Nothing we can do will help you. Best words said ever.

I did the "Manly" thing this week and went to the first physical therapy appointment as prescribed by my Orthopedic doctor last month. I'm not sure if I posted on this but I have had some reoccurring leg issues in my right leg (quad to ankle) which have manifested more frequently with my piss poor squatting. So, the general premise here was to identify what is making my knee hurt while also causing my leg to make the most god awful noises ever. We did an X-ray on the first visit and the good and bad news is that there was not a sign of anything peculiar, nor was there any evidence of arthritis. Leaving me with a choice for the follow up steps, which were basically A. to do an MRI and determine if it was a torn meniscus which would result in surgery, or B. Go get some PT and see if some age-old injuries had just caused my leg to go full retard. Being that I'm like many others and loathes the idea of surgery, I elected to start with a PT regimen before MRI's. In an effort to not sound like a pussy, I justified this decision by claiming that the expense was going to be generally lower. I'm a cheap bastard.

So I enter into the world of Physical Therapy. I'd never been prior to this...

God bless Google for showing this shit.

My "Therapist" (I think that is officially what they are called) directed me to one of those sturdy tables covered in red vinyl for the initial part of the assessment. So, some small talk and a history lesson later, I'm getting felt up. (Not in the bad touch, I need an adult kind of way.) She was looking at muscle tone (my T-Rex quads, paid off here and I was complemented. Ego trip activate!) flexibility, and strength of the joints, etc...Then we got into some of the push here, pull here stuff, all of which came up completely "normal". Apparently normal is apparently a relative term in these places, because I was informed that passing a test, didn't actually mean you passed anything. That seemed a little confusing, but hey, I was there for answers, regardless if they made sense or not. Next up was the circuit of weight machines.

Informing the PT that I had done a full blown squat workout about 4 hours earlier, she was hesitant to have me perform any of the movements. It was week one of the cycle, so it was like a 75% workout at a top work set of 260 for 8. She immediately became concerned of "HOW MUCH" weight this was, while I was crying inside at how bullshit my number is. Regardless, I shrugged it off as no big deal, and let her know that I would be happy to run through the exercises with her. I started out with a leg extension, which immediately reflected the quad dominance I have been seeing in my poorly executed squats. Double leg for most of the rack, and on to single legs for sets of 10 with 100 pounds, she shut me down pretty quick on that apparatus.

How a PT want you to squat. Notice how much weight is on this kid's back.

Next up, my old friend the seated leg curl. BTW, I have never mentioned this, but I apparently have the ham's of a 10 year old paraplegic girl. The double legs I was doing were fine, but when I isolated, HOLY SHIT! I couldn't do 30 pounds without a huge swing down. I reinforced something I had already suspected after watching this video series from EliteFTS, I need more assistance work and this is more than likely my biggest weak spot for squatting. I started adding in reverse hypers a few weeks back as a matter of fact. I guess I should really consider the glute-ham raises too. I am devising a whole plan for extra assistance work, but I'll save that for another post.

Finally I did their stupid leg press machine for the rack and we decided to call it quits. That's when she complemented me in a way by telling me that there wasn't anything that she could do for me that I wasn't trying already with higher volume and intensity then they could offer. I guess the next step is going to have to be a strict MTFU mindset, or an MRI.

A whole bunch of downtime and not a word to say.

I was effectively "Out of Commission" due the the injury reported in the previous post which re-aggravated soon after that writing. Rather than whining about it, I laid low, flew out to California for work, drank a bunch of beers, and saw how the other half lived. The other half, meaning those of us who aren't fortunate enough to work in a "hardcore" setting. (God, I fucking hate using that word as a descriptive term) The hotel I was in was pretty swanky digs, and it came all inclusive with a resort type spa and gym. I however will use the word gym very loosely. They had a few rows of Matrix machines, treadmills, elliptical, and a few other cardio things I have never seen. They also had some dumbbells which went to 75's and the typical triceps press down/lat pull machine. Not wanting to lumber around for 10 full days, I got some light assistance work in which at least kept me in hock with the calorie police that live in my head. It's increasingly difficult to justify 3500+ calories sitting on my ass.

This is the enemy of strength

None the less, I came to a few conclusions on my time away from the rack.

