As I said last week, I opted to restart this block after getting completely thrown off with a very nasty stomach bug last week. I pretty much took a 8-count on Tuesday and was in bed until the evening, and I was still pretty unsteady on my feet the rest of the week. Ended up getting into bed around 8pm every night and slept as much as I possibly could. Luckily, my kids were somewhat accommodating, in the sense that they were pains in the ass unless we took them to bed with us and then slept like…well, they slept like babies (there I said it, leave me alone!).
I did a repeat of the original workout today, and it didn’t go nearly as well as planned, but it’s a good jumping off point I think. Plus, I can only go up from here after how it felt.
I’m back to doing front squats vs 1 chain per side, and while the movement itself feels pretty good, there’s definitely something going on with my mid-back. I know when it got tweaked, just don’t know how to fix it yet. On Tuesday, while I was laid up, I was taking a nap with my 8-month old daughter (who was also sick, so we were providing comfort to each other that point), and I felt my mid back (just below the scapulae) start to hurt. I probably should have adjusted, but she was sleeping so peacefully that I didn’t have the heart to disturb her. So, like any good parent, I decided to suffer quietly and luckily, it wasn’t painful enough to keep me up.
The problem is that the same exact spot has been hurting whenever I carry any anterior load. Did I mention that I have twin 8-month olds? I’m pretty much carrying an anterior load whenever I want to spend time with them. Great, huh?
Anyway, because of this issue, front squatting just felt off, but it was the movement I had selected so I stuck with it in the hopes that warming up would help alleviate some of the issues. I was very wrong. Last time I did this movement, I got up to 205 for a comfortable set of 5, but today 185 started to almost feel like a grinder by the 5th rep. I capped it there figuring that I can only improve on this next workout. What I didn’t account for was how increasing the volume on the supplemental (paused) work was going to completely wreck me with just one set. Between the pain in my back, the instability in carrying the bar (I’ll get to that in a second) and suddenly a complete lack of aerobic capacity, I was shot after just a single set of 6 with 150lbs and sucking wind. Called it there, chalked it up to just still being under recovered from being sick, and went on to accessory work. All I can do now is hope that I can get everything back into square so that I can hit some bigger numbers in the next microcycle.
Before I get to the workout, let me address the instability issue from above. I prefer using a clean grip when doing front squats (a clean grip being with the position the hands are in after the catch phase of a power clean), but last time I was experiencing some serious wrist pain regardless of grip width, so, today I opted to use straps. Straps are a good middle ground, but for some reason I just couldn’t find a good bar position or proper tension on the straps to keep the bar locked on my deltoids. I think the set of paused reps was probably the best it felt, but even that felt pretty garbage-y. Anyway, if you can do a clean grip, use it every time you front squat, it’s just better.
Anyway, here’s the workout, as truncated as it was:
Front Squat vs. 1 Chain per Side – 45×10, 45×5 (add chains), 95×5, 135×5 (switched to strap grip), 155×5, 175×5, 185×5
2-Count Paused Front Squat vs. 1 Chain per Side – 150×6
- As I said above, these just left me sucking wind on the first set, so I stopped there and opted to move on with the workout.
Split Squat w/ Weight Vest – 26x15x3
- These give me such a killer quad pump. I’m debating whether I should increase the weight for next workout, or just work on improving the quality of these and get a better training effect before increasing the intensity. I think that’s what I’m going to do.
Ab Wheel Rollouts – 10×2
- I was intending on going for 3 sets, but frankly, my ROM was so short that the training effect was going to be minimal from adding volume. I’m going to just work on getting the ROM farther out, until I’m almost touching the ground with my nose, and then add volume from there. I’ll probably reduce reps to 2 sets of 5 instead of trying for 10 reps moving forward.
On the bright side of today, after I lost about 5lbs from being sick, and then eating completely off plan for the past few days to help with recovery, I found that my weight has pretty much stayed at the lower body weight. So that’s cool.
As of today, I’m officially down on 2.6lbs from January 1st, but frankly, my weight on January 2nd is probably a more accurate measure of where I started at, which was 202.4lbs.
Anyway, just have to keep the train rolling along. Got BJJ today, so that should be fun as usual.
Thanks for following along!
Ramble on Fitness 