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.
CLICK TO VIEW ALL MY LOG POSTS & ARTICLES
* 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.
Pre-training Notes
A few notes going into today's training session, first, if you've been following my training log, you typically have noticed that I only train a couple times during the week. That's because that's really all I can fit in during the workweek. I try to keep most of training based upon the weekends that way I can actually get in more than a couple days training during each week.
The way it works during the week is basically based on what's going on during the week. I have had a long-term goal, and I can say long-term now because I've been trying to do this for a couple of years now, to get my training done around 10:00AM. My secondary goal of getting it done around 1:00PM. And the last possible time around 6:00PM. Well, I have come to the conclusion that it's typically going to be 6:00PM during the week, forever. There's just no other time where I'm able to fit that in.
Basic structure of my day without getting into total details is I am in the office until around 2:30PM or 3:00PM at which time I go home. Because that's what time my kids get home. I want to be there when they get home so I can help them with their homework, keep them from beating each other up, tearing the house apart, and any other shit they can get themselves into if nobody else is around. I will stay there with them until around 6:00PM when my wife gets home and then I will head out to train on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tuesdays and Thursdays seem to work the best because that's when my son has football practice so I drop him off at football, train, then go and pick him back up, and then head home. So, it works out perfectly. This also gives me a couple hours at home to get concentrated work done (when the kids are doing their homework and chores).
My Training Plan
What do I train during the week? Well, that's a good question. Let me just put it this way. I train back on Saturday, and I train legs on Sunday. Which means sometime during the week I need to train chest, shoulders, biceps, triceps, and calves and abs if I decide to do that. When I do those? I really don't fucking care. So, I've been recently training with Joe Amato during the week. To give you an example of how this all plays out, on Tuesday when Joe got here, he came in and said, "Well what do you want to train?" And I laid it out exactly the way I laid it out here. I told him I had to train shoulders, triceps, biceps, chest sometime during the week. And we decided that we definitely wanted to do shoulders on Tuesday. So the plan was to train shoulders, and then whatever we felt like training after that we would do. Then whatever was leftover we would do on Thursday. So as you'll see in my back training log, we did shoulders and biceps. Which means tonight, we'll end up doing chest and triceps.
That's pretty much how the training gets broken out. You know, I have to kind of weave it in with my life. For a large chunk of my life training came before family and work, now it doesn't but that doesn't mean it doesn't get done. It just gets done when I can fit it in around my family and work. These two take up a very big chunk of my time - and that is my choice - so I wouldn't have it any other way.
Girl Friends and Porn
Now to discuss the reasons why I typically don't use a pre-workout is that I really don't have a need for a pre-workout stimulant. What I actually need a need for would be like a Xanax to be able to take before I train because of having to deal with my kids fighting and all the shit I have to deal with them between 3:00PM and 5:30PM or 6:00PM.
Perfect example would be, today my son comes home, my 6th grade year old son comes home, and informs me that he has a girlfriend. So there's a conversation I really wasn't planning on having or expecting to have today, you know, before heading to the gym and driving him to football practice. So that's been the last 45 minutes of my life. Discussing basically how to have a girlfriend when his mother doesn't want him to have a girlfriend at all. And how to treat a girlfriend. And the important things that come along with that.
Now you add to this, yesterday, I spent most of day off and on with our IT contractors trying to get a virus and malware off of my oldest son's computer that got infected from being on too many "inappropriate websites." So that was the conversation I had to have Tuesday, before training, with him. To make him better understand that that is what was screwing up his computer. And when your son is autistic, it increases the level of difficulty in this situation just a tad. Because he understands some. And some, he doesn't. Some, he's ignoring. Some, he's just making you think he's ignoring. Others, he's playing you because he knows how to play you. Meanwhile, all I'm trying to do is to keep from having to buy him a new laptop. And to teach him the same respect he should have for women.
So that is my typical, and it's not really extraordinary in any way what-so-ever, pre-workout.
The Best Lunch Ever
One thing I failed to mention, a couple weeks ago, our Sales Manager, who I'm going to mention by name is Mr. Matt Goodwin, discovered the best place to have lunch in London, Ohio. Awesome!, in his own words, "the very best place, a goldmine, fantastic".
This place is the London Senior Center where for $4.95 you get a cafeteria style lunch of whatever they have for the day. He has the freaking lunch menu which gives you what everything is for the day. I've been avoiding this. Like the plague. Because I knew what the outcome of this was going to be. So today, I took the bait, and I had about 7 potato wedges, some green beans, a chicken sandwich - a shredded chicken sandwich that is, some type of pie - which I'm not sure of what it was, and coleslaw. And not more than 4 hours later, just about the same time I got home and found out that my youngest son now has girlfriend, most of this conversation with my son was happening with me sitting on the toilet because of this FABULOUS lunch location this Mr. Matt Goodwin found. Thanks Matt..