First of all...That treadmill and band pulley weight machine shit sucks. I mean fucking terrible. I have never felt so close to injury while attempting any group of exercises in my life. This includes the notorious SMITH MACHINE SQUAT. Much like that mess, the physics of these contraptions are all wrong, and the weight which you can "say" you are using is a farce.

Secondly. I'm not doing enough. I'm "trying" hard, and I'm gaining and I'm injuring myself pretty regularly and fighting through it,but I can do more. As dumb as it sounds, the injuries are actually bringing me to this conclusion.  So I went back to my 5/3/1 where I left off and I have had some "Week 3" pretty heavy, and overall successful sessions since I landed back at home on Saturday including another Squat PR for reps. My bench fell off a bit, but I have added some accessories which I think will elevate that within the next 6 or so. Here's the "I'm not doing enough" part. More squats!

MORE SQUATS! and squat accessories.

This technically is a squat accessory

I have to add a high volume light weight day, or box jumps, or good mornings or fuck, maybe even some pause work into the lower end of my movement. I don't know, maybe all of it! My squat is terrible still. 280's for 5-6 isn't fucking good enough. And I noticed the other day, I am slow out of the hole. Not just at heavier weights either, I mean at 135, I'm slow some days. Other days, I could probably do jumps with that. I'll figure that training day out and report on it's physical effectiveness at a later date...

I know what you're thinking Blah, Blah, Blah, get to the fucking point of this. I have one. It's corny and kinda lame but I got really excited by this earlier. It has nothing to do with the new Thursday morning session I'm adding, but it ticks off the "More" from the list. It has everything to do with three things below..

This is actually learning. This is actually wanting to try harder.  This is actually growing.

All of that to me is being better, and what this has become all about.

See that right there. Don't pull that.

Get your eyes of the skeleton ass. Weirdo.

  Today was my first day back in the rack since a little incident on Saturday. (You figure that would leave more time for blogging.) I pulled my trap on the left side doing a Overhead Press (Which I PR'd) and I have been all but handicapped since.

Went back to "TRY" some squats. Hit a all time PR and a new overall max. Fuckin' A Cotton. Fuckin' A.

When you go up to come back down - Training the bench

Let me be the first to admit that my bench is terrible. It wasn't until just recently that I even tried to really do the movement utilizing the barbell. I had always saw more capacity for actual strength with the dumbbell method, as you generally have to utilize and isolate all of those little stabilizing muscles to support the effort. So, as it goes, that's what I always did. Then I went through a whole 10 years or so of doing nothing but smoking, drinking and acting in general debauchery. Whilst getting back into it, I find it a little funny that I never cared about the bench as it is what some people call "the lift". I love to tell people things about myself.  However, that question, "How much do you lift" is and probably will always be generally related to the bench when coming from people. I never cared to tell anyone, as I don't think I have literally ever maxed the movement out. I never even did the movement in any volume when I was younger. Bench and Bicep bros everywhere are crying right now. 

This guy probably benches 405. Squats in the curl rack for irony.

All of these little confessions are certainly showing in the numbers I've been putting up too. As we saw in my previous post here, I started somewhere around a 125 for 5 set. I did the Starting Strength thing for long enough to have to roll of shame out at 170 for 5. Then we had our late in the year direction change to 5/3/1.

So under the 5/3/1 principles, I max rep my last work set. Balls out, high intensity, highest volume I can achieve, one rep shy of killing myself. That's what you do. Looking deeper into it however, I find it to be absolutely amazing how on week 1 of any given cycle I have gained 20% strength, only to see it slip, and slip and slip away. I'll add a couple things here. First, I know I am literally coming off a modified week of "rest" from the deload. Second, I am staying above the grade when it comes to the overall point of the program. That "point" of the program is essentially to achieve slow linear progression with an overall increase in strength.  Here's the way it looks on paper. It's really annoying, although it's quite interesting how training in this fashion really hits your body. I am starting this illustration at week 9 overall or Week 3 of cycle 2.

Week 3 - Max effort rep - 190 x 5
Deload - who cares.
Week 1 - Max effort rep - 160 x 15
Week 2 - Max effort rep - 185 x 8

Theoretically 185x8 is better than 190x5, and I know that 160x15 wouldn't of happened 2 months ago.

