Life Through Lifting

January Training Observations

Mark Brown

January 28, 2022

This month has seen me change my training to high set, low rep range lifting structure that is more seen in powerlifting than bodybuilding. I started that the second week of January and have noticed a few different ways that has effected my training. To familiarize those who don’t follow my logs, I lift legs/back on Monday, arm isolation/lats Tuesday, chest/shoulder Wednesday, rest on Thursday, legs/back on Friday, chest/shoulder Saturday, and rest on Sunday. It’s how I have trained since the middle of December. The weather has tried to make me skip a day since then to no avail. For the last couple weeks of December and the first week or January, I had been throwing in some accessory work on those big lifting days like I have for the vast majority of my lifting life.
I’ve been listening to Dave Tate’s Table Talk podcast a lot recently and I decided to follow a bit more to the powerlifting session structure he and Sam have talked about. By offloading all of the isolation work in the arms and lats into one of the “off” days, it has allowed me to really focus on the heavy lifting I like doing with the movements. I have noticed it has taken my workout times on my chest/shoulder days to around an hour and half. Part of the decreased time on some of the days is the offloaded accessory work to a “rest” day and being able to organize my lifts to make the session as efficient as possible. Squatting first in the open racks then being able to get my deadlift and moving from there to keep from competing for benches, dumbbells and such on dominantly upper body day for others, for example. Admittedly, I have gotten lucky because I haven’t had to wait on the leg press a lot over the last couple weeks. Cutting down the number of exercises I do has also helped tremendously. I have felt muscular development and strength increase over the last couple weeks so I will be sticking with this for a bit.

The lifts I have brought into the winter program have also started to bear fruit. The sumo deadlift, floor press and standing overhead press have come a long way in the last 3 weeks in line with the way Tate talks about skill acquisition. The first week both lifts were a struggle in both knowing what weights to start with and execution of the lifts themselves. The second week I was able to settle in and get a good target range. I have put up more weight with each successive week on the floor press. The feeling is quite different from then pin press I do on Wednesdays as a supplemental to help train the bench press. There’s just so little tricep help with the lift that it really makes the chest work, especially doing it last. The sumo deadlift is so new to me I don’t know how to forecast growth. I knew it would be a good option as a replacement for the Romanian deadlifts I normally do in the garage. By swapping my foot and hand placement, I bring myself closer to the bar. The only difference I feel is I feel more in the glutes in the sumo deadlift than the Romanian but the hit on the hamstring is still hard. The pull itself is a bit more challenging, too, as the logs indicate top weight lifted. I’m no stranger to a standing overhead press, but doing it with a barbell isn’t my favorite. The weight isn’t tremendously different from what I do with the log, but the feeling it different and I feel the stress in my body differently. Still the numbers show the improvement in strength and it is what I have to work with. I can see progress going quickly with it. It really is a beast of a lift. With all three exercises, the shift to high set, low rep has really helped progress by allowing me to work heavier for longer.

Hints and Cues

Finding the Stop Sign

Mark Brown

January 25, 2022

Stop signs exist to make us pay attention to the road we are driving on so bad things don’t happen at intersections. A lifting session isn’t that different from the act of driving a car through an intersection. Physical and mental cues are constantly being sent by the brain and and body to the person lifting telling them what the next thing to do is or how to do it. For some things it’s as specific as the sound a deadlift bar makes when the tension has been pulled from it telling the lifter to pull it upward. The cues the body sends to the lifter can be confusing to interpret because they mean various things at various times. One of the easiest things to do for a lifter is to lose sight of the long term goal and push a little too hard during a session. Reading the cues one’s body is sending them correctly will allow for more strength and muscular development in the long run because they have missed less sessions due to overexertion from the previous day. Progress in strength training can only be achieved by continuously pushing “what can’t be done” into “what can be done” territory but that doesn’t happen if one is missing sessions. Reading the physical and mental cues helps find the stop sign on a day-to-day basis.

This isn’t designed to be the big “Recovery” entry that will inevitably come in the future. It is, however, central to what I do want to talk about though. When I started lifting in the garage with Pete I became more aggressive in my approach to lifting. It happened because I had a training partner for the first time and I had a dependable spotter who also knew his stuff. My philosophy of starting in the 70-75% 1RM range after the warm up set(s) then making smaller jumps through the working sets all the way to the heaviest wasn’t something he was used to. It has bore out good results over the last couple years. I have learned much more concretely that training the central nervous system how to react to heavier loads is more important than anything else. What that means for the training day is that if one wants to increase their 1RM, then they need to be lifting heavier loads more consistently. That is how I increased my 1RM in bench press down to my chest to 295 pounds last year from 275 at the end of 2020 and 305 pounds with the shoulder saver, which is equivalent to a 2 board press. I increased my deadlift 1RM using the same strategy over the same time period.

How I lifted in 2020 is not how I lift now. In 2020, I liked to start with a banger and end with a banger. I think the concept still works but what I have learned since then is that the approach of doing a major lift like a heavy deadlift last or heavy variant of the bench press is more meet or sport specific training. This style of session works deeper into fatigue than the powerlifting sessions I have been learning about and currently employ that are structured to put all of the heaviest strain at the beginning of them. The lifting I did that year has benefited me in the year since because I understand better how to train through fatigue much more fully. It’s also seen benefits my day-to-day life because I’m less fatigued by what I have to do at work. I did sets based on feel, rather than have a rigid structure of pre-determined volume and workloads. Pete and I had that in common, and said that his son got annoyed by it when they lifted together. We both had a good laugh at that and the half joke that I don’t know where the stop sign was. What lifting an inherently less structured program does is that it makes reading physical cues and reacting to how the body feels correctly much more important. Misreading them leads to injury and soreness that requires more than the normally allotted time to recover before the next session. Missed sessions don’t magically come back. This problem is felt much more acutely by those who compete than those just wanting to be stronger or more fit.

I’ve written before about the times I came close to rather serious injuries but I think they bear repeating here because of the cues I missed that led to them. The time I almost injured by back trying to straight leg deadlifts in December 2016 was caused by me completely missing the fact that my legs were nowhere near straight enough while doing the lift. That made it much closer to a traditional deadlift and I was not in the proper position do it. I was down for a few weeks before I figured out what I needed to do. The deadlift in the garage in 2020 a few months after I restarted doing them was caused by just plain not being strong enough I think. I was at a stage where I was comfortable deadlifting 275 pounds without a belt but definitely needed one at 315. I remember on that day that 275 went well so I thought I would test 295 without a belt. I was pretty confident in my ability to lift without needing any external help and the lifts got up but they were quite strained. When it came time to do 315, I tweaked my lower back on the 4th rep even with my belt properly placed. I think I asked my back and legs to do far too much too soon. I finished the session but I didn’t deadlift for a few weeks. Later in 2020 I did the a very similar thing, just with a trap bar while standing on plates. It was a tweaked back due to my pushing the limits of what I could so. What I missed in the case of the last 2 tweaks was the reaction my body was having to the sets prior to the near injury.

