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. 

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* 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.

Saturday arm pump training day.

Since I had to move my normal back training from Saturday to Friday it left a gap open for today. I could have just taken the day off but my son trains on Saturday. I was going to bring him to train, I might as well do something myself.

First question I had to figure out was what to do. I already know that I'm training in legs tomorrow. It was a matter of trying to figure out if I wanted to train what is currently the most sore on my body or if I wanted to train what was not sore.

There's two different options here. If I train what is the most sore, which currently right now is my chest, I can help to recover faster by doing a light chest pump-type of workout. But given that I won't train chest again until probably Monday or Tuesday I really didn't see the point of doing that. I'll be recovered greatly before that training sessions comes around.

The next option is to train what's not sore at all, which happened to be my arms. I had an arm pump day.

I did triceps push-downs with, I don't know the name of the handle, but I will put a link to it in here. I have not used it very often. This is the second time that I've used it. I like the way it felt. Given the fact that it was just going to be 4 sets of 15, I wasn't really too concerned with what type of push-down I was going to do as long as I could get blood into the muscle. I ended up doing 2 warm ups sets, and then 4 sets of 15 to 20. Each set was taken to just shy of failure.

Kettle bell cross body extensions. The way I do this is lying flat on a bench grabbing a kettle bell and then bringing it down as I would in extension, but going across my body or across my face until basically the back of my hand is touching, or close to touching my face, keeping the elbow high and straight. 15 repetitions with each arm and then immediately switch right back to the arm I started with. Do a set to failure, which would be anywhere between 4 to 6 repetitions. I call these double sets. I did 4 double sets.

Triceps seated push-downs. I do this exercise quite a bit in my training if you follow my blog. Being that this is just a pump day and I'm not really concerned with a lot of the training variables that I typically would use in a normal training day, my goal here was to pick a weight that I could do 100 reps with and shoot for that.

I put on about half of the stack. It took 4 or 5 sets for me to get pull up 100 reps. Basically the way it's laid out is I did as many reps as I could do. It was somewhere in the 35-40 rep range. Then basically using rest pause, taking 8 to 10 breaths and then knocking out as many more reps as I could trying to get between 6, 8 or whatever. I got to a total of 100 repetitions.

Standing dumbbell curls. Nothing fancy here. Just regular dumbbell curls. 2 warm up sets of 10. 3 work sets of 8 to 10 repetitions. Each set going to failure using is as slower than normal tempo.

NOTE: I realized after the dumbbell curls that I was going to have a hard time getting any kind of pump or any type of blood in my biceps. I noticed this when I trained biceps earlier in the week. I don't really know what's going on there. I broke from the training and went over to a stretch rock. We have a stretch rock in the gym that's made by True Fitness. It's called a True Stretch Trainer. It's several different bicep stretches to try to open the biceps up a little bit. Then I hit the biceps with a roller. It's a stick. It's called the Monster Stick. Hit it with that to try to get a little circulation and blood going on in the biceps. Went back and did 2 more sets of bicep curls. At that point started to feel like my biceps were getting a little pumped. I don't know what the deal was going on there.

If I have a pump day like this where I'm just trying to drive blood into the muscle and it's not going in there, I'm not going to keep pounding it with more and more sets or more and more repetitions. I've learned with me over the past 20 years the shit never works doing it that way. I got a break from it. Stretch it out. Get the muscle activating one way or another, then go back and basically start over again.

Face curls using the 4 inch grenade, stacked, V bar handle. I set the cable up to about face level, putting my hands on the back end of the 4 inch grenades, pulling to my face leaving my hands basically open so it's not a closed fist. Performed 6 sets of 10 to 15 repetitions to failure. I then dropped the cable down to chin level and grabbed the V part of the handles and did 4 sets of 15 to 20 repetitions to failure doing curls with the V grip part of the handle.

The last exercise is the one that I always hate to admit in my training log. It's one arm preacher curls using the glute ham raise as the bench to curl off of. Surprisingly, I'm getting stronger on this thing, which is interesting to me. I've never been able to get stronger on this stupid exercise pretty much my entire life. I've always had to use between 25-35 pounds to be able to get the range of motion that I want, which is a 3/4 range of motion. I do not want to stretch the bicep all the way at the bottom and have any chance of hyper-extending my elbow.

I'm more concerned with is being able to get a good contraction at the top and being able to really feel the rep. I'm not going to do something so stupid as this, I'd better feel something. It better burn like hell. At least make me think like I'm doing something other than just looking like an idiot in the gym.

Over the last few times of doing this my strength is really progressed up. I've used 45 pounds today. It still isn't a huge amount of weight, but was able to control it in a really good manner the same way I would with 20. I guess if there was any real take-away for the day that was a good thing I suppose. Then again it's still the preacher curl on a glute ham raise.  So why do I really care at all?