Strength Training for Singles 2014: Eight-Week Workout Cycle III

BTW Sid, Dan John and Pavel also both encourage training barefoot, seems like Rooney does too according to the article.
Rip always has a one size fits all philosophy, that's his personality. Which is funny as quite a few people knock him over it. However I did cut my toe open on my squat rack the other day...
 
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Shoot, I skipped my triples yesterday. I am going to work them in on Friday. I am liking the 2 x 5 lifts quite a bit, well I still haven't worked up the courage to do them with squats. Which I think I prefer the 5 x 2 style because it allows me to experiment a little more with the setup. I have also been supersetting the lifts to get them done quicker which is definitely doable with the lighter loads. Although 2 x 5 on the DL is tough. I think right now there is little reason for me to work singles as I feel like I am getting the same stimulus from the lighter weights?

BA any elbow or shoulder issues from the pull ups?
 
BA any elbow or shoulder issues from the pull ups?

the shoulders are perfectly fine as far as that goes. i think they still have a little something torn up in the joint part from volleyball and/or getting my arm ripped off by 4-year-old girls. however, the "heavy" weight training inspired by your original "optimal weight training" thread seemed to rehab it, so it never hurts or anything. just i can get it to make some indescribable sounds with particular motions if i really want to. but those seem to be getting less pronounced as the training continues.

my left elbow has a little something. but i think it is a muscle thing rather than a tendon/ligament thing. like, there is a super-teensy muscle that goes across the front and top side of the bumps on the upper end of the humerus that is still getting into shape. as i mentioned before, i had a similar issue with one knee when i started running (and come to think of it, it was probably the analogous muscle on the other limb). thus, i am not too worried about it and am giving it the old crosswise massage and what not.
 
Yeah I am from the Chicago-land area, which is a great place to be from. I still call Colorado home though and hope to get back there eventually. I could settle back in AZ too, its definitely a cool state. Not sure about the length over here, we are enjoying it immensely so I have no reason to head back for a while. Little man is doing great, he's actually a very easy one thank goodness, which makes life much more enjoyable. Thanks for asking! And how about your family? Getting ready to hibernate for the winter?

I took the garbage out barefoot this morning, cold wet weather makes it quite unenjoyable. I give you guys credit for having the patience for winter barefoot runs.

Yeah I haven't read about the texas method too much. But SS and the texas method seem similar to what we are doing with some additions to fill the weaknesses of those two programs. On another note I think I really was able to dial in my squat stance today, the trick was not pointing my toes out and keeping the width a little narrower. There was a lot of pop out of the whole so I think I am going to keep working this style.

Trying to firm up some race plans for the next few months... I need to find a 50 miler somewhere in the Ardennes.
Hmnn, I lived in Chicago seven years. A lot more going on than in the Twin Cities, and it feels like you're closer to the East Coast. St. Paul is the last of the Eastern Cities I guess, and Minneapolis the first of the Western Cities. Anyway, I still would like to move out West at some point. I'll take mountains over lakes any day.

The family's going great. Our daughter is old enough now (seven and a half) that she can help out more and keep her little brother (three and a half) occupied. So that's a big help. Plus it's great listening in on their conversations. Our daughter starts basketball this week, because two of her friends are doing it. It would be great if she takes a liking to sports. I think that's great for young girls' self-esteem.

Winter kinda sucks, but once we get a decent snowfall, we can start sledding. I'll try to use the sled-harness and sprint up the hills for some quad development. I gotta get back to hills and intervals at some point. Been thinking about the daily 5K a bit again, but I liked six miles on Saturday, so I think I'll try six miles again today, and stick to a 3xweek schedule with some run-commutes on my off-days. In any case, hopefully this winter won't be as bad as last winter. So far, I'm kind of enjoying it, then in January you have the NFL playoffs, so it's just February that really sucks, but sometimes we can get spring-like temps then, so you start to feel like you're home-free.

The barefoot running in the winter thing is interesting. I think it's a combination of one's natural tolerances and adaptation. You got to ease into it throughout the fall I think, but it also helps if you perform day-to-day activities like taking out the garbage barefoot as much as possible.

