Becoming an Athlete

We burned 800 calories in 45 minutes doing simple, straight-forward work, with short rest intervals. Vertical push/pull superset a. overhead press: 85x10; 95x10; 115x10; 125x11 b. Pullup: bodyweight x 6,7,8,8 Flat back goodmorning: 125x10; 135x10; 145x10; 155x10 Arms superset: a. barbell curls: 95x7, 10, 10, 10, 7 b. skull crushers: 55x15; 60x12; 70x10; 80x10, 10 That's it.  Nothing fancy.  Just hard work on basic lifts.  Friday is our day to try out all the crazy conditioning plans. 

Man, this week is just freaking magical!  I've dropped 4 pounds since getting back from a hiking trip, and I'm at a rock solid 200 pounds. Everything is working (hate to use the cliche but) synergistically. I've been following the 10 Day Green Smoothie Cleanse Diet.  I won't do 10 days, but M-F, with weekends for clean eating.  I'm adding a ton of protein powder to my smoothies to stay anabolic as I cut.  Despite a radical reduction in carbs and caffeine intake, I feel amazing.  Strength and stamina are up.  Joint pain is down, Abs are getting more and more defined.  Love handles are 95% GONE. Even my cheeks are starting to get lean.  I'm much less chipmunkish and worked my way to weaselish. The smoothies taste like a mixture of compost and yogurt, but the results are astonishing!!!! So my buddy uses a heart rate monitor and discovered that we burned about 750 calories today in our 1 hour old school workout.  It's so simple, I feel foolis...

My training buddy and I were talking about how the blended training qualities approach has been doing wonders for our fitness, but not doing much for hypertrophy, so we decided to split it up a little differently. Monday and Thursday are all about old school strength training.   Think Larry Scott, Reg Park, and maybe even HIT.  High quality sets; perfect reps; taking the last set to absolute failure Tuesday and Friday are conditioning days.  Yeah, you could call it CrossFit or MetCons, but then I'm sure I'd owe somebody $150 a month, so we'll stick with Conditioning.  High volume, low percentage of 1 rep max, lots of rowing, farmers walks, bodyweight movements etc.  The "kitchen sink" approach to circuits to get you smoked. So far, I'm making AMAZING progress. I've honestly never been stronger, leaner, or more athletic. One of the key learnings for me has been Rep Maxes.  Trying to increase max reps on a certain load is better than trying to always l...

I was weak today on deadlift for a few reasons: hard squatting the day before insufficient warm-up cutting carbs as low as possible doing just vegetable smoothies as of Monday Today's session: Clean grip muscle snatch:   45x10; 65x5; 95x5 (light weight just to wake up) strength superset: a. Chinup:  +35  x 5,4,4,4 b. Deadlift: 225x5; 275x3; 225x5,5 strength endurance superset a. flat back goodmorning: 95x10; 115x10; 135x10 b. Kroc row: 85 x 10/10; 10/10; 10/10 MetCon a. American KB swing: 50# x 25, 20, 15 b. TRX inverted row: BW x 20, 15, 10 c.  Side-plank knee-to-elbow: 15/15, 10/10, 5/5

Here's a good representative example of the current phase of training. Nice long warmup CNS warm-up:  just a few of each to get ready to lift HEAVY a. wall ball b. toes to bar or hollow-body rocks Bench press: 135x10; 185x5; 205x5; 225x7 Squat: 135x10; 185x10; 225x10; 275x5; 315x7 MetCon a. Thruster: 95 x 20, 15, 10 b. Burpees: 20, 15, 10 I felt like I was going to pass out and have a heart attack by the end of 20 reps each of thrusters and burpees. By the time I got to 10 each, I was a zombie, just doing it while light-headed and feeling my pulse rip out of my neck.

I've cut weight to a solid 203 pounds, but will occasionally hit 198 just for fun/looks, but also to get my body used to being lighter so I won't be in shock when I compete at 198 pounds for Highland Games. I'm really happy that at 203 pounds, I was able to bench press 225 for 6 reps.  Squats and Deadlifts are doing amazing, but my bench press has always been a weakness.  My Clean and Snatch are coming along great, but what II'm most proud of is my overall conditioning. While I'm not a fan of CrossFit and the random nature of their WODs, I do love structured MetCons that tax the same muscle groups and movement patternns as the strength work performed in a given training session.  Example: On push day on Thursday (quads, chest, shoulders), my MetCon was: 2 rounds of: Wallball x 20, 15,10, 5 Pushup x 20, 15, 10, 5 Weighted leg raise x 20, 15, 10, 5 I'm as lean as I was when I was competing in fighting at 185, but I'm a damn sight stronger.

Training has been amazing.  My training partner and I have 8 months of morning training sessions interrupted only by a couple of flus, business travel, and a few late nights.  I've found the balance of living fully, dieting well, lifting like a madman, and making cardio fun usually with friends. The training plan has been 4 days a week.  We tried to run Mon - Thu, but my lower back isn't able to handle the loads we've been lifting for 4 days straight.  the new schedule is Mon,Tue, Thu, Fri. We are rotating between a push day and a pull day, each getting trained twice, but with slightly different emphasis (e.g. vertical plane vs. horizontal plane). All sessions are pretty comprehensive: Explosive training Strength circuit Hypertrophy circuit MetCon On Push days, we do something along these lines: Explosive: medicine ball throws & box jumps 4 x 5 each Strength circuit usually 4 x 6 or 4 x 10, depending on the day of the week bench press back squ...