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 partially due to injuries 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. I have degenerative joint disease, have had two shoulder surgeries (right shoulder now needs replaced), one full hip replacement, knee surgery, and herniation's in all three regions of my spine, Bone spurs (all joints). 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.
Saturday, bad training.
The first exercise was using a hoist machine. I've never used that line of equipment before.
We began with a pull down, but it's kind of like a pull down and a row combined and 3 or 4 warm up sets, then 4 work sets of 10-15. A couple of reps shy of failure.
The 2nd exercise we used a seated low row placed machine with the same type of rep sets schedule, 3 or 4 warm up sets of 10, 4 work sets of 8-12. On this one I would say I took every work set to up to failure.
The third exercise was Nautilus pullover, which I was ... haven't done since High School and really didn't know if I would even be able to get in the position to do it with my shoulder, and was actually really pleasantly surprised at how it felt on my shoulder. I did not have a complete full range of motion and I wasn't really concerned about doing it from my lats or contracting my lats, or any of that shit. I was doing it to see how I was going to open my shoulder up and how it was going to feel on my shoulder, and it felt awesome.
John and the other guys that I was training with, did this a little bit differently. They did it using a form that kind of looked like a dumb bell pull over on a bench. It's really hard to describe and I didn't take pictures or films or Instagram shit. When I train it's kind of the last thing that I think about. Thinking back, I don't know if John did or not, but I hope one of them captured it because it was kind of cool how they did it. I was not able to do it that ways because my shoulder wouldn't handle it. The next exercise... how many I ... 4 sets of 10-12 reps. They were not to failure. It was more just a stretching motion.
The forth exercise was T-bar rows with what was probably perhaps the worse fucking chest supported row machine I've ever used in my life, but we made it work. You know you just had to ... If you get on a chest supported row machine and you ... and it sucks and you can't make it work. You don't feel it in your rhomboids or your lats. The trick of it is that you need to scoot up and scoot your feet back on the toe plate as far as you can and scoot up on it as much as you can. Sometimes your sternum made end up having to be off of the pad, but pay attention to what's actually being worked because it's not supposed to be a trap exercise and a lot of machines are set up with a lever. It's just way too long and it's built like shit. This kind of happened to be one of those, but you can change your body position and still make it work. 2 warm up sets, 4 work sets of 8-10.
The fifth exercise was using a core blaster and what I called the motorcycle handles. It looks like a stiff leg dead lift but it's really not. It's more of a lat contraction from the floor to the top. On this, I progressively increased in the weight. 3 or 4 warm up sets, and then 4 work sets.
That wrapped up the training for the day. As I said in the Swiss Symposium write up or as you'll read in the Swiss Symposium write up, whichever posts first, this training session or the write up. It was a great session for me because I was really super tired before hand and this kind of woke me up and I'm really ... Now that it's all said and done, I'm really glad that I did it because it allowed me to be able to stay up much later than I ever could. Typically, I'm falling asleep at 10 o'clock at night. This rejuvenated me and I was up until 1:40, 2 o'clock in the morning, talking to people I haven't talked to for 10 to 12 years and it was amazing to be able to do that and to be able to catch up with these people.
Sometimes training's more about just getting a pump and stronger inside. Sometimes it's about rejuvenating yourself so you can catch up with old friends.