I think I've committed now to making this cycle an experiment in adapting the Texas Method to the rhythm I adopted by accident last week. I'll take my triples @85% my 1RM, then, using your percentage of percentage approach, set my volume day weights at 88% of that, and my recovery/dynamic day at 90% of the volume weight. This gives me numbers that seem reasonable:

Texas adapted.jpg

If it proves to be too much, I'll lower the percentages. I'm still hoping to get in some assistance lifts on Wednesday, the recovery day, mainly Russian Twists, Hypers, Farmer's Walk, Pullovers, Dips, and Rotator Cuff. If I can do the main lifts with little or no warm-up, should be possible.

Yesterday I pulled a muscle slightly. After moving the pullup handles over to the other side, I was in a bit of a hurry trying to get through my first volume day, didn't warm-up properly, and felt a little niggle on the third rep of my first workset of deadlifts. Opps. I think I can massage and stretch it out in time for tomorrow's workout. This afternoon's run should do it some good too.

Glad to hear you're successfully honing the squats. It's funny how those little adjustments can make such a big difference, but until you're completely sure about your technical choices, it's hard to approach the squat confidently. It took me several months of messing around until I found something that works for me. Now I really love the movement, the little trip up and down. I'm also really getting into the OH Press for the first time. Those two lifts plus the deadlift are my points of emphasis now. But I'm going to keep the deadlift volume a little lower to avoid overtraining.

. I think right now there is little reason for me to work singles as I feel like I am getting the same stimulus from the lighter weights?

I still have trouble trusting that 2 x 5 is going to be enough, so hopefully allowing myself a higher intensity day on Friday and a higher volume day on Monday will scratch the itch.
Yah, I saw that. It's definitely possible, just have to keep plugging away. I'll start testing my 1RM by spring at the latest.

BTW Sid, Dan John and Pavel also both encourage training barefoot, seems like Rooney does too according to the article.
Rip always has a one size fits all philosophy, that's his personality. Which is funny as quite a few people knock him over it. However I did cut my toe open on my squat rack the other day...
Yah, Rip seems like kind of a prick, but I respect his no-nonsense attitude. His recommendation for bar position and narrow, thumbless grip was key to getting my squat more stable.
"It's not comfortable stepping out of the rack barefoot with 400 or 500 pounds on your back," Rooney says.

Funny, for me, it's just the opposite. I feel so stable barefoot.
 
Hmnn, I lived in Chicago seven years. A lot more going on than in the Twin Cities, and it feels like you're closer to the East Coast. St. Paul is the last of the Eastern Cities I guess, and Minneapolis the first of the Western Cities. Anyway, I still would like to move out West at some point. I'll take mountains over lakes any day

Yeah I should put it in context, if you like city life or road running Chicago is a cool place to be. I don't really like either personally, I'm more of a country bumpkin. Although I do like to be relatively close to a major city. That's why Colorado is a great option, mountains on one side and Denver on the other. And Denver, even though its small, has a cool vibe and the best beer scene around.

I've never spent much time in the twin cities and have just heard the cold horror stories, although I thought rock and roll is alive and it lives in Minneapolis?
 
Hmnn, I lived in Chicago seven years. A lot more going on than in the Twin Cities, and it feels like you're closer to the East Coast. St. Paul is the last of the Eastern Cities I guess, and Minneapolis the first of the Western Cities. Anyway, I still would like to move out West at some point. I'll take mountains over lakes any day

Yeah I should put it in context, if you like city life or road running Chicago is a cool place to be. I don't really like either personally, I'm more of a country bumpkin. Although I do like to be relatively close to a major city. That's why Colorado is a great option, mountains on one side and Denver on the other. And Denver, even though its small, has a cool vibe and the best beer scene around.

I've never spent much time in the twin cities and have just heard the cold horror stories, although I thought rock and roll is alive and it lives in Minneapolis?
Yah, I was lucky, in Chicago I had a college friend who had her finger on the pulse of Chicago Arts & Nightlife. So I'd just call her up on weekends and hang out with her friends and get away from the UC scene. But it was pretty hard to find a decent park besides the sand dunes south of the city.

Like you say, the Front Range is ideal. Access to a large city, mountains, outdoorsy types, and great beer.

This year I'm not minding the cold as much as last year, but that could change.

I was part of the Minneapolis post-punk scene back in the early to mid 80s. It was fun, but that scene gets old after a short time, and there wasn't any money in it. I have no idea what's going on now. My only plug-in to pop culture is the Vikings and the NFL. I get a glimpse of what's going on while I fast forward through the commercials with Tivo.

