5's, a week of 3's, 531 week, 5's, 3's, 531.  Only going for rep maxes the last weeks.  Assistance work would be as prescribed in the Ultimate Beastdom program.

Conditioning - 2 days of lifting a week.  You would set up like Paul does, but using 531 sets/reps.  So Week 1 would be 531 sets for Bench and Squats, and Week 2 would be Press and Deads with the only difference being that you would also do some light sets of Squats on Deadlift day, and no assistance on any lower body day.  Or, there are a variety of 531 2-day templates out there, so you would pick one of those, and just make sure you pick one with minimal assistance, and only get the prescribed reps.  Then you do the conditioning as Carter lays out in his program.

Rep Strength - This would be very similar to Boring But Big 531, 3 times per week.  The difference is you only get the prescribed reps on the 531 sets, and then you do as many sets as necessary to get 30+ reps with 63% of a reasonable target 1RM for the cycle.  Paul recommends your current max +5%.  Also, you would have to think about what you want to do with the Press and the Deadlift.  Paul only uses the Press as Bench assistance here.  Also, he has changed his mind about high-rep Deadlifting since he wrote the program.  I will talk more about this when I start the Rep strength phase next week, but basically you can do Deadlift just for the 531 reps, and then work on your rowing strength for high reps afterward .  For the Press, a good compromise might be to switch to incline for this cycle instead of doing separate days for Bench and OHP.  Of the 3 blocks, this one is that one that takes the most tweaking to use 531.

UPDATE:  I forgot to include one other aspect of the program that I added.  Paul once wrote a post wherein he discussed that you can bring up one, smaller muscle group on a conditioing/diet/cutting phase.  I decided to do biceps for balance and fun.  I did a 4 sets of high-reps on a curl variation at the end of every lifting session.  I alternated between BB Curls, Reverse BB Curls, DB Hammer Curls, and Rope Curls.  I don't take body measurements, but I would say my biceps definitely look larger after this program.

UB: Conditioning Week 6. Timed Mile

Defranco Mobility

5 minute walk

Timed Mile - 7:58

40+ seconds better than my best time for that distance.  I even had to stop for a second at a red light to wait for traffic to clear.  This was pretty much an all-out effort; as much mental as physical.  These last two runs, I've seen that once I get past the first 1/4 mile my brain starts telling me it's not in the cards, and I have to push past that.  Once I'm almost 3/4 of the way through that passes, and it becomes a matter of sustaining the pace.  So the middle 1/2 mile is the mental hurdle for me.  Anyway, this feels awesome.  Come the end of May, I'm going to have a period where I can only get in the gym 2-3 times a week for about 4 weeks, and I might revisit this then.  Or at least one or two of these conditioning drills.  Not sure which yet.

UB: Conditioning Week 5. Timed Mile

Timed Mile - 9:16

Right where I wanted to be.  The first week I was closer to 10:00, then the 2nd week I went way to hard and about killed myself getting about 8:40, but the truth is I slowed down when I realized how far over pace I was, and was actually approaching an 8:15.  The last two weeks I ran with my wife just aiming to help her beat her time, so doing it by myself this week, I just wanted to come in between the first two week's times.  Next week is the last one of this cycle, so I will go all out again, and shoot for 8:30 or better.

UB: Conditioning Week 3. Timed Mile

Timed Mile (against wife's time) - 2:00, 6:50, 9:45, 12:51

Beat all the markers including the total time we set last time my wife ran with me.

UB: Conditioning Week 2. Timed Mile and Steady State

Friday:

Timed Mile - 8:42

Saturday:

Steady State - 45 minute walk

I went way harder on the mile than I meant to do.  I set my baseline time last week as 9:26, and I only wanted to beat that by 10-20 seconds.  I was so far ahead of that today, that I actually stopped and walked the last half block to keep the time up.  So the log says I beat last week by 40 seconds, but I was probably on pace to beat it by as much as a minute. 

The problem here is that I didn't set time/"course" markers for myself so that I would have an idea of where my pace was.  I'm going to use google maps to try and figure out where the 1/2 way point is so that I can have a better idea in the future.  Next week, I might just try to beat my week 1 time again, to give myself more room to progress into.

The wife and I had a pleasant, but brisk 45 minute walk the next day.  Weather has taken a decided turn for the better here in Chicago.