Long Post, Brace Yourselves for my Gym Hunting story of 6-14-12 or skip to the next thread
Graduation Practice
45 mins of cardio (aka sitting, standing, and walking in the sun, was sweating bullets)
Visit 24 hour fitness and realize the only decent location is a 30 min drive from my house
5xlistening to guy try to convince me to get a personal trainer to propagate broscience
Go to crossfit gym and resist kipping pull ups
5xsupreme will power
Actual Training Session: Deadlift Deload
45 mins of learning clean from olympic lifting coach
Even though the heaviest I went was 40 kilos, it was grueling repeating the power shrug and deadlift to knees over and over. I definitely learned a lot though, but my forearms, traps, and lower back were toast, despite only working with 88 lbs
Cardio Deadlifts in Oly Shoes
10x223
8x~275
6x~315
Log Clean and Press
Worked up to something like 150 for 3 reps, feels awkward as hell off the shoulders, but lockout is easy as cake.
Weighted Chin Ups
3x5xBW+16 kilos (35 lbs)
GHR
2 good range of motion reps then hamstring cramped up
Squats
Form work, worked up to a top set of a little over 185 for 10 reps.
Hip Mobility Work
Today I went to one of the 2 closest 24 hour fitnesses to my house, I'm definitely not going to the one I trained at last summer because they have hexagon plates, deep j hooks on bench, and everybody gets pissed when I deadlift and they don't let me use chalk. My broscience propagating buddy told me that the other one is pretty good because they just revamped it into a super spot club or whatever, and I believed him. It turned out to be dead wrong. After spending about 30 minutes in traffic (if I actually trained there I would come earlier to avoid the traffic and it'd be 15 mins away), I finally got there and went in. The customer service was pretty good, but when we got to the weight area the first thing that broke my heart was the hexagon plates. I can't stand that sh*t. Messes up every floor based lift, and they are poorly calibrated, some "45s" weigh 51 lbs others are 40. All around sh*tty plates that shouldn't even be produced. It's all about the old school iron plates.
I figured if the membership was only 20 per month I could tolerate it for 3 months, though they only had 1 good squat rack, it was pretty nice, and if I came early in the day it'd probably be free. But no, it was 50 bucks a month. If I'm paying over 50 bucks a month I might as well join my friend's crossfit gym because they actually have a really awesome facility. So I decided to call him and ask what he was doing. It worked out perfect because he had just gotten to the gym. I met up with him there 15 mins later and he told me to ask his oly coach to look at my clean because it "looked like an abortion."
I spent the next 45 mins learning how to clean properly with just the bar, we added 10 kilo plates eventually, but I was toast, just holding the bar and jump to toes/shrugging it and holding it close to my body was wearing out my cardio, forearms, and traps, for such a long time. I definitely learned a lot but honestly I don't ever plan on competing in oly lifting so I'll stick with my muscle cleans, with a slightly improved hip extension and shrug, and build my upper back and speed deadlifting strength. Another thing I don't like about proper cleans is it reinforces poor deadlift technique, with the shoulders over the bar and whatnot. But that's all excuses, I'm a lazy bastard and hate technical sh*t, so muscle cleans with improved shrug and hip extension it is.
Moved on to my cardio deload deadlifts, normally this would be a lot easier but I was really gassed from the cleans, so even though I was nowhere near muscle fatigue, my cardio was killing me on these. Afterwards I felt a little sore in the glutes and quads, probably because of the oly shoes. It could just be that my back was nice and tight and my hips were nice and loose, but I felt like the oly shoes, though they increased the ROM, really helped me find my groove on the deadlifts. They exploded off the floor and locked out nice and easy. Keep in mind I was only cleaning about 90 lbs so I don't think the explosive activation or whatever was a factor. Besides, I usually muscle clean 185 before deadlifts. Anyways, I might try reducing my training max to 475 and doing a 5/3/1 cycle with oly shoes, then maybe keep them if I like it.
Log was fun, hope I can find a gym with one sometime in the future, felt it in my shoulders and triceps in a whole new way, plus the clean feels like some awesome functional bicep training. Chin ups were an easy PR, probably because I only weigh 205 now, thanks to not force feeding anymore. Weight is falling off me like nothing, all I need to do is up my protein and not force feed calories. I haven't even started cardio yet, but next week I'm doing kempo full speed. GHR was fun but I cramped my hamstring and stopped on the 2nd rep. First time doing them, I think I might have had 8 reps in me. I'll stick with GMs for now though if I can't find a gym with a GHR.
Then I had my friend look at my low bar squat form. He said it also looked like an abortion, which I was half expecting, but half bummed to hear. He said my buttwink was terrible, and that that's probably why my hips been bothering me so much. So here's the plan. I'm going to do the Defranco 8 foam rolling thing every morning and night that I can, and stretch my hips and shoulders about every hour that I remember, now that I'm on summer break and don't have anything else to do but play Halo Reach with my brother, browse on the internet, and chill with friends.
Also, for my squat, I'm going to reduce my training max to 300 and really focus on form, and do 5/3/1 squats twice a week, deloading every 7th session because it's so light. So it would go like this:
Squat day 1: 3x5 squat, 3x3 front squat
Deadlift day 1: 3x3 deadlift, 3x3 squat
Squat day 2: 5/3/1 squat, 3x5 front squat
Deadlift day 2: 3x5 deadlift (or reverse bands), 3x5 squat
Squat day 3: 3x3 squat, 5/3/1 front squat
Deadlift day 3: 5/3/1 deadlift, 5/3/1 squat
Squat day 4: deload squat and front squat
Deadlift day 4: deload deadlift, 5x10x60% squat.
This will give me the volume I need to stop having terrible squat form, and finally bring it back up. Now all I need is a training partner who can help me, and a gym to train at. Unfortunately the crossfit gym is 100 bucks a month, and only open from 4-8, which means I'd have to deal with 30 mins of traffic. The only good 24 hour fitness is 30 mins from my house, where I trained this winter. LA fitness is decent, but it's also 30 mins from my house, though I do have 2 friends lifting there, so it might be my last resort, but they're both on bodybuilding splits ='(, and it's still pretty damn far. Maybe I could carpool. Tomorrow I'm going gym hunting for real, I'm going to visit every gym with a half decent rating on yelp within 15 mins of my house, and check out the facilities. Worst comes to worst, I have a friend who lives 3 mins away from me with a bunch of weights but no squat rack, so I could just buy him a cheap rack and train there. Or I could go to LA fitness. I'll figure something out.
If you've made it this far, thank you for reading, if not, I understand. Bonus feature for those of you who made it here: crossfit lols:
Saw some guys deadlifting 365, then right after squatting 315, then right after all sprinting away to do some other random crap.
More lols but honestly most people there were really nice and I don't want to talk too much sh*t about them, it's not worth sharing any of the other lols. Just that one. It was just too great, the guy deadlifts all intense, squats all intense, then he and his 2 buddies standing around all sprint across the gym to go do random stuff I didn't get a chance to see.
I also witnessed my first kipping muscle up, I made a strong effort not to kip in the slightest on my chins.
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