Hey, I read through more on the Texas Method while stretching out my tight right hip. Rippetoe allows for quite a bit of variation, so it fits what I want to do. I'll ignore his suggested three-lifts-per-day protocol, and just employ the basic concept, which is that intermediate lifters can't advance with a simple linear progression as well as they can with some weekly variation in volume and intensity built in. He also allows for triples, doubles and singles on 'intensity' day, so I could go with a four-week or eight cycle, either changing the rep-count for intensity day every week or every two weeks. I think I'll go with the former as a first pass. Since I did triples last week, I'll jump back to quintuples this week, then skip ahead to doubles the following week, and singles after that, so that everything jibes with our third cycle. I'll end up with two 5-3-2-1RM intensity cycles by the end of our Cycle III. Here's a chart with the percentages, everything is based on a real or projected 1RM for each lift.
 

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Figured out the back issue with the press. Poor posture. Working on improving a slight anterior pelvic tilt, probably my desk job. Better posture seems to help the upper back and neck, too. My bench has a seated press position, which helps cue the better posture.
 
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of course, i'm still feeling the effects of doing BodyPump with my sweetie two days ago. and i've done my two days in a row of my stock plan. so today was a goof around day with three goals, all of which were achieved:

1) see if i could find some sort of reasonable limitation on the pullups. i finally felt some soreness in my biceps. yes! after 58 pullups loaded with 10lbs, primarily in sets of 4 or 5.

2) go running without splitting open the zombie zone of my foot. i kept it short at 2.8mi, but one of them was pretty fast. i can also feel that my mileage is *way* down without having to look back at what i've been doing. still, no blood on the floor is better than some blood on the floor.

3) test out the one remaining non-sore muscle set: deadlifts. (ok, i could have done hamstring isolation exercises, but who wants that? and my calves may or may not have noticed the sort of fast mile.) the result was a new, amazing, super-heavy, personal best. (it's important to aim low so you don't have to walk as far to pick up your arrows...) anyways, if the weights are to be believed, i did two at 225lbs. so probably 222lbs in the real world. still, 10lbs more than previous efforts. i think my grip is the primary limiting factor. so i should probably do a couple things. first, i should make some more substantial floor protectors unless i want to risk having to buy my landlord a new floor. second, i should probably not do 58 loaded pullups on the same day as trying for a new/higher deadlift load. :)
 
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Figured out the back issue with the press. Poor posture. Working on improving a slight anterior pelvic tilt, probably my desk job. Better posture seems to help the upper back and neck, too. My bench has a seated press position, which helps cue the better posture.
Just a suggestion: maybe try some type of row right before the press, to cue in good posture? I've noticed it's a lot easier for me to maintain good posture now that I take my rows seriously. I've been trying to start each workout with moderate Cable Rows as a warm-up, but also because it helps me remember to keep my traps/scapulae retracted while doing the other lifts.

of course, i'm still feeling the effects of doing BodyPump with my sweetie two days ago. and i've done my two days in a row of my stock plan. so today was a goof around day with three goals, all of which were achieved:

1) see if i could find some sort of reasonable limitation on the pullups. i finally felt some soreness in my biceps. yes! after 58 pullups loaded with 10lbs, primarily in sets of 4 or 5.

2) go running without splitting open the zombie zone of my foot. i kept it short at 2.8mi, but one of them was pretty fast. i can also feel that my mileage is *way* down without having to look back at what i've been doing. still, no blood on the floor is better than some blood on the floor.

3) test out the one remaining non-sore muscle set: deadlifts. (ok, i could have done hamstring isolation exercises, but who wants that? and my calves may or may not have noticed the sort of fast mile.) the result was a new, amazing, super-heavy, personal best. (it's important to aim low so you don't have to walk as far to pick up your arrows...) anyways, if the weights are to be believed, i did two at 225lbs. so probably 222lbs in the real world. still, 10lbs more than previous efforts. i think my grip is the primary limiting factor. so i should probably do a couple things. first, i should make some more substantial floor protectors unless i want to risk having to buy my landlord a new floor. second, i should probably not do 58 loaded pullups on the same day as trying for a new/higher deadlift load. :)
Congrats on the new PR!

It's amazing you can do that many pullups without frying your biceps.

Meanwhile, my right hip is still a little sore, so I don't know if I'll do my squats and deadlifts today. Might be best to give it two more days of rest, stretching, and massaging. No hurry, right?

I hope this doesn't become a pattern though, of hurting myself at the beginning of each cycle. Maybe this will be my cue to work more on my running in the meantime, just as I did at the beginning of Cycle II.
 