I have been much better at interpreting and reacting to how my body responds to the loads on the bar since the trap bar near injury. I push harder on big deadlifts less often these days but I do fair amount of volume to gain muscle in my back and legs. Understanding when to stop is not a reason not to give maximum effort when lifting. The first couple of weeks after taking some time off are always challenging mentally because they can be hard to read as they are being done. Lifts at what a person knows are sub max weights can feel like they are being done at max intensity. In some of those cases I have felt my quad muscles tightening up like they are about to cramp up. One could easily misread this and stop, but I have found that this tightening is the legs recruiting more muscle to perform the lift. It needs to be pushed through with more effort unless cramping is actually happening or there is actual pain being felt. I know I will be cramping up later and will need extra recovery than normal but that is the first stage to normalizing the loads the quads will be asked to lift as the weeks go by. Chest training can feel similar to this, especially with heavier loads, but hardly ever gets as sore or takes as many sets to get there. Conditioning the body to take increasing levels of strain is what this is all about. The strain is a signal to the lifter that more muscle is being recruited to perform the task. That feeling is what a lifter is after, especially if muscular development is the primary goal.

The strain can be a difficult thing to judge because working through it is how progress gets made. That progress is usually shown through either volume and/or intensity increases over time. The body is good at telling a person when muscle is straining but poor at telling them when it’s going too far. That’s what makes training the central nervous system so important. Reading those signals with increased accuracy comes from repeatedly testing it through the concept of progressive overload, the process of increasing loads over time. It’s important to note here that not all heavy loads are created equal. Heavy barbells and dumbbells feel very different than something with shape like an atlas stone, natural stone, loaded totes or any large shaped thing one can think of of equal weight. This is where sport specific training comes into play, especially for strongman. For lifters like me who predominantly uses barbells and dumbbells, weight that has 3 dimensional shape, for of a better term, feels heavier because of the weight distribution. I’ve felt that at work with totes that were loaded with at least 40-50 pounds some of bigger pieces like ceiling tiles and dry wall. A lot of those big items are getting lifted in front of me and I don’t really like them because of the strain they put on my bicep. It’s really not a fun feeling.

One important thing to consider is the effect of medication on the human body, specifically pain blockers like Advil, Aleve, Tylenol, etc. Pain is the body’s signal to a person to stop what one is doing. It does so by a person’s central nervous system shutting down the effected area’s ability to work at peak intensity. If a person doesn’t stop, then severe damage could be done to the areas effected. Humans have figured how to block the pain from reaching the CNS through the use of oral drugs so that we can continue to perform at peak intensity for longer periods of time. While blocking pain sounds great on paper, the danger comes in the form of working into strain levels that would normally be giving an athlete or lifter warning signals to stop. These drugs can throw off a person’s ability to estimate when they need to stop. I’m not saying severe injury will happen if they are used, but they will get in the way of one’s decision marking, especially if they are inexperienced in using them while being active. While in high school I watched pitchers take 6-8 pain blockers a few hours before games they were starting because they knew by the 4th and 5th innings their arms would be hurting. That is why I consider them PEDs.

Deciphering the body’s hints and cues to figure out when to push through strain or stop is the key to avoiding missed sessions and needless injuries. One of the easiest things to do for a lifter is to keep going, especially if they don’t feel sore in the moment. That is one of the traps I have fallen into many times over the last couple years. I laugh when I say “I don’t know where the stop sign is” because it’s largely true. Strength training is a long game that is played over years and decades. You don’t get better by missing sessions. Mental cues are just as important as the physical ones because they keep a lifter’s mind from wandering when can least afford it. Mental clarity is everything.

2022 Week 3 Training Log

January 17, 2022 – January 23, 2022

Mark Brown

January 23, 2022

Monday
Low Bar Straight Bar Squats – 135 x 8, 225 x 6; 315 x 3, x 3; 335 x 3, x 3; 365 x 3, x 3, 385 x 3, x 3
Deadlift, Power Bar – 315 x 3, x 3; 365 x 2, x 2; 385 x 2, x 2; 405 x 1
Calf Raises – 100kg x 15, 120 x 15, 140 x 12, 160 x 12,
Barbell rows – 135 x 6, x 6, x 6
Barbell Good Mornings – 135 x 6, 155 x 6, 175 x 6
Adductor – 295 x x 10, x 10, x 10, x 10

Tuesday
Overhead Tricep Press – 45 x 12, 55 x 12, 65 x 10, 75 x 8
EZ Bar Curl, superset with above – 45 x 10, 55 x 10, 65 x 8, 75 x 8
Lat Pulldown 85 x 12, 100 x 10, 120 x 10, 140 x 8, 160 x 8
Tricep Pushdown, Pronated Grip – 50 x 12, 57.5 x 10, 65 x 10, 72.5 x 10, 80 x 8, 87.5 x 8
Cable Curls – 42.5 x 12, 50 x 12, 57.5 x 10, 65 x 8
Preacher Dumbbell Curls, One at a time – 35 x 7, 40 x 6, 45 x 6, 50 x 6

Wednesday
Flat Dumbbell Press – 105 x 9, 110 x 7, 115 x 6, 120 x 3, 125 x 3 , 95 x 8
Narrow Grip Incline Press – 165 x 8, 185 x 3, x 3; 195 x 3, x 3; 205 x 2
Seated Overhead Dumbbell Press – 50 x 12, 55 x 10, 60 x 10, 65 x 8, 70 x 5
Floor Press – 135 x 8, 185 x 10, 205 x 3, x 3; 225 x 3, x 3
Bar Pushup, superset with Floor Press – 4 sets of 10
Side Lateral Raises – 95 x 10, x 10; 110 x 8, 125 x 8

Thursday
Scheduled Day Off – Recovery

Friday
High Bar Straight Bar Squats – 135 x 8, 225 x 6; 315 x 3 , x3; 345 x 3, x3; 365 x 3, x 3
Sumo Deadlift – 275 x 3, x 3; 315 x 3, x 3; 335 x 3, x3; 355 x 2, x 2
Leg Press – 478 x 15, 658 x 12, 838 x 12, 1018 x 8
Prone Leg Curl – 35 x 10, 60 x 8, 70 x 8, 85 x 8
Calf Raises – 100kg x 30, 120 kg x 30, 140kg x 20, 160kg x 12,
Seated Cable Rows – 35 x 12, 42.5 x 12, 50 x 10, 60 x 10
Abduction – 295 x 20, x 20, x 20, x 20, x 20

Saturday
Incline Dumbbell Press – 100 x 8, 105 x 8, 110 x 6, 115 x 5, 120 x 3
Bench Press – 185 x 6, 225 x 3, x 3, x 3; 235 x 3, x 3; 225 x 2
Pinned Bench Press, 2 Board – 185 x 8, 205 x 8, 225 x 6, 235 x 3, x 3; 245 x 2, x 2
Standing Overhead Press – 95 x 6, 115 x 6, 125 x 6, 135 x 3, x 3; 145 x 3, x 3
Arnold Press – 45 x 10, 50 x 10, 55 x 8, 60 x 8, 65 x 5
Cable Crossover – 35 x 20, 50 x 15, 57.5 x 12, 65 x 12,
Rear Deltoid Flies – 85 x 12, 100 x 12, 115 x 10, 130 x 8
Side Lateral Raises – 95 x 10, 110 x 10, 125 x 8

Sunday
Scheduled Day Off – Recovery

Miles/Steps
Monday – 26,690 steps, 13.4 miles. Tuesday – 25,817 steps, 12.9 miles. Wednesday – 23,513 steps, 11.7 miles. Thursday – 23,355 steps, 11.6 miles. Friday – 25,280 steps, 12.7 miles. Saturday – 7,560 steps, 3.59 miles. Sunday – No data Total – 132,215 steps, 65.89 miles.

