The Return of the jedi-This is not Sparta. This. Is. Madness.(now incl. Race to 100kg OHP)

Well if your squating x2 per week a little pre-exhaust is exusable.

Them dragon flags are mad mate, I must admit I don't imagine it's the sort of thing people normally see others doing in the gym, hence the polish contingent, I will find out next week but you must have hard core, core strength.

Powaaaalifting

Squat
3 no lifts with just the bar (failed to make depth) =jedi is out of the meet early on.
Legs were still v. sore after Tuesday but you know soldier on etc.
60-90-120-150
wraps on
170 -oh my christmas it feel fkkinevvy = 2 p1ss poor reps
Don't want to finish with duff reps so reload
170 x 2 decent reps much happier.
Deadward was lifting today and I noticed that his walkouts were better than mine
(which isn't saying much ...Douglas Bader would probably have had better walkouts than me).
I noticed he chopped it into 2 stages
1. lift bar off rack
2. start to step back
this sounds obvious. It probably is obvious. It is not what I've been doing. I've been doing the lift, start to step back before bar has cleared hooks, catch hooks, catch side rails, generally clang about like a pinballtw@t method. I tried the simpler 2 step version on the second set and think I'll try and adopt that in future.

Bench
60-80
competition reps
110
120
130 -much better than last week but probably a fail as, having no arch to speak of, when I tried to use some leg drive I drove my @rse clear of the bench. Not by much but enough for red lights. I also took a teeny tiny touch on the bar as it was a grrrrinder. It is deffo coming back a bit though.
Deadward mentioned in despatches as he pressed a nice 100 despite being blinded by Jackman's 1992 Norwich City home strip.

Deadlift
60-100-130-150-180-190
210 - felt heavier than the success at 220
150 x 12 I think there were a few more there - I left them there too

Vic looked in good form last night and pulled a nice 190 dead which hinted at an assault on 200 for his last lift in the British in 3 weeks. Look at Accrington the 'borough boys are coming.

Deadward mentioned in despatches as he pressed a nice 100 despite being blinded by Jackman's 1992 Norwich City home strip

jedi



I must confess to being a norwhich city fan and I do have one of those shocking shirts in a draw somewhere! those were the good old days of brian gunn, chriss sutton, jeremy goss ahhhh yessss

anyway, them dragon things look awesome, I tried again and have concluded I deffo cant do them! keep it up!

Solid lifting, mate, all things considered. If I just add in a couple of sets of leg press one week the next weeks squatting feels heavier. ..nice work

Solid session... and strength is built on solid sessions.

iaink


Solid session... and strength is built on solid sessions.

Good call. I could do with remembering that. I can remember training for athletics doing much better by concentrating on training 'well' rather than looking for spectacular breakthroughs.

dirtyvest

Solid lifting, mate, all things considered. If I just add in a couple of sets of leg press one week the next weeks squatting feels heavier. ..nice work

I can't pretend its a nice feeling having to squat Thursday so close to the leg workout Tuesday but after the truly horrendous warmups are done (I should probably video them sometime as they tend to be quite comical) then it isn't that bad as it is basically just working up in 3's 2's or 1's. I was a bit miffed to be back off the 185PB to be making 170 feel heavy again but, as above, they were good solid reps and I will wait for another up slope on the rollercoaster.

Friday shoulders

Mil. Press
60kg x 7/6/5 some lost ground to be made back here then

Seated Front Raise
16kg x 12/10/8 -surprising, first time heavy for a while made the reps with good form

Seated Lateral
14kg x 12/10/8 -again a bit surprising

Rear Delt Cable
pin3 x 12/10/8 this hurt my shoulder more than any of the above

Arnold Press/Vpress
22kg/14kg 12/10 10/10 8/8 down on my best but the new 'bells are harder to 'arnold' and I am working a lot harder on the V-press technique.

15min fat burn

In other news.
I had two different lads come up to quiz me about my steroid usage which I know is supposed to be flattering for a natural, especially as one of them thought I was in better shape than him whereas I had thought the same about him. If that wasn't enough I then had interesting chat with fitness female including the quote "You're massive" which I found had more effect than when some of the lads upstairs have said the same.
Happy jedi then?
Sadly no
I dunno why. I mean as I've just written that up it all reads like I must be in good shape. If only I felt like that myself. To be honest I'm a bit disappointed and can't see a lot of improvement from last year. Rationally, the scales say about 8lb heavier for about the same BF %age. I think that most of this has gone onto my legs (sadly not in the calf region) which were lagging a bit.
I dunno I am probably just in a bit of a blue mood.
Nutter.

