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.
Sunday. Leg day.
This was a training session that I was actually not going to do. I was going to move to tomorrow because I have to go spend time with my family for Thanksgiving. Yeah, I know it's not Thanksgiving but when you have several Thanksgiving gatherings to attend, they get spread out over the period of the whole week. When I woke up this morning, it was about 6:30 and I do have to say that with the use of the CPAP which started Tuesday I believe, I do not sleep in as late as what I used to. I fall asleep much faster. I fall asleep sooner. I've been waking up around 6 or 6:30. I've also noticed that when I wake up I feel like I actually did sleep and woke up.
This morning after I woke up I decided to test it out and see if I could actually just wake up, get something to eat, shower and head off and train and see what happens. I got to the gym around 8:30, 9:00am and trained legs. I went into the session not expecting a whole hell of a lot out of it because I haven't been able to train this close to waking up in probably ten years. The session went really well. I think it's just a matter of giving myself another hour to be able to let my body move around a little bit, a little bit more time in a hot shower. Spending more time warming up and there could be a really good possibility that I could actually move my training back into the morning before work, which was something that I thought was a complete impossibility forever. I never thought that that would be a possibility to be able to do that ever again.
This was a good test. It worked out real well. I'm a little excited about it, it's opening up a possibility I didn't know existed which can really help me when it comes to busy times of the year and time management and being able to have a more consistent training time.
Training Session
Seated leg curls
seven warm-up sets of ten reps. Obviously there were a lot of warm-up sets because it was pretty much straight into the gym and that's what I started with. Throw my coat off, jump on the machine and go. That's about how much time I had to be able to get this done. I was also under a time restraint. I only had an hour and a half to be able to get in and out.
After the warm-up sets, I did six work sets of ten to fifteen reps. None of the sets were taken to failure. Each one was about two reps shy of failure. I do control the tempo on this and I do hold the contraction for a one second contraction. After every five reps, I like to try to get a really big stretch on my hamstrings by pulling my toes back and trying to lift my hamstrings off of the bench. In other words, pushing my shins into the top of the pad as hard as I can.
Leg presses
I worked up to a weight that was going to be comfortable, for a set of twenty, but would still be able to do 30-35 if my life depended on it.
Once I found the weight I'd be able to do twenty reps with, I did eight sets of twenty reps with my feet close together and down mid platform. This seems to hit my quads more than if I keep my feet real high. Keeping my feet real high, I'm way stronger because it's going to pull in more of the hamstrings and more of the hips is where I'm more dominant. Pulling it down closer like I did when it's more quads, I'm not as strong and that just goes back to the power lifting background that I have.
Hack squats.
One warm-up set of fifteen reps, two work sets of ten reps, and then two sets of one rep with an eight count eccentric and then an eight count ISO Hold. Then using my hands and legs, pulling myself back up to the top. I used the monster mondo hack squat to do this and the benefit of that is there are handles both in the top by your head but there's also handles at the bottom which are down by your waist. When I do something like this, which is going to put me at complete failure or very close to complete muscular failure, by grabbing the bottom handles I'm able to use my arms and body leverage to get the weight back up to the top and then lock it back on. There were a few sets of those.
Leg extensions.
Five sets of twenty reps. There are no warm-up sets. I just used whatever weight was on the machine. It was a couple forty-fives and a quarter and a few dimes, I'm not really too sure. The weight was moderately heavy so I just used the tempo that I needed to use to make twenty reps hard and so I would fail somewhere between 17 and 20. On these again I like to control the tempo. I think I get more out of it by controlling the tempo than just slamming into it and slinging the thing up as hard as I can.
Glute press machine.
I absolutely suck at this. I've always sucked at this. It's been a year now, I have no idea how in the hell I'm actually getting better at it. Three sets of eight reps. Pretty much the same way I've been using for a year so on this one, I think I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and start doing it every day to be able to get everything to fire the way it's supposed to fire.
Loaded stretch for the quads and a loaded stretch for the hamstrings.
Each one of these were held for a forty-five second count in my head. Then wrap it up for the day, head home. When it's all said and done, the verdict's still out in regards to I'm going to be able to pull this morning training shit off before work but we'll see. At least it looks like the option may be open.
On the good side of things it does seem like the CPAP is making a big difference in how I feel and how I sleep. My wife says I don't snore. That's great for her. I don't know if I really ever gave a shit about that but it's good for her but I'm starting to see that it does definitely help and it's making a difference on how I sleep. I can't at this point, after being almost a week, there's no way, absolutely no way that I'm going to sleep and not have that thing on. I can say that without a doubt.