Notes

No weather events made this week of training stay on stay on schedule. I changed up the nature of the training with a volume based focus to one that is workload based. The difference as explained by Dave Tate is the former is reps x sets and workload is reps x sets x weight. That change is reflected in an increased amount of the triple and double sets at about the 70-75% 1RM or above. The idea is to increase my absolute strength through increased reps at higher loads. There is still a fair amount of volume sets in there for muscular development but the increased workload is in the plans. I feel like I can increased strength significantly by targeting higher loads for lower reps. It also helped focus my effort of primary movements like squats and deadlifts.

I’ve been able to get what I wanted done in the order I have wanted it for the most part while at the gym the last couple weeks, even at busier times. While luck has played a role in getting specific machines when I needed them, I believe that the session structure of main lift – supplemental – accessory has helped me need less equipment has allowed me to stay in order. The sessions are by no means short, but the flow of the sessions has been pretty smooth. My current lifting schedule feels like it is producing the desired results so the train keeps rolling.

You Don’t Have To Love Your Job

Renting Space in Another’s Dream is Okay

Mark Brown

January 19, 2022

I have thought many times over the last 5-10 years about ambitions, dreams, employment and realities. The first 2 are important to give the inertia any good push has and the last 2 give direction to them. What I have found in answering questions related to those 4 ideas is that every decision made has a consequence. I have written a few times how my job allows me train like I do but not really gotten into it beyond that. This is the time and place to do it. When I came to the realization that I was essentially renting space in someone else’s dream my attitude towards it changed. The ability to leave work at work really is a blessing because it allows me to focus on things that are actually worthwhile. If one loves their job then good, but I have found that it isn’t necessary. What is necessary is finding something one does love and uses their job as a springboard to do it.

One of the central tenets to my recent total buy in to strength training is that the lifting matters the most. What that means is that everything else becomes slave to the goal of getting stronger. That requires an approach to how I make an income that allows me to do so. I was fortunate to get a job at the company I currently work for through a family connection almost 11 years ago now and never really regretted not really looking for another. I have tried some things outside of my job that in areas that I am good at but found the monetary results weren’t time and life investment. The main one was when I started selling food, mostly jarred sauces of different kinds, at vendor shows about 8-9 years ago. I gained a lot of cooking skills in a short amount of time and sold a fair amount but it was hard to do when it wasn’t my main hustle. I had a lot of marathon canning sessions, the longest being 11 hours for 29 pint jars of pineapple salsa, for a couple years that made me really question if I wanted to keep doing it. During fall and winter it was fine, but as spring and summer came the canning and the shows themselves really got in the way of golfing, which I really wanted to do more. What I learned from that experience is that it wasn’t worth the life investment of tying something I love doing, cooking, to my car payment or student loan. As much as I love to cook I have never attempted to make it more than a hobby I am serious about since. I don’t even really cook the much anymore. Work and lifting make it hard to really cook seriously on the weekdays.

My view of money and investment changed as a result of going through the vendor show scene and giving it an hard, honest attempt. There’s always been a lingering thought to perhaps doing an east coast deli or just a place that makes and sells my own deli meat because it’s one of the things I am best at but that feeling has passed. I went as far as to believe that the money is the poison pill when one ties what they love to how they pay bills. Money, no matter how I look at it, is the boss. I was already past believing the “if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life” line and well into the “if you do what you love, you work everyday of your life” reality by this time. I felt that my joy of cooking and making food for whatever event was best left untainted by a car payment. Tying how one pays bills to a hobby changes the parameters of the hobby by introducing a monetary component that wasn’t there before. It is for that reason that I don’t feel any internal push to potentially monetize all of this strength training information I have been accumulating into some kind of career. This is about as far as I am wanting to go with that information I have learned. I want to maintain the kind of freedom this allows me to have with topics to write about, discuss and help people along the way. Monetizing that in a main hustle kind of way would interfere with that by restricting the bulk of my content to that which monetizes well. Derek from More Plates More Dates and Greg Doucette have each talked about in Youtube videos about the struggle of content that is essentially reference material at its core. That material just doesn’t drive the views in the same way if they can’t tie it to something in the news that isn’t trending even though the subjects of PEDs, body transformations, etc are perfectly interesting topics on their own.

Up till 2020, I was more or less okay with my job physically and mentally. There were points of high frustration, especially around 2018 or so, but I never actually thought about moving on. A huge chunk of that is the reality that I would be taking a pay cut anywhere else I was going to work and that had to be accounted for. I bought my house in 2016. That mortgage payment isn’t going anywhere and I like where I live. It started off badly when the gyms shut down in Iowa in March 2020 for 6 weeks leading me to become a complete asshole. Those frustrations grew more untenable as the year progressed, even after I started lifting again. The warmer months have always been the source of many long days at work, but summer and fall of 2020 were plain destructive on people’s personal lives. Work days that were 12-14 hours long with 6-8 more on Saturday caused a lot of people to quit. It was especially catastrophic to the company from a worker perspective because a lot of those people who quit were in the 6-10 year tenure range. The company lost a lot of people who knew how to do a lot of things in the warehouse. Those who stayed had less faith in those running the warehouse I work in and it’s never come back, no matter what those with decision making authority do. The work environment was about as toxic as possible but here I am still employed by the same company. I did want to quit many, many times but the reality that it would have been harder to quit and find a different job than gutting through my current one. All the overtime did allow me to purchase all of the equipment I own in my buddy’s garage gym so some good did come out of it. The hours did also push my lifting sessions to absurd times, regularly finishing at around 11 pm, and killed my sleep and eating in the evening. I was an angry, terrible human being in 2020 but there is a significant part of me that is driven by the anger. The rage that is the fire that fuels 2-3 hour lifting sessions after 12-13 hour work days. It’s expensive energy, so to speak, but the work has to get done. You don’t get anywhere in strength training by skipping lifting sessions. Period.

Last year started the same as 2020 but a small change in the scheduling helped bring me to my current mental state. What made 2020 hard was the amount of injuries at work and the task that was being asked of the people I work with directly and I being ridiculously hard. It was a 4 person job being done with 3 people. I did essentially what I do now so I was getting the same a solid amount of conditioning and cardio in. That changed when a 4th person was added to the tote line crew temporarily to do half of the stuff I was doing, laying and stacking pallets, so I could focus on thing I couldn’t do when I was doing that, which is pulling totes off the conveyer line as they came down it. That small change removed a responsibility and made the job less physically demanding and mentally easier to handle. My Apple Watch was telling me that through the number of steps and calories burned. When the addition of the 4th person was made permanent in the middle of 2021, he decided he didn’t want to mess with the pallets so I got that back. I got those steps and calories burned back. That was when my mindset towards work became more positive. Hours were sane and manageable and I was getting part of my exercise in. There are still things that drive me crazy and ultimately those along with a real lack of mental stimulation that really dulls any love or like I have for my job.