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http://www.t-nation.com/training/texas-method

Experience with this has shown that it's best to do just one heavy set of five deadlifts on Monday, after squats and benches or overhead presses are finished. It won't be a "true" 5RM, since it follows all the squat work, but it should increase every week.

Are you doing more than one?
Actually, since my left shoulder has felt pretty good for a while now, I'm thinking of subbing Power Cleans in for Deadlifts on Monday, or 'Volume' day. I keep reading about not overdoing deadlifts, and on Monday I pulled a muscle a little bit while doing them, so I'm thinking just one intense Deadlift session per week ought to do it, on Friday, with a couple of light sets thrown in on "Recovery' day, or Wednesday, to prime Friday's Deadlifts. The Power Cleans on Monday will train the same pulling movement, but with much lighter weight. I guess it's Rippetoe's influence, but after reading him I always feel guilty about not doing Power Cleans.

If you look at the chart, you'll see a lot of other modifications to Rippetoe's plan, changes which take into account my age, my goals, and my results up until this point. Rippetoe's target demographic is a young guy who's just completed several months of training, has up to two hours to work out each time, can recover quickly, and is capable of adding weight to his lifts every week. He has two hard workouts per week and a ton of sets for each lift.

I'm only going over three sets for the Squats and OH Press, and I'm de-emphasing the Bench Press, since it's already relatively strong, has potential to aggravate my shoulder, and seems to get better on its own anyway as long as I'm progressing in the other lifts. Plus I'm doing my upper body pulls each and every workout, because I'm still convinced that a strong back is the platform for the four 'performance' lifts--DL, SQ, BP & OHP. Rippetoe doesn't think upper body pulls are very important at all for some reason. I can't imagine bench pressing without doing rows. And doing 10 body weight pullups seems to be just as good a standard of strength as anything we might measure on the basic barbell lifts, like 2BW DL, for example.

I'm also intending to do a fair amount of assistance work on Wednesday/Recovery Day, a lot of stuff at light to moderate weight for two sets of five. And I'm only conceiving of Friday as being the really hard workout. For Rippetoe, Volume day is actually supposed to be hard. And I don't have any intention of resting 8-10 minutes between sets, or going over an hour per workout.

So all I'm really doing is lifting the concept of Volume-Recovery-Intensity, and that's something I kind of stumbled onto by myself anyway. It's just that Rippetoe has helped me refine and think of my medium workout--Monday--as a specifically volume day. I've never really thought too much about volume per se. At first it was just about intensity. Now with our six lifts protocol, I'm experimenting with frequency too, so it seems worthwhile playing around with one or two other parameters as well. I may even mix in 'density,' by making my recovery day workout relatively fast-paced.

So, hopefully, I find some kind of optimal balance between volume, intensity, frequency, and density. I like using your idea of percentages so I can easily manipulate weights across workouts and between lifts. In my Excel chart, if I change the value for the 1RM of a lift, everything else changes automatically. And if I find Volume and/or Recovery day are still too much, I can easily lower the percentages those workouts' weights are based on, and change the weight for each lift automatically.

I think this system may also help keep things mentally fresh.

In any case, I'm really liking your cycles concept. I started out this cycle thinking I would just do more of the same, more of the 625 protocol, but I think it'll be good to experiment these eight weeks with a different programming tweak. In the past, I've mostly made up the protocols on my own, but it'll be interesting to borrow a template from someone else and then modify it to suit my needs, just as you've been doing.

Here's the chart with slightly better formatting.
 

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Yeah I looked at your sheet I just wasn't sure about the sets. Agreed about the adjustments, I laughed a little when he said your rest shouldn't be more than 8-10 minutes between sets. And then he probably wonders why people are screwing around on their phones standing around or sitting on the bench at the gym all day.

I like that Monday heavy concept and then the other days are more recovery. That was kind of my natural tendency before I started doing my 80% of 87% days.

For the bench I might recommend just dropping your weight to like 205 and keep doing 3 easy sets. Then you can superset them with pull downs. Let the volume work and do them after your press too.

Power cleans again, maybe that's his pull so just replace with pull ups? You go for it, I think I have all I can handle right now. Plus I need to factor in the landmine eventually.

