Thursday, leg day.

I haven't updated my training as frequently as I would like to, but I'll drop in a couple of training sessions here and there until I get this training program gets completely structured and figured out. I do have it figured out to the point now that I know pretty much what's going to be going on on what day each week, and how the intensity factors are going to cycle throughout each week. With being on vacation last week, or the week before ... the days all kind of run together for me. When I came back the first I hit was a really, really light leg day just to get the blood flowing.

One of my indicator movements that I'm using to gauge the strength and the progress of the maximal effort  work that I added into the program is the spider bar squat off a box. I wanted to see where that was at, because while I haven't necessarily dialed in the program, I've been working through the program to dial it in, and I have been making progress with it. I wanted to see where it was at.

When I first tested, I worked up to 5 plates per side, and kind of gauged that maybe I would have been able to do 5 and a half plates per side, but was kind of doubtful.

Now, being 5-6 weeks into the program, I wanted to hit the spider bar again, test it, and see where it was, and was planning on working up to a single on that, and then going through and doing the rest of the training for the day. The training proceeded with starting with 135 for a set of 5.

I did wear the light metal pro-briefs. These are original, the first pair of metal briefs that I ever had. They're tight, but they're not super jacked tight. Before I was training in the metal M ... the metal single ply which are about a size too big ... The problem is with those, when I started the program, My weight was 299. Right now, I'm 274. When I wanted to put those on, they were way too big ... they didn't do shit. It didn't give me any support at all so I went with a ten year old pair of metal pro briefs.  It's hard to gauge because with my hip replacement ... I'm not so concerned with that one. What I'm concerned about is my other hip that's going to eventually need replaced. I don't want to work up to anything extremely heavy without having some type of support. My old pair of metal pro briefs seem to be about the same as what the m briefs were, expect they were way more uncomfortable. I am not under to the thickness in the crease of the hip and will get a smaller size of the M briefs.

There were multiple sets with 1 plate a side for several sets with the briefs ... just to get the legs of the briefs where I felt like I could sit back and not have it pinch my dick, or bite my leg and all this other crap, because they were sliding so much. I don't want the gear too big or too tight either. I am just looking for the support without the pain in the ass of wearing briefs.   Once I got that figured out, I went to 2 plates per side for a triple.

Went to 3 plates for a single, 4 plates for a single, 5 plates for a single, and then went up to 6 plates. With 6 plates. It's been a long time ... probably since 2007 since I've had that much weight on the bar, and took it out shaking like a mother fucker, which I normally do when the weight gets around 5 plates per side. I've got to figure out how to work around this again.

I used to think it was the hip causing it. I was told before it was the nerve damage and the spinal compression. Whatever it is, I take the bar out, and I shake like hell. As soon as I start to sit back, the shaking stops. The hardest part of the whole entire lift for me, is standing up with the damn thing. Once I stand up with it, and the shaking stops, then I begin to sit back. In this case I  tried to stand up with it 3 times ... can't get the fucker out of the rack. Finally braced myself in a different way. Every time I can't get it out one  way, I'm changing how I'm trying to brace, where my hip position is, because it's been so long since I've had that weight on my back, It was hard to remember what to do.

I finally got the fucker out, shake like crazy, bend my knees, shaking stops, sit back, pause on the box, and stood up like it was easy. If all I had to was stand up off the box with the weight, I probably could have done another 50 pounds, maybe another 90 pounds, but there's no way I'm going to get it out of the rack. From that stand point, there's another weakness I have to work on for that, but at the end of the day I was happy with that. I was also shot.

I think the total number of reps I did was around 12-15 if I  added it up for that session,  ... after that top set I threw up, dry heaved and the cramping started. Anytime I jack myself up into this mental state, I usually end up throwing up, getting sick, blowing dry heaves, cramping, blow my eyes out and having all types of issues. It just comes along with getting in that mental state. It's not something that I want to do every training session, or multiple training sessions, because I'd never recover.

This is something  I do when I'm lifting a weight that I'm not really sure if I can do or not. I need to put myself ... I need to take myself out of the gym and replace myself with somebody else who knows they can do it. That's putting myself into another state to be able to do it. I (or better stated the other "I") had no problem doing it.

That was it and it was awesome. It was just awesome. This is what I lift for. It was just fucking awesome. It's been so long to strain like that. It was just fucking awesome. I'm so happy. To me, the weight is irrelevant. It was just fucking awesome to be in that state, in that zone, and under that strain again. I don't have words to explain how fucking awesome it was. At that point, I knew there was no point in doing anything else for the rest of the day.

It's funny that this is a fairly long post for a training session that involves one exercise and about 2 total work sets. But it was fucking awesome, so I wanted to post it, to note it. Not so much for you guys, but for myself, because I want to be able to look back on it and remember what this felt like, because this is what I have to be able to add into my training. This is a huge part of what I love about the training process that's been forgotten in my training for so long. I loved it. I've got to bring it back. I just need to do it in a way that's not going to fuck me up, and push me backwards. I'm already fucked up enough. That's the update on that.

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