The reason for my positive mindset on my job is that it has truly taken a secondary role in my life mentally. My job had been forcing itself into the primary position in part because I let it. That caused stress in my life that I resolved at the gym regardless of the physical price I had to pay to do it. My job is now just part of the day I have to get through to do the thing I really want to do. I don’t even like it that much but the tangential benefits gives me enough to hold onto to make me feel that’s it not a waste of my time. The one that matters the most is that I get paid to do my conditioning and cardio. It also stays in the building when I leave. Now more than ever because I don’t come home with the emotions I feel when I am there. Part of that is that any residual negativity gets eaten by the bar at the gym or in the garage. Another part of it is that I actively enjoy being pissed off. There’s just an energy that comes with that feeling. It bears repeating that it expensive because the best analogy I can think of for it is a bad energy drink. There is an inevitable crash at the end.

People reading this might well disagree with my concept here in this essay. I can respect that. I think this subject is relevant because of the unstable job market over the last 2 years. I have seen more than my fair share of people who lost jobs and got on where I work because they needed a job over that time frame. I’m not saying that “loving your job” is outdated. It’s admirable and commendable, but it is far from necessary. Renting space in someone else’s dream is perfectly okay so long as something truly worthwhile can be found.

2022 Week 2

January 10, 2022 – January 16, 2022

Mark Brown

January 16, 2022

Monday
Low Bar Straight Bar Squats – 135 x 8, 225 x 6, 275 x 6, 315 x 6, 345 x 4, 365 x 3
Deadlift, Power Bar – 315 x 5, 345 x 4, 365 x 4, 385 x 3, 405 x 1
Calf Raises – 100kg x 15, 120 x 15, 140 x 12, 160 x 12, 180 x 12
Prone Leg Curls – 65 x 12, 80 x 10, 95 x 10, 110 x 8
Leg Extensions – 115 x 12, 145 x 10, 175 x 8, 205 x 8
Abductor – 295 x 20, 295 x 20, 295 x 20, 295 x 20

Tuesday
Overhead Tricep Press – 45 x 12, 55 x 12, 65 x 10, 85 x 8
EZ Bar Curl, superset with above – 45 x 10, 55 x 10, 65 x 8, 85 x 6
Lat Pulldown 85 x 12, 100 x 10, 120 x 10, 140 x 8, 160 x 8
Seated Alternate Dumbbell Curls – 35 x 8, 40 x 8, 45 x 8
Tricep Pushdown, Pronated Grip – 50 x 12, 57.5 x 10, 65 x 10, 72.5 x 10, 80 x 8
Cable Curls – 42.5 x 12, 50 x 12, 57.5 x 10, 65 x 8
Preacher Curls – 55 x 8, 70 x 8, 80 x 6, 90 x 6

Wednesday
Flat Dumbbell Press – 105 x 8, 110 x 8, 115 x 6, 120 x 4, 125 x 3 (fail half way #4)
Narrow Grip Incline Press – 155 x 8, 185 x 6, 195 x 4
Seated Overhead Dumbbell Press – 50 x 12, 55 x 10, 60 x 8, 65 x 6, 70 x 4
Floor Press – 135 x 8, 185 x 5, 205 x 3, 195 x 3
Bar Pushup, superset with Floor Press – 4 sets of 10
Rolling Tricep Press – 25 x 8, 35 x 6
Side Lateral Raises – 95 x 10, 110 x 8, 125 x 8
Rear Deltoid Flies – 120 x 10

Thursday
Low Bar Straight Bar Squats – 135 x 8, 225 x 8, 275 x 6, 315 x 6, 345 x 5, 365 x 3
Sumo Deadlift – 225 x 6, 275 x 5, 315 x 5, 335 x 4
Leg Press – 478 x 15, 658 x 12, 838 x 12, 928 x 10
Single Leg Leg Curl – 35 x 10, 60 x 8, 70 x 8, 85 x 8
Calf Raises – 100kg x 30, 120 kg x 20, 140kg x 15, 160kg x 12, 180 kg x 10
Seated Cable Rows – 27.5 x 12, 35 x 10, 42.5 x 10, 50 x 10, 60 x 8
Abduction – 295 x 100(ish), stopped counting after awhile
Adduction – 295 x 10 for set sets
Seated Machine Rows – 100 x 8, 130 x 8, 160 x 6

Friday
Scheduled Day Off – Recovery/Winter Storm

Saturday
Incline Dumbbell Press – 100 x 8, 105 x 8, 110 x 6, 115 x 5, 120 x3, 90 x 10
Tricep Pushdown, Pyramid – 42.5 x 8, 50 x 8, 57.5 x 8, 65 x 8
Bench Press – 185 x 8, 225 x 5, 235 x 4, 245 x 3
Pinned Bench Press, 2 Board – 185 x 6, 205 x 6, 225 x 4
Standing Overhead Press – 95 x 6, 115 x 6, 125 x 6, 135 x 3
Arnold Press – 45 x 10, 50 x 8, 55 x 8, 60 x 8, 65 x 4
Cable Crossover – 35 x 20, 42.5 x 20, 50 x 15, 57.5 x 12
Skullcrushers – 45 x 15, 55 x 12, 65 x 10
Narrow Grip Flat Press, Superset with Skullcrushers – 45 x 10, 55 x 10, 65 x 10
Rear Deltoid Flies – 85 x 10, 100 x 10, 115 x 10

Sunday
Scheduled Day Off – Recovery

Steps/Miles
Monday – 25,612 steps, 12.9 miles. Tuesday – 24,824 steps, 12.3 miles. Wednesday – 27,863 steps, 14.0 miles. Thursday – 22,485 steps, 11.2 miles. Friday – 22,845 steps, 11.4 miles. Saturday – 8,918 steps, 4.4 miles. Sunday – 1,639 steps, .8 miles. Total – 134,186 steps, 67 miles.

Notes

Training went well this week. The winter storm on Friday impacted me by making me bring up the 2nd lower back/leg session up a day to avoid missing the it. I would normally have rested Thursday but I know if I waited till Friday it would have either thrown everything off or just been missed. I feel a little bit more in my knees on Thursday due to a combination of one less recovery day than normal and the fact I forgot knee sleeves on Monday and decided to train fully raw on that day, which I haven’t done for awhile. As we can see from above, I didn’t hold back because I was fully raw. The squats and deadlift felt pretty good. The pull at 405 is the most I’ve done in a 4-5 months and was done with straps. I feel like I’m in a good place with lower body training and progress is being made, especially in the working sets.

Upper body training is rounding into shape. I feel like I have a pretty solid plan for it. The dumbbells are the main lift because I’m looking for more muscular development at the moment. They are also being done heavy enough to get some strength gain out of it. The sets between 100-115 pound dumbbells are especially strong right now. Those reps are quite smooth. The sets involving 120 and 125 are more power oriented so I don’t expect more than 3-4 reps of those. Wednesday’s upper body session I took a little slower but still fairly efficiently. Saturday’s session was done at what felt like break neck speed. I intentionally cut down the rest time to bring a different test to the lifts, especially in the middle with the bench press and pinned press. Taking out the isolation triceps accessories to put them on another day helps the session become smoother.