There are so many variables you can tweak with lifting its really difficult to find the best without doing some experimenting and modifications. I think the 8 week cycle gives you plenty of time to try something out and then add or drop after that. Plus you can take an 8 week deload, kind of what I am doing now without losing any strength (or so I hope...). I still haven't had time to make a fun excel file. Maybe when I am on the plane I'll have a little more time.
 
Yeah I looked at your sheet I just wasn't sure about the sets. Agreed about the adjustments, I laughed a little when he said your rest shouldn't be more than 8-10 minutes between sets. And then he probably wonders why people are screwing around on their phones standing around or sitting on the bench at the gym all day.

I like that Monday heavy concept and then the other days are more recovery. That was kind of my natural tendency before I started doing my 80% of 87% days.

For the bench I might recommend just dropping your weight to like 205 and keep doing 3 easy sets. Then you can superset them with pull downs. Let the volume work and do them after your press too.

Power cleans again, maybe that's his pull so just replace with pull ups? You go for it, I think I have all I can handle right now. Plus I need to factor in the landmine eventually.

There are so many variables you can tweak with lifting its really difficult to find the best without doing some experimenting and modifications. I think the 8 week cycle gives you plenty of time to try something out and then add or drop after that. Plus you can take an 8 week deload, kind of what I am doing now without losing any strength (or so I hope...). I still haven't had time to make a fun excel file. Maybe when I am on the plane I'll have a little more time.
Yah, even for heavy deadlifts, I like to keep the rest intervals at 3-5 minutes. For upper body stuff, 2-3 minutes. Ideally no lift should take more than 10 minutes total, including warm-up.

It's funny though, now you got me conjuring up a guy who used to spot me on the bench in Chicago. He could easily take up to 15 minutes in between his sets, talking about whatever came to his mind, with whomever was around. The guy also juiced, had a super shredded upper body but bird legs.

That's the beauty of the home gym. I just pace back and forth in between sets until I get bored or feel recovered. Rarely much extra time wasted.

Another I don't get about Rippetoe is his idea of adding weight so frequently. Every workout for the novice, and every week for the intermediate. That just doesn't jibe with my experience. I feel lucky if I add 5-10 pounds every month or two once I'm back in relatively decent shape.

Yah, Monday has always been the day I'm most up for really hitting it, so maybe I should switch Intensity and Volume day around? That way, it will also be easy to reduce the volume on Friday if I'm feeling any sort of accumulating fatigue. Plus it would help me make sense of this week's hip niggle, as I could put off higher intensity work until the beginning of next week.

I'm still having trouble trusting volume to get the job done, so this will be an interesting experiment.

I've tried supersetting a bit, but it's hard for my OCD brain to switch between lifts if I'm doing them at any kind of intensity.

The Power Cleans shouldn't take any longer than the Deadlifts they're replacing, since they don't require as many warm-up sets, although including them will introduce a more technically challenging lift, so it will use up some mental energy until I get the technique down. If they make my shoulder feel funny though, I will quickly abandon them. My main focus for this cycle is improving my Squats and OHP, so I'll only do Power Cleans if they don't detract from that focus. Still, now that I have a halfway decent Oly bar, it'll be interesting to see how Power Cleans feel. But the main idea of doing Power Cleans on Volume Day is to get in some volume with something deadlift-like without the stress of deadlifts. Sort of DE deadlift.

Another thing, it's doubtful I'll be able to do the 5-3-2-1RM intensity for OH Presses, but I'll be able to give it a try. I might end up doing those like the Rows and Pullups, alternating between 3 and 5 reps on the intensity day.

Yah, the charts can take some time but they really help clarify things with a more nuanced program like the Texas Method or with what you're doing. It helps to learn a few short cut keys, like ctrl +y = repeat same action. Our charts are getting pretty sophisticated but once they're set-up, they should save time making adjustments as the cycle unfolds.

Anyway, have a good trip back, when are you flying?
 
i keep trying to do a "light" day, but it doesn't work. :) my triceps are still not fully recovered from BodyPumping, so the presses and faux-bench have gone backward. but then the squats and deadlifts keep going up. also, i think i decided that the triceps get worked a little bit at the tippy top of pullups if you're trying to get as high as possible. as in, they do some work moving the bar from your jaw to your upper chest. and then i think i use them at the other end of their range a little bit due to my quirky interpretation of deadlifts. now that i've done a few quasi-deadlifts, perhaps i should look at some pictures and see how what i think i'm doing relates to what other people do.
 