Nothing unusual about that mate, the old dysmorphia. You can probably accept as fact that you are bigger and in better nic than the average man on teh street but we can be so self critical and aware of teh physiques we like and admire that that is where we make our own markers for progress, by which we often fall short for quite some time.

Right pain tho, I agree.

That said, compliments means something is going right so enjoy them anyway

I agree with DV mate, I keep thinking I'm small looking at other guys(not in that way lol) and thinking their more defined and bigger, but I think your clothes are a good indication, I'd been wearing medium T-Shirts cos I like a decent fit not really baggy but am really a large I have found as today I brought one home with out trying and Hmmm Gay Bar springs to mind. Cheer up mate a lot of guys would like to be in your position!

Cheers chaps, I don't think it is dysmorphia as much as objectivity and changing goals to be honest. I can see that I look in fairly decent shape but I am now at the limit of 82.5kg if I want to do some powerlifter. I think I could do (on my best day) something like 180/130/220 in an unequipped meet which I think would be fairly useful. However, I am not that dedicated to the powerlifting cause that I would stop working to improve my physique. As I may have mentioned earlier I think it is feasible that I could recomp by 4 or 5lb's but the dieting would be hard and doubly so if I want to add some muscle into the mix. I would look something like my optimum physique at 90kg. I don't think putting 14lb of muscle on over the next year would be especially easy either plus I don't see my lifts improving to iaink standards. Other than that, I'm quite happy with how things are going

Chest/tri's
We have a new bench.
It is this bench.

It looks sh1t and I was dreading it but to be honest I quite like it. It is a bit narrower and lower to the ground than the old one. The fact that the hooks stick out in front may take some getting used to but over all I like.

Bench
60-90
110 x 9 +1
110 x 6 +3
110 x 5 +1
paused reps
90 x 9 + 60 x 6
Hooya, that's a bit more like it, 9, 6, 5 is worth sticking with and and hopefully tuning up to 10/8/6 before mounting assaults on either 12/10/8 or moving up to 120.

Incline Bells
40kg x 9 +1
40kg x couple less
40kg x couple less
30kg x few more
Managed the 40's better than last week that's for sure.

Low Cable X-over
pin? x 12-12-12 still loving these

Skulls
40kg x 12-10-8

Straight bar pushdown
pin? x 12-12-12

Plus some single arm pulldowns

15miin fat burn recumbent bike.

Nice work.

Reg- powerlifting vs nice physique... as I may have said you can have both. You can even be more concerned with your physique if you wanted to but do the odd meet for the hell of it once in a while.

You'd be close to qualifying for both BDFPA (520) and GBPF (540) British Unequipped champs with your current level of strength.

I'm back in Loughborough for 2 weeks for the easter holidays, fancy a session?

Bench looks better than mine mate, as I said in my journo mines real narrow so you can't get a grip much wider than shoulder(if that) width.

Me dont like that bench...expect to be tea-bagged from spotters

 

AWG

I'm back in Loughborough for 2 weeks for the easter holidays, fancy a session?

Absolutely mate although my timetable is pretty rigidly stuck to
Monday: Bench/Tri's 6.15start
Tuesday: Legs 6.15
Wednesday: Biceps/Abs/ 6.15
Thursday: Powerlifting 7.00
Friday: Shoulders/Upper Back 6.00

You're more than welcome to join in on any of those or if you don't fancy that I have a bit more slack at the weekends to organise a separate tris/bi's session

iaink

Reg- powerlifting vs nice physique... as I may have said you can have both. You can even be more concerned with your physique if you wanted to but do the odd meet for the hell of it once in a while.

I can see that being the way it would go.
I keep forgetting to mention that I have acquired some Oly shoes from a mate. They are possibly half a size at least too small for me but interesting none the less. A bodyweight testrun has shown I can do a squat to full depth with my hands raised above my head; which doesn't sound like much but would be a trip to A&E if tried in any other footwear.
I'll probably* squat 200 on Thursday.




*not

Incredible Bulk

Me dont like that bench...expect to be tea-bagged from spotters

As I said, I don't particularly like the look of it either but it 'drives' better than it looks. I'd say the risk of teabag incidents has actually diminished due to the lower bench. Plus I may now be able to get some kind of arch ....although I wont hold my breath.

crying freeman

Bench looks better than mine mate, as I said in my journo mines real narrow so you can't get a grip much wider than shoulder(if that) width.

I meant that the actual pad is narrower but does the above go some way toward explaining your mystery bench lag?

You can get a bit of a hybrid thing going on no probs. So long as you stick with your main compounds being strength based (altho maybe not with the same degree of volume a typical PLing routine would use) you can then use the supplementary lifts more for BBing and you should get a happy mix of both getting productive results.