Conditioning and Cardio: Part 2

Mark Brown

January 15, 2022

Now that I have laid out what conditioning and cardio are and aren’t, it’s time to talk about getting them into a lifting program. A lot of how these two are attacked will depend on what the other 22-23 hours of the day look like for someone. If one has a job that is essentially steady state cardio and/or conditioning based given changes in circumstances like I do, then they are primed to get right to work on their lifting sessions. I average between 20,000 and 25,000 steps at work every day I’m there and add 4,000-5,000 more after work during lifting sessions. They are not the meandering type of steps, either. Whatever conditioning I do at the gym or garage, not including regular lifting, is icing on the cake and dependent on if I feel I can recover in time for the next day’s lifting session. The more active one is at work or during the day makes it easier to concentrate on strength and muscular development when the time comes to get it done. For people in this boat, conditioning and cardio is already covered so 5 day or even 6 day a week programs are possible if one’s recovery is good enough. I usually roll with a 5 day program with 2 rest days. One of them is a rest day I am at work so it counts as an “active” rest day and the other is “passive” rest day on the weekend where I do house stuff and just relax.

Programming these two things becomes harder when dealing with a person whose job or lifestyle is more sedentary than active. They will eat into the lifting session’s time because they have to get done. That means 5 or 6 day programs will become untenable very quickly unless time isn’t an issue. A 4 day lifting plan would allow all of the muscle groups to be hit twice a week and get the requisite cardio/conditioning in. The lifting program itself would be heavily impacted, especially if the goal is strength development because it is generally heavier load-wise. I can say from experience that moving from a 5 day program down to 4 required me to completely rejigger my entire lifting plan in November. A possible solution is getting conditioning in through lifting weights but the challenge of working cardio into the program would still be looming. That isn’t necessarily a difficult solution if one has enough time to implement a plan that gets it done that way. I heard Stan Efferding’s statement of 10 minutes of walking after every meal for the first time on Dave Tate’s Table Talk Podcast #90 and it made a lot of sense. Time is normally not on anyone’s side so cardio in this case is going probably going to be done at least at a moderate pace like a constant jog, the interval training or doing HIIT. Training is full of tradeoffs. The one here is that both conditioning and cardio will be done at a higher intensity. That higher intensity one works out with causes greater strain on the body, especially joints. This is one major reason why swimming is a great form of cardio. The weightlessness of water makes it very easy on joints while doing the work.

CrossFit programs specialize in dealing with time crunched individuals, or people who just like a more active session, through mashing conditioning and cardio into an extremely intense workout. It’s one of CrossFit’s main selling points. The other selling point is the use of Weightlifting being the main conditioning tool. I personally have never done it and have never expressed any interest in doing it. My oldest brother, Mike, did it a couple years ago and give it a good couple year run, if I recall. He did it because he wanted to vary up training. As lifters go, I get more into back and legs than he does but upper body our approaches are similar. He told me what he did when did CrossFit so I have at least a window size look into it. It seems crazy to me to ask someone to sprint or run any kind of long distance immediately after hitting a deadlift or squat of at 70% 1RM but if the goal is to get in and get out, then that part of it at least makes sense to me. Recovery is always the thing that boggles my mind. I would not recommend doing this right out of the office chair, so to speak. It is quite one extreme way of getting conditioning and cardio in. The concept behind CrossFit could very well be applied to a hypertrophy based lifting program instead of the high intensity of Weightlifting. While it wouldn’t be the same from a results frame, cardio and conditioning could be delivered that way. Executing that type of plan would work better and be easier for home gym owners as opposed though who go to commercial gyms. Supersetting two lifts that are within 5 feet of each other is hard enough when the place gets busy.

Learning how to breath is a skill that every lifter needs to learn to get stronger and lift heavier loads over time. This is skill is more important for powerlifters or weightlifters more than people going to the gym to put a moderate workout in. I can attest that learning how to breath helps keep the body rigid during heavy lifts. It’s not as easy as it sounds to learn. Conditioning in a program is designed to help develop wind capacity. That makes conditioning an extremely important part of strength training programs. A lifter who has more wind capacity is one who will be able to put in more reps more often. That will lead to better results over time and perhaps quicker, too because one is able to work further after fatigue starts to set in. One of my primary strategies for individual sessions is to work as deep into fatigue as possible. Cardio will help develop better wind by forcing the lungs to do more, even if it is just a simple walk, in addition to its primary function of burning fat. Just don’t do it before lifting. A gentle walk is probably fine to get blood flow into the legs but there is no reason to pre-fatigue a lifting session. I made the mistake of doing my normal big leg day after walking 18 holes of golf only once. Years ago. That lesson was learned quickly and fully.

The big thing to remember is that the less time one is going to devote to conditioning and cardio, the more intense it has to be done in order to get enough of it in. Working any kind of training program means managing tradeoffs is necessity. I prefer the steady state approach to cardio because it allows me to focus more of my energy on where I want to spend it. I am fortunate that I have a job that is conducive to allowing me to do it the way I do. I know plenty of people at work who view work as the gym, and have no desire to lift or run or whatnot after they are done working. I like to think my lack of injuries at a place where they have been common over my nearly 11 years there is related to my lifting after I’ve punched the time clock. My recommendation here might look like a cop out but screw it because I think it’s the right answer. One has to evaluate the time and sport specific goals they have to accomplish the mission of getting conditioning and cardio into their strength program then make a decision on how to get it done. What should that person choose: Whatever mentally stimulates them the most. Why? The body follows the brain. When mental stimulation starts to fade, the motivation to find something else to fill the gap increases. If one is able to work through the fading motivation, then the only thing keeping the activity going is one’s discipline. Finding what most stimulates mentally will help motivation and disciple work in tandem to keep one on their chosen track. This is essentially finding what you want and need at the same time. This might take some time figuring out you like pushing weighted sleds, medicine balls over the shoulder, constant jogging, or any of the dozens of ways to get this done the most. Once it’s been found it, attack it but don’t forget to find the stop sign along the way.

Conditioning and Cardio

Photo by Samuel Theo Manat Silitonga on Pexels.com

Mark Brown

January 12, 2022

Conditioning and cardio are two things no human can really avoid doing. They are both important for athletes of all ages and skill level as well as for humans just surviving. They must be accounted for whatever training anyone decides to do long term. The biggest questions to me are figuring out which one is doing and why are they doing it. These are the central questions to answer because they will answer the question of how one goes about doing them. For me, the simple answer to the question of what is conditioning and cardio comes down to physiology: Conditioning is for muscles and/or lungs and cardio is for the heart and fat burning. Cardio could be described as conditioning for the heart and I doubt I would argue the person who presented that. The effect on the body, especially the organs in particular, drives the distinction between the two terms. In this first part, I will reach into what conditioning and cardio are then highlight some differences so they can be viewed properly. The second part will be to highlight the importance to programs and how it effects them.

My favored form of cardio is swimming. I like the way it doesn’t do more damage to my joints than I am already doing during lifting sessions. It forces the lungs do work in an environment that is not favorable to them. It’s also very possible I enjoy it a lot because I don’t do it that often. Most public pools in my area aren’t really destinations for swimming. In lieu of swimming, I will almost always choose walking on a treadmill. Yes, walking anywhere is good but treadmills offer speed and incline adjustments that help give the cardio a boost. In the past I would have put elliptical machines above walking on treadmills because it is far more of a full body workout but these days I am less interested in that after I’ve destroyed myself for 2+ hours lifting and working 8-10 hours. This is especially true after leg days because of the strain I have put on my knees via squats, deadlifts, leg presses, etc. I did my share of running/jogging 4-5 years ago and I did see a significant drop in weight but the focus on lifting in correlation with my diet going back to what it was saw it come back. Steady state cardio is perhaps the safest and best of the options because is doesn’t exert as much force on the knees. This kind of cardio is best described as the kind of cardio done throughout the day being active and being on one’s feet. While the heart very rarely gets into the “fat burning zone,” it never really gets to “rest” when one is being active so the heart rate stays just below the zone for an extended amount of time.