Training For The Day
Chest and triceps.
Incline shoulder saver press. For this exercise I use the shoulder saver bar instead of the shoulder saver pad. The shoulder saver bar is a fat bar with the cylinder to be able to keep it from completely touching my chest. It's about two inches off the chest. With my shoulders I have to use a grip, which is about one thumb space away from the cylinder, so for most people it'd probably be considered a close-grip but I physically can't go any wider before I start to have crepitus and my shoulder starts popping and moving around in all kinds of funky ways. I did 4 sets of 8-10 repetitions with the barbell and then from there worked, put a quarter on each side for 3 sets of 5. Went to two quarters on each side for 3 sets of 5. Three quarters on each side for 1 set of 5. Three quarters and a dime on each side for a set of 5. Three quarters and two dimes on each side for a set of 5. Four quarters and a five on each side for a set of 5, and then drop down to two quarters on each side for set of 12 repetitions to complete failure. The training partners had to pull the bar off.
Flies with chains using the tsunami handles. The tsunami grip handles are really cool with this because it allows you to angle your hand a little bit more, takes a little stress off your wrist, and I'm able to get a little bit better contraction at the top. I also like using the chains for flies because I get de-load at the bottom so it takes a lot of the stress out of my shoulders in the most vulnerable position but makes my chest contract way harder at the top because the chains are picking up and that's where it's the heaviest. On this exercise I did 4 sets of 10-12 repetitions, each set going to failure. I did a fifth set, which was a loaded stretch, where I lowered to almost a complete stretch position. Let's say I was fifteen degrees away from a full stretch position because I don't want to do a loaded stretch in a full stretch position with my shoulders, and held it for a 45 second count.
Decline hammer press machine. Used one plate per side for 3 sets of 15. Just some warm up work. It wasn't feeling right on my shoulders. It took a couple of sets to kind of get the right position, the right seat position, the right hand position. Once everything felt right I worked up to two plates per side for 2 sets of 12. Then went to three plates a side for 4 sets of 8-10 with each set going to failure.
Machine flies for 4 sets of 10-15 repetitions. Each set, once again, taken to failure.
Tricep push-downs using the muscle mace. To this day I only use the bottom grenade balls and did 3 or 4 warm ups sets of 15, but then progressively worked up doing sets of 10 until I could not do sets of 10 anymore. Worked up to failure at a set of 8-9 repetitions, total number of work sets were probably around 4 to 5.
Coming Very Soon to Elitefts.com
Reverse grip, or what we call the angle grip bar, or we're going to relaunch the bar because we added a couple handles to it and it's going to be called "The American Angle-Grip Bar". The grips on this bar are designed to be able to do a reverse grip bench-press. That was the original purpose and reason for designing this barbell, was to have a bar that has an angle on it that will comfortably allow somebody to do a reverse grip without having to deal with the wrist pain of using a straight barbell. We stuck in some handles in the middle to be able to do tricep extensions, close grip bench-presses, and so for, so I was kind of experimenting with this bar today and did a super set of reverse grip bench-presses with the close grip handle. At this point I could not use a whole hell of a lot of weight, so I used one plate per side, did 15 repetitions with the reverse grip, and then was lucky to be able to get between 4 and 7 repetitions with the close grip handles. Did 3 sets, or 3 super sets of this exercise. Love the feel of the bar, everything's a go on this thing so we should have it up on the site soon. Everything with this bar turned out amazing and exceeded my expectations.
Seated dips using the seated dip machine. 4 sets of 8 to 10 repetitions with an 8 count eccentric on each repetition.
Spud tricep straps, overhead standing tricep extensions. The goal of this exercise is to get my hand back as far as I can behind my ears. This is not an easy thing for me to do because my shoulder does not want to rotate into that position, so it takes me usually 5 or 6 warm up sets. I don't even know if you want to call them warm up sets, they're probably more experimental sets to figure out what position I need to be in to be able to get the greatest range of motion on the stretch end of the movement. Once I finally figured that out, finally got it into place, I did 3 sets of 12 to 15 repetitions, all sets taken to failure.
Back to reality: Because I spent so much time on the can earlier in the day I was up most of the night getting my work for the day completed.
CLICK TO VIEW ALL MY LOG POSTS & ARTICLES