Thoughts about life, crap, training, and stuff - Monday Edition

In case you didn't know, Jamie Lewis went 1705 this past weekend at his meet.  650-385-670 (he took a run at a 700 dead but missed).  Wanted to give major props to him for putting up some a retarded total at 181.  Apparently Dan Green also went 2030 as a 220.  Which again, is retarded and insane.  So that had to be a heck of a meet to be at.

Speaking of meets, my meet training starts not this weekend but next weekend.  I already have everything planned out.  I will be running my strong-15 short cycle with 1 week extra at the beginning just for some acclimation because I plan on taking a few days off next week.  This coming weekend, I'm SOOOOO excited as I get my wisdom teeth pulled Friday.  I hope you can smell the overwhelming stench of sarcasm in that previous sentence.  

Anyway, since I always get asked about routines, here is the split I will be using leading up to the meet.  

Saturdays - Squat and Deadlift

Squats - strong-15

Pause Squats - strong-15

Deadlifts - strong-15

Elevated Stiff Legs - 1x8-15

Tuesdays - Upperback, Hams, Abs

Behind the back shrugs - 6x6

Rows - 1x10,1x5,1x10

Leg Curls or 1-Legged Work - 1x10,1x5,1x10/3x20

Ab Wheel - 3x20

Thusdays - Bench and Assistance

Bench - strong-15

Incline - 1-2 x AMAP cyled

Front Raises - 1x100 

Curls - 1x100

My quad is slowly getting better.  Generally the day after I squat it is pretty stiff/sore but it's tolerable.  I'm not going to talk about what I want to hit at this meet and all of that shit because just being in a position again to compete feels good.  

Also as you can see, I will keep in the set of 100's for the front raises and curls.  I think this is a great idea and I also believe it solves the problem of doing what support work is supposed to do.  Namely, strength the SUPPORT areas for the big lifts.  You do not need to go heavy on your support or assistance work in order for it to do the job.  My elbows also feel the best they have felt in forever since I started doing sets of 100.  I think they are going to be pretty much a staple.  At least for some time.

Speaking of 100 rep sets, I did the 200 reps on barbell curls only to find out that Poundstone did a set of 353.  Hmpf!  That's ridiculousness.  I will wait and see the video, not that I doubt it, but I want to see how painful that was for him.  I also plan on hitting a set of 100x100 (100 pounds x 100 reps).  But that will have to wait.  I also see people writing shit like "what's the point of this?" or "why do this?"  What's the fucking point of lifting weights, jackass?  What's the point of challenging yourself?  Or doing something different?  To learn.....to get better.....to overcome hurdles.....to be able to speak from experience that you did something and can offer intelligent input about it.  Some people are too fucking stupid to like sometimes, I swear.

Also speaking of Jamie, I ended up watching The Raid last night, since he called it "visual viagra" and wouldn't shut up about it for weeks on end.  Let's just say when he gets back I have a bone to pick with him about his movie taste.  I'm not saying I thought it sucked, but the fight scenes were so retarded I had to dumb myself down during the movie in order to not just die of hysterical laughter.  Some guy fighting non-stop for 12-15 minutes at a time.  Fighting 5 guys with machetes in a narrow corridor and never getting cut.  Retarded.  I'm big on buying into a movie, and with everything we know about fighting now, watching this shit made me feel particularly stupid.  I much prefer fight scenes closer to what they did with Bourne than this shit.  

Dumb fight scenes

I also watched John Carter over the weekend with the girls, and it was weird.  Very weird.  It did have enough laughs in it to keep me entertained, but it was most definitely a strange little flick.  If you have kids I recommend it because they will enjoy it more than likely.  

Weird

I'm also going to eliminate carbs for the next two weeks in order to drop some water and a little bit of fat.  I'm still in good condition, however I'm now at 250-251 and I'd prefer to be more like 240-242 at the start of meet prep and then eat up from there.  

I'm also working hard on the LRB/365 manual.  If I don't end up doing the meet in spring, I will be doing this myself because I am setting it up, so that you spend the winter eating, and gaining mass, then strength peaking, losing fat, strength stabilization, a short strength peak, and then right back into mass gaining.  It's set up in mostly 6 week blocks, with scheduled time off.  I will also have some training chapters in between some of the scheduled stuff.  I don't want to make this some super in-depth thing because I want to be able to do Q&A's every few months with it to see how people are doing.  So I will arrange this whole thing and put it in an easy to follow format.  

The 6 weeks of hard training is something I have been talking about for a while, even back to the Philosophy of Training Programs.  I have thought for some time, that 6 weeks is about all you can give in terms of training balls out, before you need to sit down and think about whether you need time off or not.  Feeling great?  Add on a few more weeks.  Feeling burnt?  Take a week or so off.  This is a theme I have seen in my peaking cycles as well.  It's also why I tell people that the first three weeks of the strong-15 is supposed to be nothing more than an acclimation phase.  You should not be hitting anything during those 3 weeks that is even remotely heavy.  It is a primer for the hard 6 weeks of training.  For whatever reason I can't seem to get a lot of guys to understand this concept.  Maybe it's because they want everything now?  Or because they had been doing too much fucking "ME work" and nonsense like that.  

I have two Lifter articles left.  One will be out this week, and then the final the next.  After that I am going to do a PDF containing all of them, plus some other stuff.  

I hope your Monday is like eating thorns and wasps.