I prefer to do weighted conditioning because it forces my body to physically do more and that makes me more mentally stimulated. I lift heavy for a reason beyond getting stronger and more muscular. Conditioning is an act that everyone on a strength training program, regardless of the aims, does. This is because muscle is conditioned to accomplish more through lifting progressively heavier loads over time. The term lifters use for this as a concept is “progressive overload.” It is the core of most strength training programs, regardless of aim. This kind of conditioning puts a high level of stress on the body, especially joints, so rest becomes necessary to keep from breaking down quickly. Rest between sets is especially important for max effort and max intensity sets and lifts.

Heart rates during high intensity or high volume lifting sets regularly hit the fat burning zone for the duration of the lift and a few minutes after the set is complete. One can keep themselves in that zone if they severely limit rest times between sets. This “cardio lifting” tends to be heavier on volume and lighter on intensity. It is a very real strategy to use for bodybuilding. I have watched strongman contests where competitor’s heart rates were tracked and saw them higher than 200 beats per minute on deadlifts in the 800+ pound range. I have personally recorded heart rates in the 140-165 beats per minute range on my Apple Watch during my heaviest intensity and max effort sets, especially on squats and deadlifts. Cardio is occurring during heavy lifting sessions but muscular conditioning is the lead goal. Rest that allows the heart rate to dip back below the fat burning zone then back up into it during another set makes serious strength training interval training by definition. Dependent on the heart rates involved, it could be pretty damned high in terms of intensity.

I’m sure readers know where this next paragraph is going. One of the most misunderstood concepts in fitness: High Intensity Interval Training, aka HIIT. The concept suffers from the overstatement of one’s own effort level during training. It shares that in particular with another concept in the lifting community based on effort: RPE, Rate of Perceived Effort. It is extremely difficult to find out what someone’s true 100% effort actually is. It is the main reason why I work off percentages of my 1 rep max. It’s easier to track week after week. I have heard it stated by strength and conditioning coaches of all kinds that the idea of training is to get the maximum amount of growth with a minimal amount of effort. It is this idea that is the main concept behind HIIT. The best example I can think of for this is a person is planning to do 30 minutes of cardio on a treadmill. HIIT would have this person put that treadmill up at the max speed they could to keep up with the machine before it spins them off then rest for the next 4 minutes before they repeat the process 5 more times over the half hour. Chances are their heart rate stayed above the threshold for fat burning and they only actually did 6 minutes of work over that half hour. HIIT isn’t running at sub-max pace then walking for 4 and repeating that process over the period of time on the treadmill. Walking on a treadmill between running does not count as “rest” in this context because something is still being done. One isn’t giving enough effort for it to be called “high intensity” this scenario. If what I just described as theoretical HIIT sounds almost identical to what I did earlier regarding serious lifting, especially max effort and intensity, that’s because it is. Lifting weights just uses different equipment to do it. HIIT uses what is effectively conditioning to do cardio work.

The max effort conditioning that HIIT uses to accomplish keeping the heart rate high enough to burn fat without actually doing anything is the kind that is more commonly associated with the term “conditioning.” This is especially true for anyone who played a sport growing up in high school, or somewhere equally organized, that required constant movement like basketball, soccer, or football. This is the conditioning that focuses on developing a person’s wind capacity. It is dependent on the factors of effort given and the physical capabilities of the lungs in the person doing it. Smoking, vaping and other types of lung damage all play pivotal roles in one’s ability to increase their wind capacity. The benefits of higher wind capacity are nigh universal for every kind of athlete. They can go longer and harder than one whose less conditioned. This kind of conditioning is mostly sport specific but almost always involves lots of movement. For people whose activity will predominantly be running based, sprints will probably be the bread and butter. I remember those basketball practices in junior high very well. All of those wind sprints sucked, especially for 13 and 14 year old me. They’d still probably suck for 37 year old me now. Having higher wind capacity allows lifters to get in more reps during sets. It helps one be able to practice longer and get more high quality work in. Making progress in a chosen sport or fitness path is very difficult because the steps forward are incremental and the steps back are generally less so.

2022 Week 1

January 3, 2022 – January 9, 2022

January 9, 2022

Monday
Low Bar Straight Squat – 135 x 8, 225 x 6, 275 x 6, 315 x 5, 345 x 5, 365 x 3
Deadlift, from Floor – 275 x 5, 315 x 5, 345 x 4, 365 x 3, 385 x 1
Calf Raises – 100 kg x 20, 120kg x 15, 140 kg x 15, 160 x 12
Leg Extensions – 115 x 10, 140 x 10, 175 x 10, 205 x 8
Prone Leg Curls – 65 x 10, 80 x 10, 95 x 8
Seated Leg Press, Machine – 210 x 10

Tuesday
Tricep Pushdown, Pyramid – 50 x 15, 57.5 x 12, 65 x 12, 72.5 x 10, 80 x 10, 87.5 x 8
Cable Curl – 42.5 x 12, 50 x 12, 57.5 x 10, 65 x 8, 72.5 x 8
Iso-Lateral Front Lat Pulldown, Weight in Each Hand – 45 x 10, 70 x 10, 90 x 8
Overhead Tricep Press – 45 x 12, 55 x 12, 65 x 10, 75 x 8, 85 x 8
EZ Bar Curls, Superset with Overhead Tricep Press – 45 x12, 55 x 10, 65 x 8, 75 x 8, 85 x 6
Tricep Pulldowns, Cable and Individual Arm – 10 x 20, 15 x 20, 20 x 15, 25 x 12
Preacher Curl – 45 x 8, 70 x 6, 90 x 6
Weighted Crunch, Machine – 110 x 10, 125 x 10, 140 x 10, 155 x 10
Medicine Ball Over The Shoulder, 20 pounds – 6 minute 10 second duration.

Wednesday
Flat dumbbell Press 105 x 8, 110 x 7, 115 x 5, 120 x 4, 125 x 2 (failed 3/4 through last rep), 95 x 8
Narrow Grip Incline Press – 135 x 8, 185 x 5, 195 x 4
Overhead Dumbbell Press – 50 x 10, 55 x 10, 60 x 8, 65 x 6, 70 x 4
Floor Press – 135 x 6, 225 x1, x 1, 185 x 6, 195 x 4
Read Deltoid Flies, Machine – 85 x 12, 115 x 10, 145 x 10
Side Lateral Raises, Machine – 95 x 12, 110 x 12, 125 x 12

Thursday
Scheduled Day Off – Recovery

Friday
High Bar Squat – 135 x 8, 225 x 8, 275 x 6, 315 x 5, 345 x 5, 365 x 2
Sumo Deadlift – 135 x 6, 225 x 5, 315 x 3, 345 x 1
Cable Row – 20 x 10, 27.5 x 10, 35 x 10, 42.5 x 10, 50 x 8, 60 x 8
Leg Press – 478 x 12, 658 x 12, 838 x 10, 928 x 8
Single Leg Leg Curl – 35 x 10, 60 x 10, 70 x 8, 85 x 8
Calf Raise – 100kg x 20, 120kg x 20, 140kg x 15, 160kg x 10

