Training, stress, and shitty timing

I got this train of thought started during the Toast Open Thread today:

Because of work troubles that I won’t get into here, I have been full of stress and anxiety and it has not been helping my gym time this week. I usually try to go MWF, this week I’m managing to go all of yesterday and today. : /

I went in yesterday trying to work on the press medley for my upcoming strongwoman meet, and I found that I can barely get the 20kg kettlebell press over my head consistently. Every week I work on it until I do, but I need to be able to do it consistently right off the bat. I managed to get the 70lb keg and the 70lb sandbag up last week once, but I wasn’t able to do the keg at all yesterday. I think.. I think I may just have to come to terms that it’s likely I’ll scratch out of this even, because I only have a minute to do 3 reps of 20kg ground to overhead, and then 2 reps of the keg press, and then 1 of the sandbag.

I’m planning to write/submit a post about training/doing this event, but oh man, it kind of sucks to be 1.5 weeks out and go, “well, you know, I need to be realistic about this shit, and I don’t think I can do the full medley.” Presses have always been weaker relative to my squats and deadlifts, I guess after this it’s going to be the year of the upper body for me.

That was me nearly four hours ago. After this brief vent, I went to the gym, started stretching, and found that my shoulders and chest were really tight from spending 1.5 hours with intermittently successful kettlebell presses. One of my friends was there and she had plans to work on the deadlift medley and I was still in a crappy mood, so I joined in. After taking what seemed like an eternity to set up..

Haha, whoops. My friend and I have both been doing sumo deadlifts all summer and that probably wasn’t helping. Sure, axle deadlifts are harder than barbell deadlifts but this was ridiculous! For reference, we both have one rep max barbell deadlifts of 240lbs or so, and this was a 185lb axle. It was clear that our technique was off.

K suggested that perhaps we were both unconsciously setting our grip a little too wide because there were none of the visual markers we were used to on the axle. I thought that I was trying to rush through my lifts and as a result, my technique for the axle deadlift was doubly off. We both tweaked out technique accordingly. K is much stronger than I am and on her next attempt, she flew through the medley in just under 22 seconds. As for me:

I didn’t ask her to do a hard time, but from eyeballing the video it looks like I’m at 34 seconds or so. It’s been a really tough week for me at work, so it’s very gratifying to struggle, and then successfully complete this medley. Some key notes: pace yourself when doing the deadlifts, move quickly between transitions but take the time to set up your next lift properly so you’re actually successful. Figuring out when to move slow and when to pick up the pace is a big part of strongwoman events that I’m trying to get better at, but I appreciate the challenge.

As for the medley itself, it was:

3 reps of 155lb barbell deadlift

2 reps of 185lb axel deadlift

1 rep of 210lb farmer’s pick

I’m too buzzed from wine and listening to the RNC debate

Ok, quick rundown for today/last night, since I’m not in the best writing frame of mind.

Squats: volume day, three sets of 155lbs. Honestly, felt kind of shitty, the whole “staring at a spot 1-3 ft in front of you” was kind of tripping me up a bit. I felt like I was keeping my back tight so I’m just.. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oh wait, this is my third day in a row lifting and I pulled 210lb deadlift yesterday. I’m a bit tired, I need to let things go a bit and just be pleased that I showed up and got those reps in.

Bench press: one heavy work set of three reps at 100lbs. Woo, okay, so I got a double and almost got the third rep at 100lbs. I took a breather and got that last rep in as a single, and you know what? I’m good with this. My 1RM in April was 102.5lbs, so being able to do a double at 100lbs is pretty damn good. I was having trouble figuring out the proper placement of my feet, so that didn’t help matters at all.

Strongwoman training:

Tried a different technique for the keg press, and it didn’t work! D: I mentioned having a video of me failing yesterday, and here we go, I am failing a lift.

I should add that I asked Mike McKenna (who I’ve consulted before about this very important question) for recommendations for accessory work and tips, especially since my coaches are out of town for vacation. You can learn a lot from second opinions in lifting. I’ll keep you all posted about this.

I am worn out right now.

Okay, maybe training two days in a row isn’t the best idea, but I am going to North Carolina to visit family from Friday-Sunday and I have to squeeze some lifting time in somewhere! Even if it’s not going to be the best lifts ever. And.. I’m planning to lift tomorrow too. This weekend is going to be a weekend of whiny soreness.

However, before I get there, I have some lifting to do! Here’s what I did today.

Shoulder press. Er, this was supposed to be a heavy shoulder press day where I try to do triples at 71lbs, which would be an improvement over the previous week where I did doubles at 71lbs. You know, steady progress and all of that. However, I’m pretty sore from yesterday’s bench presses so I managed to do one rep before deciding that 1) wasn’t going to happen today and 2) it’s definitely time to reset that lift. And then I did two more sets at 63lbs and while that was managable, it was still pretty ugly. I think I need to reset at 58 lbs. -_-;

Cue of the day: still working on catching that bounce! This will probably be the overriding focus with my reset.