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i keep trying to do a "light" day, but it doesn't work. :) my triceps are still not fully recovered from BodyPumping, so the presses and faux-bench have gone backward. but then the squats and deadlifts keep going up. also, i think i decided that the triceps get worked a little bit at the tippy top of pullups if you're trying to get as high as possible. as in, they do some work moving the bar from your jaw to your upper chest. and then i think i use them at the other end of their range a little bit due to my quirky interpretation of deadlifts. now that i've done a few quasi-deadlifts, perhaps i should look at some pictures and see how what i think i'm doing relates to what other people do.
Yah, light day only works if you're still recovering from the previous workout, otherwise, why go light? I think light day and varying intensities are unnecessary if you're still making progress with simple linear progressive overload, that is, just doing the same thing and adding weight when it starts to feel easy.

Why mess with Texas if you're having success?

The reason I'm looking for a more varied approach is not so much that I've outgrown linear progressive overload, as it is that it's difficult for me to remain patient. I have trouble trusting that moderate frequency and volume are going to get things done, even though so many elite trainers/lifters like Wendler say so. I like at least one workout a week where I really push it, but sometimes it's twice a week, and then I need some kind of recovery day built-in to make sure I don't start to overtrain. "Light" day pops up on its own a fair amount, whenever I'm pushed for time or my body tells me to hold back a bit, but sometimes I can go weeks without too many interruptions or shortened sessions, and my body doesn't always let me know when it needs to rest, and even when it tells me, I don't always listen.

It was kinda coincidence that I stumbled on the Texas Method. I wasn't looking to change anything this cycle. The Texas Method seems like it might be thought of as "complex linear progressive overload," inasmuch as you're adding weight to different protocols within the same workout week, based on different parameters, and manipulating the relationship between them.

It's nerdy, but besides noticing how the Texas Method came close to how I ended up doing my first week of the cycle, I find it intellectually intriguing to think about percentages, and the relationships between various protocols, how, for example, a lift on intensity day might be primed on volume day. I've never really done that before. It was always just 1RM and various rep counts. Actually, until about six months ago, I think it was just 1RM and drop sets. That always seemed like enough.

Anyway, now I'm thinking of renaming "Recovery Day" as "Density Day"--still aim to do the main exercises light or sub them out for near-equivalents--like DB Arnold Press for BB OH Press--and add a fair amount of assistance, but also try to do everything with minimal rest periods and decent bar speed, making the workouts more 'dense'--another parameter to exploit.

So, now within a general frequency approach of doing all six basic movements threes a week, I can exploit the parameters of volume, density, and intensity within that basic structure.

Just got to wait for this annoying hip/glute pull to simmer down. If feels like someone kicked me in the right buttcheek. Stretching and massaging are having limited success. Might just have to rest it for a while. Dammit, no squats and deadlifts for a while.
 
victory and defeat: i made a throwaway comment about how i had gone to her class, so when is my sweetie going to work out with me? she was like "i don't feel like lifting weights." but, lo and behold! as i was finishing my first set, she comes wandering in and says, "so what's the plan?" the defeat is that she is so much more genetically gifted than i (that's what you're supposed to do, right? seek out the superior genetics and insert them into your descendants' genomes?), that everything was sheer embarrassment on my part. just standing next to the weights, she has bigger muscles than i have when i am "pumped up" and trying to move some pile of iron around. she has some lingering mechanical difficulties afflicting one shoulder, so she "modified" by replacing overhead press with triceps extensions and abdominal things. other than that, despite saying she was only up for half an hour, she toughed it out and did the whole thing, albeit with appropriate loads. of course, she thought is was mega-boring or something and isn't really her style. but, i'm trying to impress upon her my conjecture that #1 squats, #2 deadlifts, #3 anything else will have wonderful anti-osteoporosis properties. she's not close at all to the age of worry for that sort of thing, but considering her general situation as well as her amazing shrinking mother, i want to get out in front of it by a several decades, if at all possible.

also, as i'm typing this, i'm madly stuffing my face. the available food of the moment is pasta; the sauce is from a jar. which suddenly spawned a silly retort to all those "broken glass" inquiries: uh, do you ever drink beer or eat pasta? those come in glass jars so aren't you afraid you are going to drink some broken glass? what? you wouldn't drink from a broken bottle? oh? well, i wouldn't step on one either....