Saturday
Incline Dumbbell Press – 100 x 8, 105 x 8, 110 x 7, 115 x 5, 120 x3, 90 x 10
Tricep Pushdown, Pyramid – 40 x 7, 50 x 8, 60 x 8, 70 x 8
Bench Press – 135 x 8, 185 x 6, 225 x 5, 235 x 3
Pinned Bench Press, 2 Board – 185 x 6, 225 x 5
Standing Overhead Press – 95 x 6, 115 x 6, 125 x 6
Split Jerk – 95 x 3, 115 x 3, 125 x 3
Arnold Press – 45 x 10, 50 x 9, 55 x 8, 60 x 7, 65 x 5
Cable Crossover – 30 x 12, 35 x 20, 42.5 x 15, 50 x 15, 57.5 x 12
Narrow Grip Tricep Pushdown, Pronated Grip – 65 x 8, 72.5 x 8, 80 x 8
Side Lateral Raises – 95 x 8, 110 x 8, 125 x 8

Sunday
Scheduled Day Off – Recovery

Steps/Miles
Monday – 25,430 steps, 12. 8 miles. Tuesday – 24,041 steps, 11.9. Wednesday – 26,299 steps, 13.2 miles. Thursday – 20,010 steps, 9.8 miles. Friday – 23,638 steps, 11.7 miles. Saturday – 7,523 steps, 3.8 miles. Total – 126,941 steps. 63.2 miles.

Notes

Smooth week of training this week. Dumbbell press being the main chest movement is already working on muscular development in chest. The reps are also getting smoother. It has allowed me to get more reps in the working sets in. No matter what I use, I seem to always do a lot of work sets. Shoulder presses with dumbbells are also getting more stable. Getting the 70s up the shoulders is still a pain in the ass but I can feel the strength coming back.

I experimented this week more than I have any time in the past year. I tried sumo deadlift seriously for the first time Thursday. It felt very different. Couldn’t do more than 1 at 345 pounds, which is normally my second set in on traditional deadlifts. The sweet spot for working sets of 3-5 reps is probably 225-315 pounds. Wednesday I floor pressed for the first time. In terms of distance to the chest, it’s a 2 board press but the floor being there doesn’t allow my triceps to exert the same force as a 2 board press. I thought I would be able to floor press 225 for 3 fairly easily. Very mistaken. I should focus in the 185-215 range. I used one of the half racks to do the pin presses recorded above. I tried the smith machine for them Wednesday but felt nothing of use. The half racks aren’t moveable so the lift stats about 1.5-2 inches above my chest and had similar results to what I do in the garage. Overhead press I decided to clean the bar into position as opposed to unracking the barbell. The clean isn’t that difficult because the weight isn’t overbearing. The split jerks I did were also my normal messy kind. I lack speed at the bottom of the lift to be smooth right now.

I low bar squatted working sets for the first time in at least 4-5 months on Monday. It felt good and knew I had heavier reps in me but I really don’t like squatting in half racks at 95% or above loads. I use the open rack area used for weightlifting or CrossFit for my high bar squats in case I need to dump the weight. I’m not sure why I used the half rack for the low bar squats this week. The pull situation is what will define the next 8-12 weeks. I don’t have a solid plan built around it other than I will be going up to 95%-100% 1RM every week. The pull of 385 from the floor felt pretty good so there could be a pr there in the deadlift at the end of March.

Winter Plan 2022

Mark Brown

January 5, 2022

Well, snow has fallen here in Iowa and the temperature is starting to stay in the 20s or lower most of the day so that means a shift in my training is coming pretty fast. First week of January last year is about when I started full time going to the Genesis Fitness Clubs Merle Hay location in Des Moines, Iowa for the season. I wanted to stay lifting in the garage at least for at least 1 leg/back session and 1 upper body day because the garage is where I have all of my specialized equipment. The primary reason for that is that I wanted to maintain skill work on the specific exercises like log press, yoke bar and cambered bar squats and block pulls. Looks like the weather is pushing me towards the gym for the time being. This time I will go back to the gym having learned the lessons from the mistakes I made last year, mostly in programming.

Moving to the commercial gym I lift at for the season means a shift from barbells to dumbbells for the most part. I think dumbbells should be a part of any training plan, barbell based or not. The biggest mistake I made last year when I shifted to the gym was that I completely avoided all barbell work for upper body training. Dumbbell press, done either flat, inclined or seated for overhead, was my main press movement last year. I did that because it has been my inherent go to for years when I’m in a setting where I can’t go all out with a barbell press without a spotter. I also just done’t like doing standing overhead press with barbells that much. The consequence of that avoidance of barbells last year was that I had to re-learn how to bench press during the summer when I could have been making progress on that lift during that time. It took me about 10 weeks into my summer program to finally get back to 275 pounds. That’s 10 weeks of progress I missed out on because I didn’t want to bench press at the gym. That’s not a mistake I will be making this winter. In addition to the heavy dumbbell work as main, I will be looking to maintain skill in the bench press by doing it more often and for volume work in the 50-80% 1RM range. The same will apply to standing overhead press because it will transfer over to the log when I get back to it.

Leg training won’t change a ton but it just eliminates some of the highly specialized lifts I have been doing for the last couple months. The yoke bar box squats and the assisted squat with the handles on the power rack have been the main leg movements for the last 3 months and have been fairly eye opening in effect. The assisted specifically was used to work the quads for a very short range power movement. It was legitimately eye opening when I figured out how much I could overload the lift. In many ways, it imitates a leg press or a hack squat because of the way it is just pushing into the floor with my feet as hard as I can. The gym has a leg press that I have been using on the second leg day as a supplemental lift so that assisted squat is covered. I can still do box squats, and will be part of the plan on one of the days. I have even recently seen an old looking safety squat bar, not of the same design as the one I own, against the wall so I will have to see how it feels. I’m not entirely comfortable with a SS bar squat with the racks in the gym so might not be in the cards that often. I know how much more difficult yoke bar squats are than straight bar squats. I can probably execute about 75% of my current garage leg plan at the gym but I think changing it up will benefit me in the long run. A big part of my garage leg day comes from the fact that I don’t have all of the hypertrophy based machines at my disposal during the session so I have to make the big power movements also be responsible for some volume. Being in the gym both days just means some rearrangement of lifts and a fuller use of what is available to me.

The gym, through specific members, has been getting more specialized equipment over the last couple months. It’s not one of those commercial gyms that is afraid of powerlifting. I already mentioned the SS bar. One of the gym members had his Texas deadlift bar left at the gym. I have used it occasionally and only learned it was his when he stopped me to make sure I knew it was his, not the clubs, and to make sure I wasn’t doing anything crazy with it. It has absolutely wicked knurling on it. It’s sharper than the Ohio deadlift bar that I have. My main deadlift movement, a Romanian deadlift done from mats totaling 3 inches off the floor, is done as a supplemental lift after my main squat on my first leg day and is done up to 95 to 100% 1RM. I think a lot of people would also say it’s done in heavy volume as well. I do between 20 and 25 lifts per deadlift session on the first leg day. One possible change I will make for the winter is to use a regular power bar as opposed to the deadlift bar to pull from the floor with. The difference being the bar itself, which makes the pull different. The second heavy pull of the week has always been a challenge to program in because I’ve never been set on how I want to approach it. I’ve done it with regular pulls from the floor, heavy dumbbell pulls and recently a trap bar.

