Training log update.
I'm still pretending to be a powerlifter half the time and a closet bodybuilder half the time, so basically what this boils down to is I'm lifting some heavy shit couple times a week and training like a bodybuilder for the rest of the time.
I touched on this before with the last post I made about my training. I'm in the process of going through and basically doing a high rid routine between John Meadows Mountain Dog stuff and some Westside-based stuff. I guess about a better way to explain it is it would be if there is such a thing as concurrent bodybuilding, it would be concurrent bodybuilding but bodybuilding is inherently concurrent the way that it's designed anyhow.
I'm utilizing the repetition method, dynamic effort method, and the max effort method. There's some things about these methods that makes them a little more complex to through in for a basic bodybuilding type program because the max effort method and the dynamic effort method do not necessarily elicit any type of growth, but what I've been finding over the past 12, 16 weeks of doing this is there's other impacts that they have on your training as far as being able to absorb force and building tendon strength and building muscle strength that it's actually helping in areas that I wasn't putting one and one together before, such as pain, joint pain, and so forth.
The max effort work is actually helping my joint pain instead of hurting my joint pain, and I can get into more details and science behind why that's actually happening in a later time. To quickly update from a strength perspective because my diet's not worth a thought, so there's nothing really to report on that except my body weight's hovering in between 270 and 280. It hasn't gone up, and it hasn't really gone down. I'm a little bit leaner but not by that much.
The focus has been more so on training for strength, balance out what this dynamic work and max effort work, what's the best of that training as far as the sets and repetition of all the bodybuilding type work and how hard being close to failure or pass failure in taking all those. From a strength update, when I went into the program, one of the training partners I trained with myself swiped at a few exercises to be able to use his base exercises. I can't use your standard squat bench and deadlift because I can't hold a squat bar on my back because of my shoulder. I can't touch my chest with a barbell because of my shoulder, and the deadlift, I fucking hate the deadlifts to begin with, so I'm not going to make any excuses for that. At the same time, full range of motion deadlift for me has never really done a whole hell of a lot from any type of growth standpoint. I hate it, and it fucking always hurts. It's like a train wreck after I do it.
The movements that were selected were spider bar box squat with hip joint slightly above knee. I did not say crease of the hip, I said hip joint. The reason I go with the hip joint is because while my left hip has been replaced, my right hip has not, and it's not great. It is borderline replacement, so some of the restrictions that I have post-surgery from my hip I've kept into place for my other hip, basically to try to put off and to avoid ever having to have surgery on that. One of those restrictions is, at least with heavier weights, not taking and going below 90 degrees or going below parallel. I'm not saying that that's something that should be done by anybody that has any hip problems. I'm saying this is a specific restriction that has been discussed with my physical therapist and my doctor when discussing long term training after my first hip was being done and for preventative nature of the other one.
I do squat below parallel and have put in close stance as deep as I can go squats. I'm not going to say my squats are ass to calves because I don't have the mobility to get there get, but they are definitely below parallel and I use the Tsunami bars to do that or the bamboo bar, something that's light and unstable because I want to build the ability to stabilize the joint first and then to absorb all of the force especially when we're going down. I'm trying to take this training level post to shorten it up a little bit.
The first test was with the spider bar. I did 5 plates per side. With that bar I just say plates per side. It's easier to remember. I don't have to say that the bar weighs 82 pounds. My bar I actually think is 90-something pounds because I still use the prototype bar. It's 5 plates per side, and the second test with it about 6 weeks in, I do think I made a blog post about it was 6 plates per side. Yesterday I did 6 plates and a dime per side, actually 6 plates and a 5 per side, so a 10 pound PR which is exactly what I want with the max effort work. I did by myself, and that old school situation where it was easy and I definitely know I could have done more. That's how I ended up being so fucked up in the first place, is by always doing that instead of being smart about it and just taking the 5 pound PR and walking away and coming back and getting in the other 5 or 10 PR next time, which will be in a few weeks.
After contemplating and going back and forth with myself about this is grab one of the other guys in the gym and we tore the bar down as fast as we could, that way I couldn't cheat on mine and go back up, so now I'm pissed off because I didn't do it, but I'll get over it in a week and then come back for that. From the bench standpoint, I'm using a few different exercises. I'm using a floor press with a zig zag bar with my feet not straight out in front of me but laying on the floor. That way I get to use my shoulders pushed, drilled, and locked into the floor to keep a little bit healthier environment instead of I don't want to be bench pressing, especially a floor press, with a fat type bar or different type of bar in an environment that's just going to put you in more crap on my shoulders. I want to be in a position where I can distribute the load and draw my whole body with that.
From that standpoint, it has and the progress hasn't been as fast and the strength gains have not been as fast, but I'm tripling and doing 5's. Before I had single lifts in the very beginning. Last week I did a reverse band press, 5 plates, a dime and a 5, and that was with a regular bar. That's getting back up pretty close to what I used to do before, but I'm trying not to get too tied up in all this. I'm just kind of pretending to be a powerlifter because there is no end game here. If I could just get the strength back up a little bit. I do think it's going to help with my joints, and because I am so far, at this point I kind of have the days locked in.
I have both the dynamic effort ways are going to be as far as how many weeks they're going waive. The accessories I kind of have that locked in on how many weeks I can stay with each accessory, and if I'm going to be able to, what intensity factors I need to use when I can go to failure, when I can go pass failure. I know now when to not do the accessories at all based upon how I feel and it's actually correlating to about a week, too, on the dynamic way with the lower body. With the upper body, I'm still kind of playing with that a little bit. For me to do the whole thing, it is a very long training session. It's going to be about an hour and a half. Typically, that's not going to be the case after I do the, what I call the alpha part of the program, which is the most important part of the program, which is going to be the first 1 or 2 movements.
From that I decide how much of the beta part of the program I'm going to actually do, which are going to be the movements that are after that. Sometimes it's 1 or 2 movements, but it can actually be up to 5 or 6, which depends how I feel after that first part of the movement because I haven't been able to actually get through everything that I want to get through. It's not due to time, it's just due to how I know how I recover and how I should feel at the end of the training session, in the middle of the training session, and so forth.
I'm going to throw in some recovery training days on top of the 4 main days I have now to help expedite that recovery process to be able to see if I can get through more of the bottom tier movements without throwing myself into a position where I'm not going to be able to get enough sleep and everything else again.
