Back under the bar

May12
by Duf on May 12, 2014 at 6:17 pm
Posted In: Daily Workouts

Barbell-Bench-Press[1]This weekend Cindy and I did a run/swim brick on Sunday.  The run portion was two loops around a local park which worked out to 4 miles, the longest run under my belt in 2014 which is pretty sad.  4 miles felt like 10 used to.  I’d like to keep building my running endurance back up but there seems to be one injury/ailment after another that keeps derailing progress.  The latest is my first ever case of h-roids, getting old is so much fun.

I did a total of 1600 yards of swimming.  I stretched my swim segments as prep for a team tri I am doing in a few weeks as the swim leg.  My pace wasn’t great, roughly 9 minutes per 400 but it’s good enough considering the inconsistency my endurance training has seen in 2014.

So today at the gym I was feeling annoyed and irritated, mostly by the irritation in the seat of my shorts.  I almost felt like bagging it due to frustration.  I wound up doing stagger pull ups, three sets of 20 deep dips and then something I haven’t done in EONS, bench press.

Bench press used to be my favorite exercise, it was the move that I judged my overall fitness level by.  The bigger the number, the stronger I felt.  This was the case for about the first 20 years of my adult gym going life.  Somewhere around 5 years ago I started having more and more shoulder pain and bench pressing amplified the problem.  My interest in body weight movements eventually pushed bench press totally out of my fitness regimen.  Before today, I think the last time I benched was in 2012, maybe.

I really had no idea what to expect trying to bench, especially after doing three hard sets of dips.  It’s a good thing I wasn’t expecting much.  Getting back under the bar felt familiar, despite that vantage point being absent from my life for so long.  Laying under a barbell for me can invoke a myriad of emotions ranging from excitement, anxiety, anger and fear.

I started light with only 135 pounds on the bar, a weight I used to  bounce up and down for what I would now consider 15 shitty reps.   I did 10 slow reps with full extension each time.  I’m not sure if it was the pre-fatiguing with dips, the full ROM or just lack of bench pressing, the weight felt heavier than I hoped.

I went up to 185 and did just a single rep with a goal of loosely testing my 1RM.  At 205 lbs it felt like I had already started scraping the limit.  It felt like 275lbs did during my creatine enhanced, 210 pounds of flabby Duf days.  I backed down to 185 lbs and did thee sets of 3 reps and then a final set of 4 reps.  On the plus side I didn’t feel any shoulder discomfort doing the reps.

I’m not sure if I will try to shuffle bench pressing back into my regimen or not.  For some reason I hoped the thousands of push ups I have done since abandoning BP would have translated to me pushing more weight.  The last thing I need is something else to feel like I am under performing in.

Today’s Workout

5 minutes cardio/stretching

3 stage pull ups (bottom, middle, top pause)  x8 x 6 x 6

Full ROM dips – 20 reps x 3

Bench press – 135lbs x 10, 185lbs x 1, 205lbs x 1, 185lbs x 3, 185lbs x 3, 185lbs x 3, 185lbs x 4

6 minutes of A2G hold

 

 

 

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Mix

May08
by Duf on May 8, 2014 at 5:45 pm
Posted In: Daily Workouts

DeepSquats[1]I have a couple things going on health-wise that are steering me clear of doing anything involving really heavy weights.  I also missed yesterdays gym session (second miss this week) so I wound up just throwing various movements together.

Although I do a lot of wall handstand holds I have not done much if any practice of free standing handstands.  It doesn’t make sense because one of my long term goals has been to hold a nice controlled handstand.   I think I don’t like doing them because of the rampant amount of failure.  Plus I am less than graceful at times exiting a handstand although I can usually avoid the massively embarrassing and painful back flop.

I did hold one for maybe 2-3 seconds.  I need to get off the wall and just work more without a net.

Today’s Workout

5 minutes cardio/stretching

10 high pull ups

Barbell squat (chest to thigh depth) 135lbs x 8 x 3 sets

Chin up 4’s progression ( 4 reps first half of movement, 4 reps second half of movement, 4 full ROM) x 3 sets

Free standing handstand attempts, varying duration, none exceeding three seconds

Stagger dips (weight is shifted to alternating hands at bottom of each rep) x 10

6 minutes of A2G hold time

 

 

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Stride and spin

May06
by Duf on May 6, 2014 at 5:29 pm
Posted In: Daily Workouts, Endurance activities

spending-time-with-the-ant-enabled-spin-bike-24[1]

This morning I woke up with a little bit of pain in my abs at the spot that has been problematic.  It’s nothing major but I can surely attribute it to the 5 circuit Rays Way on Monday.

