Wed, 7 Jun 17

Block 12, Wave 3 - SQ

Sometimes when everything is feeling good, I get away from doing certain things to shorten my dynamic warm up.  Then when stuff gets tight and prevents me from moving well or through the correct positions, shit starts to ache or nag and I think I'm doing something wrong - and I'm right.  It is almost always that I didn't loosen up something that was tight or activate something that is not firing well (usually due to tightness somewhere) in my warmup.  Speaking of which, if you do not perform some type of dynamic warmup, you're an idiot.  Everyone, regardless of age, experience, or strength levels is going to get their soft tissues all jacked up, which can (and usually will) lead to knee pain, hip pain, low back pain, elbow pain, neck pain, or any other abnormal joint pain sooner or later if it is not addressed.

The more you do and/or the stronger you are, the quicker this happens.  I've worked with 20 year old college football players all the way up to 90 year old women who have complained of joint pain with and without movement and who were able to reduce or eliminate it through either adding in daily stretching, mobilizing and activating related areas in their dynamic warm up, or both.  So if your warm up is walking over to the squat rack and doing a set with the empty bar, you better be doing a solid 30 minutes per day, every day, of stretching if you don't want stupid, preventable pain.  Even then, you'll improve your performance with a well executed dynamic warm up.

I mention all this because my right knee had been bothering me the last few times I had squatted and I was worried something was wrong, but then I realized I was doing almost nothing to address it in my warm up.  I added in some quick joint flossing and some lax ball work to muscles around the knee and hip and boomsauce!  No more pain.

DB 3E Jumps

5xBW to 6"

5x30 to 6"

3x30 to 7.5"

3x30 to 9"

3x30 to 12"

The set at 12" was much better than last week so I'll do 2 sets here next week.

Squats

10x55

6x15

4x235

2x325

5x360

3x410

2x455

No pain thanks to pulling my head out of my ass and warming up correctly.

Banded Axle DL (short light bands)

5x80 + bands

2x170 + bands

4x2x220 + bands

2x240 + bands

2x260 + bands

SS Yoke Bar Calf Raises/Incline Reverse Crunches

2x{20x305/15xBW}

20x305/12xBW