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.
Wednesday, leg day.
Standing leg curls.
Six warm up sets. Ten to 12 reps. Four warp sets of eight to 10 reps. Each set being one to two reps, shy of failure.
Stiff leg bell lifts
Using the Hammer shrug machine. The way I preform this exercise is actually more like a Romanian dead lift, where I shift all of my weight back onto my heels and try to pull the handles back as I'm coming up. Keeping all the stress and tension on the hamstrings. Also, pull my toes up and try to keep my toes up throughout the whole movement. I don't use a whole lot of weight, maybe two plates per side would be going heavy for me. I did two warm up sets with a quarter per side and then four warp sets with one plate per side, for 15 reps. Each set was probably hard rep shy of failure.
Seated leg curls.
Two warm up sets, 15 and then four working sets of eight to 10 repetitions. Each working set of two to three reps, shy of failure.
Leg presses.
Five warm up sets of eight to 10 reps. Then, five sets of 20. With each set being really close to failure. Probably one or two reps, shy of failure. The way this is performed by as keeping my feet close and about half way down the foot plate. I control the tempo based upon how many repetitions were left in the set, so I would fail or come very close to failing at around 20 repetitions.
Leg extensions.
One warm up set of 20 reps. Then, four sets of 10 reps. Where I move forward and shift my hips back. It's actually lengthening the quads a little bit. After the 10 repetitions are performed I lean back against the seat and do 15 partials out of the bottom. These were done to failure as well. Once again, the tempo of the set dictated the repetitions. In other words, I was going to do 10 full repetitions and 15 partials if I started the set and it felt like 10 repetitions was going to be impossible, because my tempo was too slow, I picked up the speed of the tempo. If it felt like it was going to be too easy, I slowed down the tempo.
Hip abduction.
Two sets of 15 reps. Hip abduction, two sets of 15 reps. Just two sets of each one of these this time. The last time did these I got sore as hell, so I had to back it down and work it back up again. The last time I did these I did these I did four or five sets and the weight was way heavier. I kind of paid the price for that one and I wasn't going to go down that path again. That was hell. That was not good. It was a really stupid exercise to be extremely sore from.
kettlebell dead stop, dead lift.
I call them squats, but if you were to look at it, it actually looks more like a dead lift than a squat. Using a moderate stance, squatting down, grabbing the kettlebell and standing back up. Flexing the quads and the glutes at the top as hard as you can and then back down again. Three sets of 10 and then on the last set, the fourth set I just randomly chose three different kettlebells and did eight repetitions with each kettlebell.
Neck work using our neck machine.
It's a neck attachment that basically goes onto a pod that we have set up in the gym. Three sets forward, three sets backwards and one set to each side. That's it.