Life has been a little bit crazy with my person coming back into town but I wouldn't have it any other way. It had been about 7-8 weeks sense I last saw here so spending time with her was my priority. Training took a back seat however we did manage to get in some training together which is always nice. She pushes me like nobody else can.
I have been dealing with some hip bursitis lately. Lateral hip bursa has been inflamed for a while and its causing some havoc on my IT band and it has been affecting the ability for my quadriceps to activate.
So I have been increasing my rehab work. This consists of me bringing down the inflammation by adding an extra 2 days of rest in between legs sessions. I have started to incorporate more hip and glute mobility in order to free up my hips. I have been adding in extra eccentric loaded dorsiflexion work to increase ankle mobility. The combination of the above two are doing a good job of freeing up my IT band. Additionally I add in 2-3 days of soft tissue work per week but I change the modality and the intensity (aggressiveness) of the modality. Right now I'm using graston, light cupping for blood circulation and some self Active Release Technique.
So we managed to squeeze in a leg day while Laurie was in town. Legs went as follows.
Started with our typical hamstring work. We worked the single leg standing hamstring machine. This works the shortened ROM and you can get a killer contraction. I worked up in sets of 10 until I reached 80lb and then did a triple drop of 6,6,6. Next we moved on to a single leg press using the 45 degree angled leg press. I worked up in sets of 10 again until I couldn't get 10. This was 5 plates per side ( 10 total) then we did a strip set where Laurie pulled of 2 plates for 10 reps, pulled another 2 plates for 10 reps then pulled 1 plate for 10 reps, then she pulled another final plate for 1 last set of 10 reps. So total reps on the last set was 50 reps per leg.
Next we moved onto squats. Now one of the things I'm currently doing to help make squats easier is I added a shoe with a very small heel, maybe 3mm rise. This places a lot of the load on my glutes and hamstrings and lightens the load off of my quads tremendously. I will not keep this in forever. I will only wear the heel to assist me in hitting the depth I desire. Once I have the results i want from increasing my mobility I will ditch the heels and return to my flats. Use things as a tool not as a crutch! Here is a video of 405x10. This was my last working set of squats.
Our last final exercise was a super set of quad extensions with 2 sec pauses ss walking lunges with varying step lengths etc. 4 total working sets there. That was it for the leg day training. We went home and killed some pumpkin roll dessert that her mom made for me and had a nice Saturday. I will be catching up on training this week so keep on the lookout.