The biggest shift from the garage to the gym isn’t the lifts or the equipment but the intent. When I am in the garage, strength development always takes lead. The biggest reason for that is my best weapons in my arsenal for strength training are the big complex movements than can be done at max intensity because I don’t have to worry about killing myself if I fail a lift. I have been overdue for giving myself a cycle of high volume lifting so for the next couple months the lion’s share of the focus will be on muscular development. The formula of main lift – supplemental lift – accessory lifts will still be the same but I won’t be actively pushing the accessories to the side. Those lifts are the ones that the gym does best. Another of last year’s mistakes was that I didn’t really have a well thought out plan. There are a few reasons for that but that will not be the case this time around. The goal for this winter’s training is to get myself primed for spring when I can get back into the garage. I went from struggling with 245 pounds on bench press the first week June last year to 295 the last week of November. I fully believe I can be at 315 or possibly above that on bench press by the end of the year but that starts now with a focused strategy while at the gym.

A couple wildcards that I could play here is beginning the process of skill acquisition of Weighlifting and expanded cardio/conditioning. I dabbled with it here and there last year in the garage with no real eye towards improvement because I was so intent on getting stronger with the 3 main lifts. There is a real opportunity during this stretch of 12 weeks to really begin the process of learning the lifts, especially the snatch, without compromising the rest of my plan. It might start out simply with a snatch grip deadlift and front squats and moving up from there. It can’t hurt to add explosive movements to what I do already. The gym has some nice conditioning equipment I don’t have in the garage like a couple sleds, rowing machines, bouncy and soft medicine balls,. They will definitely become part of the program this winter.

The winter plan for lifting won’t look all that different than it does now. A change in location and focus but not the formula for increased strength. If anything, it will be closer to the summer powerbuilding program than the fall program, which had a heavier powerlifting focus. I can already feel the de-load doing it’s work rebuilding the neural connection. The movements have been smoother over the last week. I’m ready to put the work in over winter.

New Years Week Training Log

December 27, 2021 – January 2, 2022

Mark Brown

January 2, 2022

Monday
Good Mornings – 65 x 8, 115 x 7, 135 x 6, 155 x 6, 175 x 6
Box Squat, to Parallel – 175 x 8, 245 x 6, 275 x 5, 295 x 5, 315 x 5, 335 x 3, 355 x 1
Assisted Box Squat – 355 x 4, 365 x 6, 385 x5, 405 x 5, 415 x 5
Block Pulls – 315 x 6, 345 x 6, 365 x 5, 385 x 3, 405 x 1
Leg Extensions – 110 x 12, 130 x 12, 150 x 12, 170 x 10
Calf Raises – 245 x 15, 295 x 12, 315 x 10

Tuesday
Tricep Pushdown, Pronated Grip – 50 x 12, 57.5 x 12, 65 x 12, 72.5 x 12, 80 x 10, 87.5 x 10
Cable Curls – 42.5 x 12, 50 x 12, 57.5 x 12, 65 x 10, 72.5 x 8
Lat Pulldown – 40 x 10, 50 x 10, 60 x 10, 70 x 8
Seated Overhead Tricep Press – 45 x 12, 55 x 12, 65 x 12, 75 x 10, 85 x 8
Standing EZ Bar Curls – 45 x 10, 55 x 10, 65 x 12, 75 x 8, 85 x 8
Single Arm Pulldowns – 10 x 12, 15 x 12, 20 x 10, 25 x 10
Preacher Curls – 45 x 10, 70 x 10, 90 x 8

Wednesday
Unscheduled Day Off – Weather

Thursday
Flat Dumbbell Press – 105 x 8, 110 x 6, 115 x 5, 120 x 4, 125 x 3, 95 x 12, 90 x 9
Close Grip Incline Bench Press – 135 x 8, 185 x 5, 195 x 4
Standing Overhead Press, Strict – 95 x 6, 105 x 6, 115 x 6, 125 x 6, 145 x 1 (push press)
Cable Crossovers – 30 x 12, 35 x 10, 42.5 x 10, 50 x 10, 57.5 x 8
Seated Overhead Dumbbell Press – 50 x 10, 55 x 8, 60 x 8, 65 x 6, 70 x 4
Skullcrushers superset with Closegrip Press, EZ Curl Bars – 45 x 12 (x 12), 55 x 12 (x 12), 65 x 10 (x 10), 75 x 10 (x 10)
Side Lateral Raise, Machine – 95 x 12, 110 x 12, 125 x 10
Read Deltoid Fly – 90 x 10, 105 x 10, 120 x 10, 135 x 10

Friday
High Bar Squat – 135 x 8, 225 x 8, 315 x 6, 335 x 5, 365 x 3
Trap Bar Deadlift – 285 x 5, 335 x 5, 385 x 5, 405 x 2
Leg Press – 478 x 12, 658 x 12, 838 x 12, 928 x 10, 928 x 5 10 second holds
Single Leg Leg Curl – 35 x 10, 60 x 10, 85 x 8
Calf Raise – 100kg x 12, 120kg x 12, 140 kg x 12, 160kg x 12
Adductor – 300 x 12, x 12
Abductor, different machine than normal – 305 x 10, 220 x 12

Saturday
Scheduled Day Off – Recovery, Winter Storm

Sunday
Bench Press – 135 x 8, 185 x 8, 225 x 6, 235 x 6
Incline Dumbbell Press – 105 x 6, 110 x 5, 100 x 6, 95 x 7
Tricep Pushdown, Pronated Grip – 50 x 10, 65 x 10, 72.5 10, 80 x 8, 87.5 x 8
Arnold Press – 45 x 10, 50 x 9, 55 x 8, 60 x 6
Cable Crossover – 30 x 10, 35 x 10, 42.5 x 10, 50 x 8
Overhead Press, Hammer Strength Machine – 45 x 10, 70 x 8, 90 x 8
Side Lateral Raise – 95 x 10, 110 x 8, 125 x 8

Notes

This week of training was made interesting by the weather. The initial plan for the week was to start with legs/back in the garage, arms in the gym on Tuesday, upper body on Wednesday, rest on Thursday, Legs/back on Friday at the gym and Chest on Saturday at the gym then finally rest on Sunday. Weather interfered this week in a big way. A small winter storm on Wednesday forced me to use my first rest day on that day instead of Thursday. That left me with a decision to keep to my schedule of lifting and drop the second chest day in lieu of 1 megahard upper body day to keep my coming weeks normal or force my coming weeks to change to what I did this week. I chose the latter. The Saturday winter storm didn’t have much of an effect on the training week in the end.

I can start to feel the de-load period starting to end and the neural connection rebuilding, especially back and lower body. The Romanian deadlifts felt good and smooth all the way up to the attempt that 405 pounds that I completed. It definitely felt heavy and didn’t have more than 1 in me. That might be the last time I am in the garage for my normal 1st leg day of the week though for a while unless it gets unexpectedly warmer. Upper Body is getting there past the de-load stage but lagging slightly behind my legs in that regard.

I have to get back to the garage at some point this week to get some of my equipment to use at the gym. That’ll probably happen on Thursday. There are elbow sleeves, wrist wraps and some smaller lifting equipment to use at the gym and bring back home between sessions. As much as I would love to bring the log or Viking press or my deadlift bar to the gym, it’s just not necessary to do so.