I did another run/bike brick today, hoofing 2 miles on the treadmill at the same 9:13 pace as last week and then covering .2 of a mile farther during my 10 minutes on the stationary bike, racking up 3.3 miles.  The brick was tough once again but felt slightly more manageable than the week prior, despite my upping the bike intensity this time.  I also was sporting my real running shoes, running shorts, a spare shirt and an oversized towel to mop up the sweat.

I think I will change up the run portion of the brick to the same format as the ride, doing a run for a defined amount of time (20 minutes) with the goal of increasing the distance covered during that 20 minutes slightly each week.  The 30 minute total brick time is a nice round number with easily trackable performance points.

Today’s Workout

Run/Ride Brick – 2 mile run – 9:13 pace, 10 minute ride – 3.3 miles covered

 

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Back to 5, Today at the gym

May05
by Duf on May 5, 2014 at 5:32 pm
Posted In: Daily Workouts, Ray's Way

talking-cell-phone-bench-press-set_640_337_s_c1_center_top_0_0[1]Today at the gym – On my personal blog today one of the subjects I ranted about was the insidious infestation of smart phone usage into modern society.  People can’t seem to resist making visual love with their always connected electronic portals to the world for more than a few moments at a time.  To me one of the most egregious examples of this sickness are people that insist on bringing their phones with them to the gym.

Today we had one fine example.  The guy was as white bread looking as you can imagine.  A very manicured, parted to the side hair style, gray shorts that matched a lighter gray sleeveless name brand shirt and just enough extra weight that it erased any possible lines of definition in his physique.

The guy was doing incredibly low energy exercises, if you could even call them exercises at all.  It was more like some mild stretching.  He used the infamous inflatable ball to do some of the least effective ab exercises possible, the big dowel rod to do very short radius trunk rotations and a couple other energy neutral movements.  His phone use to exercise time ratio had to be at least 7 or 8 -1.   I just don’t get it.

Today was the first time I have done a 5 set untimed Ray’s Way since before my mystery ab strain and GI disaster, meaning at least 4-5 weeks have passed.  Getting the five sets of 15 dips, 10 pull ups and 20 push ups down the pipe was a struggle as expected.  However it felt good to endure the pain and not feel any weird twinges around my belly button during the workout.

I am planning to modify my gym routine a bit.  It used to go like this:

Monday – Rays Way or some other circuit

Tuesday – DL/Squat/Legs

Wednesday – Bi’s/tri’s

Thursday – Shoulders/inverted training

Friday -Mostly core

My hope is to make Tuesday’s my mini-brick day where I will run and bike, move DL/Squat to Wednesday and then squish shoulders, bi’s and tri’s into Thursdays.  I think incorporating some intense cardio into the week will be an overall boost to my fitness routine.

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Just to see

May01
by Duf on May 1, 2014 at 5:35 pm
Posted In: Daily Workouts

308_1[1]So it didn’t take me long to find a movement that I felt in my abs, the wall handstand push up.  I did exactly one rep before I felt a little pull in my abs after I which I immediately kicked off the wall.

For some reason near the end of my shoulder workout I wondered how much I could push overhead one time in a seated barbell shoulder press, a movement I haven’t done in a long, long time.  The answer appeared to be around 142.5 lbs.  I brought the bar all the way down to my upper chest for the rep and barely got it locked back out.  I would hope if I tried the same thing at the beginning of a shoulder workout I might be able to get 155 pounds up there, maybe not.

Today’s Workout

5 minutes cardio/stretching

20 pull ups

1 wall handstand push up (ab pain)

60 second wall handstand static holds x 3 – standard, narrow and wide hand position

Alternating standing straight arm lateral/front dumbbell raises – 15lbs x 15, 20lbs x 12, 25lbs x 8

Seated barbell overhead press –  95lbs x 1, 115lbs  x 1, 135lbs x 1, 142.5lbs x 1

5 minutes A2G hold

 

 

 

 

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