Quote Originally Posted by nh_maclean View Post
Your weights make my weights look sad sad sad! (I'll stick to my excuse I've been out of the gym for 4months and only starting week 3 of my workout... but still - damn!) I'm a fan of the high weights, low reps for 4-6 weeks and then doing a 4-6 week stretch of the reverse - but for me that's for helping the muscle endurance catch up so I can stay on the wall longer (rock climbing/bouldering).

But damn, I'd love to get my squat to 200 again and to do incline bench with 65s! Any routines/sets-rep that you can recommend for helping me get there?

Do you superset your squats, snatches with any lower back/abs? (hanging knee raises, hyperextensions, etc?) I've been told it helps prevent injury and if anything I find it helps stretch me out curious if anyone else does this.
I'm kind of liking your 4-weeks/4-weeks plan. I'm pretty leery of trying to do what the pro Highland Games athletes, and the young guys do. I'm not sure this old body can do that stuff and not get hurt. At any rate, I'm going to give it from now to the beginning of December, doing high weights days, and then see where I am in December.

As for how I got to 65 pounds on the inclined board, well....when I saw miss Dana popping out rep after rep after rep with 45 pounds, and I bet she doesn't weight 150, and I WAS DOING 45 POUNDS, I decided something had to change so I started actually DOING them....you know, like regularly. I do those and I do pushups as well 'cause I think they're going to help with the stones at the Games. It's taken me about 6-7 weeks to move from doing two sets of eight with 45 pounds to (almost) two sets of six with 65.

I have to be *Extremely* careful with any exercises that affect my lower back, because of that stenosis in L4. I don't do reverse hypers, I don't DARE! Heck, I just started doing squats and leg presses again in the last two weeks. I'm getting killed on the field at the Games by guys who have, as I say it....garage door springs in their quads... I can't turn a caber that most of the guys I throw with can turn, and my WOB is only "OK". So I decided that I have to do SOMETHING for the quadriceps. So I'm doing squats and leg presses again, but I'm more concentrating on exercises for the quads where I move weights FAST, like the dumbell snatches and sumo dead lift high pulls (REALLY fast) and cleans, which I sometimes do with overhead presses.