And, all of those number makes my little graph go like this...

Which, makes my brain hurt, even though we are directionally correct in our strategy to improve the lift, and honestly I feel as though I am much stronger. My issue with the bench now becomes that even though I never cared to have an ego about the bench, the bench started getting Excel files involved.

For those of you that don't know. I fucking love Excel files.

Somehow, when you type in I love excel into www.google.com, you get this. Mother fuckin' Gosling.

Deload Week Deadlifts

I mentioned that I kind of like and equally hate the deload week on 5/3/1 in my last post. I don't think there is a day that this feeling is more prominent than on dead lift day. If I haven't eluded to my pure and unadulterated love for the dead lift, or the god damn frustration that the movement causes me, let me start today.  I love doing dead lifts. Fucking straight up love them. I'm not even that strong at them yet, but it is the best goddamn ego boosting exercise in the world as far as I am concerned. Here's a little gushing little love story about the dead lift, as narrated by me.

I love that it's not a highly technical lift and that it's right there in front of you. The lift is fundamental simplicity. The basic premise of the entire movement is just what it is. You pick up the fucking weight. You, pick it up and fucking stand there with it for a second, then put it back down. Just like that. Then you do the exact same sequence of events again.  When you can do this in both volume and frequency and intensity, it gets better.

There you have it. Even the love story about the lift is simple. So imagine my disdain when I get into a week that I get to do work sets warm-up weights. I understand it's good for my body to rest or something in order to make progress (i.e. GAINZ) but I can still bitch about it. I have also seen some musings elsewhere about the CNS being overly taxed. I'm not going to buy that at 2,3,or even 400 pounds. Never the less, I was a good boy and listened this week.Here's this week's log.

Deadlift 135x5,135x5,165x5,165x5,205x5,205x5,205x5,205x5,135x10,135x10,135x10,135x10,135x10
Leg Press 
425x10,425x10,425x10,425x10,425x10

Disclaimer: If you are doing some deads, make sure they don't look this terrible. Or good, I can't tell...It's like looking at a house fire, or a car wreck.

Hill Sprints - The test run

This is gonna be short. I did some testing on this hill in my back forty today and all I can say is HOLY FUCK! Wendler was right here... "It Sucks Balls".

I did two, yes two runs up this thing and my lungs are about to explode.. I apparently need conditioning.

45 yards. FML

De-load week, the sickness and read your books.

No pretty pictures this week, just a quick update.

So this is the 8th official week of my venture into 5/3/1, which presents the ever glorious and depressing deload week. It's truly a little of both. It absolutely sucks to have to check your ego at the door and do 40% squats after hammering home 3 PR's the week before. But, in the same breath, it's a welcome relief to get to work on form and some of those weak points you've identified in the last couple sessions. If I can't make the work hard by volume or frequency, I am going to do my best to make sure it's technically perfect. Fortunately, the timing couldn't be better for this "lighter" version of the work. I think the flu bug that is wreaking havoc on the area was somehow able to sneak it's way into the house and is attempting to make me it's first incubator. I haven't fully succumbed to it yet though. I guess, I'm kinda half sick.

A funny thing happened a few days ago. I decided to learn something correctly. For some reason I made the adult decision that I should probably purchase the book for the program I am doing that explains everything the way it was meant to look, rather than what I have been doing which was reading web-board chatter and anecdotal information from r/weightroom. Guess what! I was doing it wrong.  Not totally wrong, but there were a few little nuances which from just looking at I could immediately tell would make a ton of difference. We shall see as they get put into practice. If I think it's worth mentioning later, I'll give some insight to the changes I made. One or two light workouts in doesn't seem like long enough to accurately measure.

I am going to get through this deload, measure and then start adding conditioning in. I suppose it's probably best to do it now as Wendler had described some overall number declines when adding things like hill sprints in. I would rather take a step back while my squat is at 285 and 5 pound jumps aren't that big of a deal instead of 400, where every ounce is going to matter. The long term goal is to get stronger, let's get me stronger all the way around. Selling back a week to earn more is fine by me.

Unrelated to anything above, and I guess you can file this under the equipment part of the story...$2.00 ACE type bandages do nothing for your knees when squatting. Buy wraps. Pay the $30, and it will be worth it.