SHEIKO #13

This week is a little lighter following a heavy week.

• Bench 145x5 (50), 170x4 (60), 200x3x2 (70), 215x3x4 (75)

• Squat 225x5 (50), 260x5x2 (60), 305x5x5 (70)

Rene said I looked a little bent over on these. Not sure why. But my right knee was hurting me on second heavy set -- I think I put my knee sleeve on twisted or something. It bothered me a little for the rest of the workout. Hopefully won't be an issue later this week.

• Bench 155x5 (55), 185x4x2 (65), 200x4x5 (70)

• Dumbell press (hands facing in) 40x10x3, 45x10x2

• Good morning 185x5x5

• Ice knees

Roper sack

Close-grip pull ups
bw + 45 x 5
bw + 90 x 5
bw + 115 x 5
bw + 135 x 4
bw + 90 x 6

(superset)
Shrugs:
thumbless grip + full pause at the top
315 x 12
315 x 15
405 x 8 (kept slipping)
315 x 21

Bent-over Rows:
super strict, with weight touching the ground (no bounce) between each rep
165 x 8
250 x 8
250 x 10
275 x 6

(superset)
Band-resisted curls:
40 + greens x 8
40 + greens x 10
40 + greens x 8
40 + greens x 6

Reverse Flyes:
160 x 10
205 x 10
245 x 10
275 x 10

Finished the 3 sets of rainbow dragonfly ponies, for 3, 5 and 7 reps. (Abs were sore from the ab wheel yesterday)

Equipped Sheiko Training

I just discovered that the Excel file for my current Sheiko program includes equipped lifts. So now I officially know how to train Sheiko equipped-style. Check it here.

Block 1 #11 - short day

Power clean + jerk 90/3+2 x 2 105/1+1 x 5
Clean pull 105/4 x 2 117/3 130/2 x 2
Seated good morning 70 - 4x4

So the workouts for this stage are scheduled to have hard days on Mon/Wed/Fri and easier/lighter/shorter days on Tues/Sat. I like this for increasing volume because you get 5 quality workouts a week and still can recover. I understand why Sheiko programs the way he does and why Nathan only does 3 days per week: the Olympic lifts basically leave no fatigue from one day to the next while powerlifts will mess you up. I also like the way that the hard days are concentrated: much more volume on the hard days than the easy days in order to allow recovery. This is also what Sheiko does, in that you don't do 85%/2 x 3 on Monday then 70%/5 x 4 on Tuesday. You do them on the same day and recover the next. Only when one day is "full" do you add an additional day to increase the volume, rather than adding more workouts distributed evenly across the week whenever you want more volume. The Russians even go so far as to resort to 2-a-days on the high volume days (at higher qualification) rather than moving the additional work to one of the light or off days.

Another interesting thing is that high intensity and high volume tend to go together. If a workout is very high volume then there is a good chance that I'll be doing 90%+ lifts in it even though I'll be doing tons of work before and after. I don't really have a good explaination for this, it's just an observation. This occurs more frequently in the preparatory phase though. In the competition phase volume is lowered and intensity is higher: 90% lifts almost every workout (about 2/3 of the workouts I think, off hand), so you don't do an entire workout in the one of the lifts then go for 90%+.

Ok, I need to actually work today so I guess this post is over.... If anyone wants to talk about how this may relate to powerlifting go ahead, I like discussion and we haven't had many lately.

Squats and more Squats

1/12/09

Squats

135 x5 (warmup)

185 x 5 x 2

using purple bands
225 x 5
275 x 5

315 x 5

using green bands

365 x 5
I know I did more, but I can't remember what weight I did.

Lunges

135 x 8 (each leg)

145 x 8 (each leg)

155 x 8 (each leg)

Leg Extensions

stripped set starting from 210

Squats

135 till failure

Ab Wheel

3 sets

Squat

Squats:
330 X 5 (belt only)

After I did these, I put on the bottoms of my Fusion deadlift suit and messed around a bit. I tried to sink a few reps at 259 and 313 but didn't hit depth. They are a lot tighter than the bottoms of the Max DL. Maybe I'll give it a run next week when I use my gear.

