MacFhearchair's off-season anti-slack

[RogerWS76]

The early darkness is killing our Wednesday night practices until the Government decides it's time to change the time again. Very much missing them AND the guys too!

[Alan H]

Soon there will be a big mo caber out there that will challenge you to pick it, even though it's only 11 feet long.

[o1d_dude]

Mansplaining maybe, hitting on you maybe, or just being helpful? Nah. Just being a dillwick/gym nazi if you ask me.

One of the reasons why I'm thankful for my garage gym is that I don't have to put with silliness from anyone but myself.

As far as using the rubber bumper plates for deadlifts, they're great if you have them but people have been doing deads with iron plates since day one. If you're lifting on rubber gym floor mats, it really makes no difference. Bumper plates are pretty much mandatory if you're going to drop the weights like from cleans or other Olympic style lifts.

Next time someone gives your grief like that, tell them you compete in the highland games and throw bigger pieces of crap than them.

[MacFhearchair]

Yeah, I'd like to get one of them garage gyms. For now I'll have to settle with my climbing gym membership, which isn't the worst deal I've ever gotten. If anything, I get to practice not taking crap from people like that.


Tonight I lifted lighter weights than my max. I started out squatting the unloaded bar and found my hips were super tight and random things were just *hurting*, so I put myself on a treadmill and did 5 minutes of jog, run, run fast, run, jog in that order for a minute each, which limbered me up some. I went back to the squat rack and did sets of 5: 95, 115, 115 (I can do 135 but something was telling me not to try it tonight and I listened).

overhead presses - 2 sets of 5 @ 65#
bench press - did 2 @ 115, and 2 sets at 95.
dead lift - 1 set @ 135, 1 set @ 155
landmines - a whole bunch with an unloaded bar
ab stuff - a whole bunch of cross crunches, jackknife situps, transition planks, toe-to-bar, and head-stand leg lift things *shrug* I hardly keep count, but it's good to know I'm doing it.

I would probably yammer a lot more but after all that plus a large dinner, I'm about to fall over dead. Zzz.

[Alan H]

3-4 months of this, 2-3 times a week and I think you are going to be surprised what you can do, come March. Seriously.

There's much talk about "active warmup" and "active stretching" and "dynamic stretching" as things to do before lifting, amongst the cognoscenti at NASGA. I think they tend to get the terms mixed up, but the basic idea is to save the static stretching....what we usually think of as stretching... for *After* the lifting workout. Before lifting, do stuff like your treadmill thing, or maybe 5 minutes on a stationary bicycle, or a few minutes on the rowing machine. Donna the Trainer suggested this nasty combination warmup routine which I both hate and like and should probably do before my lifting workouts. Basically it goes like this...

get an appropriately sized dumbell, and the lowest pylo box... grad the dumbell in one hand and stand about 3 feet away from the box.

Now drop to a crouch and put your hands on the box. One has the dumbell, right? Shoot your legs out behind you so you can do a pushup. Now do a pushup. Basically you just did the first half of a burpee, only on the pylo box. Now lift the dumbell in the air above and behind you, which means balancing on the other hand/arm. Bring your legs in. Stand up. Hoist the dumbell over your head. Then back to starting position.

Repeat until breathing hard.

Rest.

Switch hands, so the dumbell is in the other hand. Repeat until breathing hard.

[MacFhearchair]

I might give that a whirl Alan. There's really no end to the goofy exercises one can do with the blunt objects they provide you at the gym, is there?

I didn't make it out last night - it was a really rough week at work and my workday ended at 8pm, at which point I was just not feeling it at all. Fail.

[Alan H]

Nope, no end - you can do all sorts of awkward looking things!

When my workday ends at 8:00 PM, I usually can't summon up the juju to get to the gym, either. So that means I try to make it up the next day if I can.

[MacFhearchair]

Tonight I got out to the gym. I didn't feel like going, but my new strategy seems to work pretty well (I don't *have* to do anything; but I do have to show up - and apparently that breaks the whole thing down into digestible parts).

New squat PR: 145 I can almost do a pull up, and I'm doing sets of 5 @ 45 lb dumbbell bench presses (90 total).

I did a whole bunch of stuff; no deadlifts though.

Too tired to really go into much detail. ...but I did the stuff. So there.