My training History: I trained less than one year before competing in my first powerlifting meet as a teenager back in 1983. Before leaving the sport in 2005 I achieved my elitefts status in the 198,220,242,275 & 308 weight class. Throughout these years I did have a 3 year run in the bodybuilding world. Loved the training didn't like the competing aspect so I went back to my first love, powerlifting. Injuries have been a part of my life ever since I can remember and were the biggest reason for leaving the sport (I can no longer hold a squat bar on my back). I have degenerative joint disease, have had two shoulder surgeries (right shoulder now needs replaced), one full hip replacement, knee surgery, herniation's in all three regions of my spine, Bone spurs in places I didn't know you could get them, planter facetious, tendinitis and bursitis. I can't even begin to list the number of muscle tears I have had, surgical and non surgical. I am "The Mashed Up Meathead" and this is my story.
You can find my training log archives HERE and my most current training log posts HERE.
My best lifts are behind be but my best training is yet to come.
* Unless otherwise noted the tempo of the work sets is about 1/2 of what most would consider normal. In most cases, if I did the set with normal temp what I fail at with 8-10 reps in training I could do for 20 reps with a normal tempo. This is to keep the joint stress down while increase the stress on the muscle. I have found this to work best for me provided the conditions listed in my training history above.
October 11th. Training log - Back
First exercise: normal grip Swiss bar pull downs. This is a great bar to use for pull downs because all grips on the bar are a neutral grip, ranging from a wide grip into a close grip. The way I like to use this is to begin my sets with the widest grip and do four to five warm up sets of 10 to 15 reps, increasing the weight with each warm up set until I get to a weight that is going to be a work ... It's going to feel like a work set where I will fail somewhere between 8 to 12 repetitions. Once I get to that weight, I will do two sets with each grip working inward for a total of six sets of 8 to 12 repetitions with each set taking the failure.
Second exercise: Four inch grenade ball cable pull down. The key here is to hold the grenade ball in your hands the same way that you would hold a dumbbell if you were to do a dumbbell pullover. Then to position your body under the cables so when you pull the grenade down with slightly straight arms you're using almost 100% of your lats to do the exercise. You do not to feel any tension in the backs, or any tension in the shoulders. It should all be in the lats. There will be a little bit of a slight bend in the waist to be able to get a stretch in the lats at the top, but then at the bottom of the movement you want to make sure there's a tight contraction of your lats that you're going to hold for one to two count. On this exercise, I use one or two warm up sets of 10 to 15 reps just to feel out what weight I would need to use to be able to perform four work sets of 10 to 12 reps to failure.
Third exercise: close grips supinated mag grip low rows. On this exercise I performed in it a more typical fashion. I increase the tempo just a little bit so it wasn't my usual slower tempo and work up to three heavy sets of 8 reps. These were not taken to failure, probably two reps shy of failure, but there was a tremendous amount of tension and contraction of the lats at the end of the movement, or the top of the movement.
Forth exercise: kettle bell rows. The reason for using the kettle bells instead of dumbells these rows, and this is both at the same time, is you can get your hands closer to your hips with the kettle bells than you could if it was a dumbbell or a dumbbell row. This allows you to get your elbows up higher and back more than what you typically could. One warm up set and then straight onto four work sets of 10 to 15 reps. These were taken to failure. Failure really at this point of the training, after doing the other exercises all depends on what the tempo is and how hard you're contracting. It's very typical on this exercise that I have failed at four reps and five reps. It all really depends on how much momentum you use and how much contraction that you're using. My goal was to try to fail under 10 repetitions.
Fifth exercise: double D handle pull downs facing away from the lat machine. By facing away from the lat machine, you change the angle of the pull at the top of the movement a little bit so there's ... For me, there's way less stress on the shoulders and a lot more pull on the lats. Three to four warm up sets. 10 to 12 reps once again. Mainly just to feel out how much weight would be needed for my work sets. Four work sets of 8 to 10 repetitions, all taken to failure.
This was a pretty typical lat workout, or back workout for me. Once every four to six weeks I'll do some type of lock pull, dead lift, pin pull, or some type of dead lift will change in a higher repetition range. After a squatting yesterday and the way that my legs feel and just total body feels, I really wanted to try to do some pulls today but it just was not, it wasn't in the cards. My body wasn't going to cooperate.
Currently my body weight is sitting at about 272 pounds. I haven't had to get extreme at this point with anything with my diet yet. I'm going to just keep riding it out as long as I keep losing one to two pounds a week without having to do anything extreme. We're just going to keep it the way it is. The one thing that will be put back in next week is to add in the cardio that was pulled out over the past week, and that's just to help aid in the recovery between the workouts, or between the training sessions more than it is for any type of fat loss or anything of that nature.
I was recently told I need to have a sleep study done but I will leave that for another time.