Cambered Bar Squats:
225 X 5
245 X 5
275 X 5

SS Bar Good Mornings off pins:
135 X 8 (4 sets)

Sled Work

Abs

Squats

1/12/09

Squats

135 x warmup

185 x 5 x 2

using purple bands

225 x 5 x 2

275 x 4 x 2

using green bands

275 x 5

295 x 5

315 x 4

315 x 5

Lunges

135 x 6 x 2

145 x 6

155 x 6

15 second break

another 2 reps

Quad Death

3 sets of the cycle

Leg Extensions

stripped set starting from 205

Squats

95 till failure

Ab Wheel

4 sets

ME Squat (sort of)

Goal today was to walk out 600+ and see how it felt. I wanted to at least feel the weight once before I attempt it in competition. This is my last squat workout, so I didn't want to push myself too hard in volume to allow time for recovery.

Squat:
w/ suit straps down + knee sleeves
Used the blue bands on the outside. We used two sets of safety pins to ensure that the bands were completely slack for the top 6" of the lift. This let me walk it out with no band tension.

405 x 3 (straps down)
455 x 1 (straps down, belt over)
545 x 1 w/ blue bands (same)
605 x 2 w/ blue bands (same)

545 felt so-so. 605 felt super easy. A bunch of people were like "WTF?!?" after we loaded the weight on, so I used that to pump myself up. I was originally only going to do 1 rep, but I decided to do another and that also felt easy. I know the bands definitely helped, but I still felt very strong on the lock out and acceleration, so I think this may actually be feasible for a 3rd attempt.

Lunges:
225 x 16
275 x 12
315 x 8

I wasn't too gassed from the squats, so lunges felt much easier today for a change.

Quad Death:
Leg Extesions for 6 strip sets (did the stack ~20 reps to start) + a shit ton of reps with 135 on the squat. Did two sets of these.

The guys did a great job of pushing me to the limit on these. So much that I felt like puking when I got done...

Ab Wheel:
2 sets. Had to stop on the second because I still felt nauseous from the quad death.

Block 1 #10

P Sn. ab. kn. 75/5 x 5,3,5,3+miss+1
Snatch 75/2 x 2 85/2 x 3 87/2 90/2
Sn. pull + Sn. 85/2+1 x 4
BTN 55/4, 57/2, 55/4, 57/2
Back squat 95/6 115/5 x 3

5 reps = a lot for 70% pwr snatches, which made me really tired. I definitely have improved my technique though because all of the snatches were spot on. Presses are better than ever but still annoyingly slow in improving. I want to press 60kg so I can put a real plate on the bar when I do them. I have good feelings about restarting the class II program even though I'm bitter about not beating Nathan to class I.

CARDIO/FLEXIBILITY

Time : 0:45. Weight : 211.

• Cardio - bike 150-165 bpm x 25 mins

Heart rate a little higher than I'd like.

• Stretching - gastroc, soleus, hamstrings, adductors on machine, seated groin, hip flexors, 

glutes, IT band

Week B #1: In the Drink

This sucked.

Gear:
Belt

Shoulder-Stance Back Squat:
405 x 1

Hardest rep ever, so canned it.

Medium-Grip Bench Press:
315 x 1
315 x 2
315 x 1

BLEH.

Conventional Deadlift:
451 x 1 (Belt)
451 x 1 (No-belt)

This is probably the worst cycle ever. Feel pretty de-conditioned to the work, and don't have any power right now. Hopefully the C week will smooth things out and I can have one last productive cycle before the USAPL meet.

Bench

1/10/09
Didn't know when lifting was, so I played basketball and snuck in a set of bench presses. Fooled around and tried to hit my max, but failed. Did some extra biceps too. Gotta impress the ladies.

Bench
135 x 5
185 x 0 (failed)
185 x 0 (failed)
155 x 5

Concentration Curls
25 x 5
27.5 x 5 x 2

DE Bench

Bench Press:
245 X 5
265 X 3
265 X 3

Bench Press with Phil's Big Chains:
135 X 3 (8 sets) with ~60 seconds rest between sets. Used 3 different grips.

Phil Style Overhead Press:
115 X 5
135 X 5
155 X 5
165 X 3

Incline Skullcrushers:
5 sets

Banded Floor Dumbbell Tricep Extensions:
4 sets

Abs

Block 1, days 8, 9

1-9
P. cl. Ab. kn 90/4 x 2 105/2+1 x 3 (+1 =jerks)
C&J 105/2 117/1 x 3
Jerk 105/1 Upper back too tired for more
Cl. pull + clean + Jerk 90/1+1+1 x 3
seated good morning 60/3 x 3
Front squat 142/1 Super hard....