injury update: the elbow seems to be 99.5% healed (i'm expecting tomorrow to be 100%). the zombie zone on the right foot seems to have finally patched up enough not to re-split after every third run. it still has a little more to go to have the skin completely fixed up, but it is not slowing me down or stopping me from running.

in other news, i need to try to stay warm. it is usually not a problem, but i intentionally underdressed a little since i usually way overdress. i was running in "balmy" 44F weather today with only a t-shirt and long-sleeve-t-shirt. the combination of some sweat and some drizzle and (depending on location) the 10mph winds meant that the last few miles got my arms very cold. as in: a couple fingers were completely cut off from the blood supply and were approaching paper white. it took 20 minutes of eating food in the warm house plus 20 minutes of hot shower to get all the valves opened back up. the feet, of course, were fine. still, it was one of the few times i have ever stopped running before making it back home: once i got back amongst the houses and hence out of the wind, i walked it in for the last half mile to counter-intuitively warm up.
 
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Ha a strong wife isn't a bad thing to have. I think that logic is perfect! Isn't all working out boring? Glad to hear your injuries are gone.

Lee I am in suburbs now. Still up with the kids in the middle of the night though... one of the tough parts of international travel. Good thing everything here is open late! One of the few weird things I have missed about the US, that an American cumin. Picked up a stone sampler pack, that's a definite bitter hops system shock.

Got to the gym yesterday, it was a weird experience working out next to people and having mirrors available to check out the guns. It was really messing with my setups. I'm gonna skip running for the next couple of weeks. I also forgot my belt so my max pull is gonna have to come once I am back home on the 30th.
 
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My right hip/glute still has a dull ache that I'm having trouble massaging or stretching out. Frustrating. I'm really anxious to give my version of the Texas Method a full go, but I'll have to wait another week or two. We could almost consider ditching this cycle and starting fresh with the New Year, since Abide's schedule has been interrupted and Broad Arrow is still recovering from a Buns-of-Steel-like infomercial fitness outbreak. In any case, I going to try running daily again, build up that way, and see if this kind of daily light work with limited ROM and stress helps my hip/glute in 'active' recovery. I'm thinking that might be the way to go. Absolute rest doesn't seem to help at all. I wonder if it's a small pull/tear, and then the surrounding muscles decided to stiffen up to protect it while it heals.

A strong woman is good to find, and I think you're right to prescribe the big lifts to maintain her big-boned health and density. Seems like more and more people are coming to that conclusion, that ST is probably a better anti-aging agent than aerobic activity/aerobics. But unlike spouses, we don't have to choose just one fitness modality.

I had briefly caught up to you in Winter Challenge mileage, despite my bum bum. Now it's cold and snowy again, the window of opportunity has closed, and you've regained a lead on me. Looks unlikely I'll even place this year. But Christian Lemburg is poised to give Yvonne a run for her money.

Abide, this may be a good time to work on your muscleman poses, maybe throw in a tanning booth session or two too.


(Looks like this guy activated 'micro' results in at least one area)

You're like me, you come home to your hometown when its NFL team is sucking. If you want to check out some IPAs you may have been missing in Western Europe, here's a list of some of my favorites in the buck-a-beer range:

Summit Saga
Founders Centenniel
Liftbridge Hopdish
Lagunitas Maximus
Lagunitas Lil’ Sumpin’
New Belgium Rampant
Alaskan HopThermia

Interesting t-nation article today: http://www.t-nation.com/workouts/double-stimulation-training
I've noticed this too, that consecutive days of lifting can be beneficial once in a while. This article gives the broscience behind it and how it might be deployed. I used to think of it as intentional but brief overtraining, but now I guess it's got a different label: "double stimulation." It also sorta fits with the greasing-the-groove approach, but on a more limited basis.

Since I can't do deadlifts or squats for a week or two, maybe I'll give a brief emphasis to bringing up my upper body pulls a bit more, and blast my back on Tuesdays for 15-20 minutes, a la double stimulation, and maybe on Thursday as well. In any case, I was thinking about doing more rows and pull-ups/-downs today, after being interrupted at the end of my workout yesterday, so this article gives me license.

Weights can be boring, but I can also get into a zone similar to running at times. Just depends on my mood I guess, but experimenting with different 'programs' and thinking a bit more deeply about the relationship between lifts and programming parameters has made workouts more enjoyable, and at times, a sort of zen practice, inasmuch as one begins to really pay attention to the process, the daily practice, or implementation, and not just goals or going-through-the-motions, so to speak.