Must've been tired from the previous workout because this workout was very difficult.

1-10
Jerk 117/1 x 3
BTN Jerk 117/1 x 3
Jerk 102/2 x 4
Front Squat 142/3 x 3
Lunge 105/3 102/3 x 2

Rolled over the stuff I couldn't do in the previous workout to this one. Got every rep and eerything was pretty easy. 117kg jerks didn't feel super great but I got them all. I'm still not catching jerks in exactly the right place though. I'm going to keep focusing on that. I think the problem is in my back position when I start the jerk.

Chains and Shit

Note: my ~200 lbs of chain is now located in a suitcase at 4 Star Gym. Brent, go nuts.

SHEIKO #12

Weight: 212. Time: 1:15.

  End of a very tough week. Recovery capacity still not back to full force, so I was pretty beat up coming into this workout. Looking forward to 2 days off.

• Squat 225x4 (50), 260x3 (60), 305x3x2 (70), 350x3x5 (80)

Lower/middle back infinitely sore. This made things difficult. I decided to belt all the heavy sets.

• Bench 145x5 (50), 170x5 (60), 200x5x4 (70)

Just worn out generally, this was a little difficult too.

• Flies 30x10x5

Right shoulder killing me, I'm going to permanently swap these for dumbell bench.

• Dips BWx8x5

• Good mornings 170x5x5

Back, ow.

Bench

Weighed in at 185.4 today, which is good. That's down ~8 lbs in two weeks (I weigh myself in the morning to try to account for fluctuating water weight.) Hopefully I can put on a bunch of the weight after weigh-in and bloat back up so my gear is tight. Panda Express double orange, here I come!

Band-lightened Bench:
used quadded purples, with full weight for the last 3-4" of the lift. All reps were done with a full 1 second pause. The goal was to emulate the assistance of a bench shirt without going overboard with the band assistance.

275 x 5
295 x 5
315 x 5
335 x 5
365 x 3 + 1 fail
375 x 2 + 1 fail

I felt find coming into the gym, but after my first warm-up set at 135, my shoulders/pecs started feeling horrrible. I wonder if deadlifting tore them up again? They weren't sore at all until I started pressing.

Floor Press:
225 x 8
245 x 6
265 x 3 + 1 fail
225 x 9

These felt better than they ever have. I think my lockout is much smoother now, which is helping.

(superset)
Cable Rows:
Used medium-wide parallel grip bar
250 (stack) x 10, 4 sets

Skull Crushers:
120 x 10
140 x 10
170 x 5
120 x 19 + 1 fail

Terrence challenged me to do 20 reps with the plate on each side. I almost made it but was exhausted on the 20th rep. Maybe next time :'(

Finished with banded decline abs.

Deadlift

Deadlift
240x1x5
290x1x4
340x1x3
360x2x3 (belted)
370x3x2 (belted)

deficit deadlifts (stood on 100lb. tires)
290x4x3 (belted)

goodmornings
135x3x5

My lower back was sore from benching the day before...a good sign that I'm actually using leg-drive while benching to help keep my arch.

Squats/Abs/Running

1/9/09
Decided to take an easy day and work on my calves, biceps and abs... gotta work them beach muscles. Fit in some quads and cardio as well.

Squats
135 x 5
185 x 5
195 x 3
195 x 3

Pause Squats
185 x 3 x 2

Standing Calve Raises
280 to exhaustion
240 to exhaustion
200 to exhaustion
160 to exhaustion
120 to exhaustion

Concentration Curls
25 x 5
27.5 x 5 x 2

Medicine Ball Decline Abs
Rowing Curls
Obliques

1 Mile Run
6:15

Lower back

1/8/09
Deadlifts
265lbs x 3
275lbs x 3
285lbs x 3 belted
300lbs x 2 (PR)

Deadlifts Off Blocks
285lbs x 3
285lbs x 2
285lbs x 2

High Pulls
1??lbs x 5 x 4 (can't remember how much the black kg. weights weigh)

Seated Good-Mornings (using pins)
Good God I'm sore a day after doing these...
95 x 10
135 x 10 x 2

Kneeling Cable Crunches
Rowing Crunches
Obliques