Deadlifts. Remember how I deadlifted 225lbs last week, and how it was a PR but I was still disappointed that I only did three reps instead of five? Well this was the day I was going to redeem myself and go for that set of five before resetting my deadlifts! Except.. I did my last warm up set with my leather belt, felt like I was going to throw up a bit, and.. no. There are a few instances where something will happen and I will stop a lift, and that is one of them. I will grind through lifts in the ugliest way mid-lift, but if I even remotely feel like I’m going to throw up (which is rare), I’m going to stop once the movement is done.

Cue of the day (besides not throwing up): keeping my chest over the bar, and keeping my eyes focused about 5 feet in front.

So here’s when I should mention this: I was incredibly, incredibly distracted through both of these lifts. I don’t know what it was: being on twitter, or maybe I was excited that I brought in gummy bears for my gym’s candy stash? (Yes, my gym has a candy stash. It’s awesome like that.) I’m not sure, but it was definitely impacting my lifts. Sorry guys, the lesson I am taking from this is: stop dicking around on social media while you’re at the gym. Another obvious lesson, but today really made it hit home for me. I’ve starting playing timed games of Alphabear between lifts if I’m not chatting with fellow lifters, and I think I need to stick with that.

Anyway, I got to the gym pretty early today, so I decided to spend a little extra time on more strongwoman training. Some other women had already loaded up the implement for the duck walk, so I decided to go for that because I knew I was too gassed to work on any presses.

The event for the meet is this: carry a 100 lb keg for 50 feet, and then do a 150lb duckwalk back.  I decided to at least feel out the 150lb duckwalk, partly because I tried it yesterday and was unsure whether or not I could actually do it. Unlike yesterday, I actually did some warm-ups with a 90lb, and then 135lb duckwalk. So far, so good. Why did yesterday feel so terrible then? Was it because it was so new?

Then I remembered what kind of weight plates one of my fellow lifters added to the implement, and realized that she had loaded 170lbs onto the implement, instead of 150. That’s a big difference! I could actually walk with the damn thing, although it’s uncomfortable as hell because it keeps on hitting my calves.

Success! Now I just need to work up the mental fortitude to walk 50 feet with it. I can try this next week.

To wrap this all up, I did three sets of 8 bicep curls with 15 lb dumbbells. Gotta get those bis swole. (Realistically, I need stronger biceps to help with the strongwoman event.)

Training Log – For 8/4/2015

Yesterday was a great training day! I took care to pack all of my gym clothes and set aside plenty of food to eat during the day, and I think it really paid off. Another thing: I had been coming to the gym the past couple of weeks feeling very tired and out of it. Sometimes it was about food, most of the time it was because I was playing games or tweeting on my phone and I was getting a little motion sick while taking the bus to the gym. ^_^;

It’s really the saddest thing. Recently I’ve tried switching to reading my Kindle on the bus, but I was still walking into the gym feeling kind of crappy. I finally had the bright idea of just listening to Pandora on the bus–I like being a little distracted when riding the bus–so I tried that out and it’s been working out really well so far. Without some music, I’d be tempted to try to read or play games on my phone.

Anyway, personal traveling epiphanies aside (embarrasingly simple insights to boot), my first lifting day of the week went as follows:

Heavy squats: two sets of 5 at 180lbs. I’m working my way up from a recent reset with the camber bar–I topped off at 200 lbs for a double, which is pretty good considering my 1RM is 215lbs. I was a little nervous about this one because I only squatted once last week, but I focused on two major cues: head down, and elbows up. Both of these things are geared to helping me keep my torso tight throughout the entire squat, which is crucial for me to keep the barbell stable during the movement, and minimizing the feeling that the barbell is going to crush me. Seriously, it makes a big difference to feel like you are actively holding the barbell on your back, as opposed to feeling like you are just letting 180lbs hang out on you.

For the sake of this post, I asked a friend to take a picture. My weight belt isn’t tightened, which is why I might look a little weird.

180 lbs on my back! I just finished both sets so this is just a demo.

Light bench day: three sets of five at 90lbs. It’s amazing that I now consider 90lbs a “light” bench day and it’s a testament to some very helpful coaching I’ve received over the past three months. For four years my bench was stuck at something like 95lbs; it was only this past March that I even got a 1rm in the triple digits and it was only last month that I was even doing work sets above 95lbs. Bench presses are very finicky, and the slightest adjustment can help you progress–or lead to a pretty shitty training day.

The thing I was focusing on today was tracking and tweaking where I was setting my feet. Thanks to the suggestion of one of my coaches two weeks ago, I had found that I have an easier time keep my chest tight and maintaining some active pressure through my legs if I brought my feet in closer towards me. This may sound a little weird if you’re not familiar with bench pressing; I mean, it’s not intuitive that you should focus so much on what one part of your body is doing (chest/back in squats, or legs in bench press) when this movement is supposed to be working something else (squats = legs, bench = chest/arms). I don’t have the full knowledge to explain why using your legs is so crucial for a successful bench press, but please, take it from me, it does. It’s also been making a huge difference where I place my feet; if it’s in the right spot, I’m in a position where my body has to engage my legs no matter what.

I guess maybe that’s why my thighs look massive and awesome in this video. (Okay, they look pretty normal, I’m just not used to seeing any significant muscle definition.)

Strongwoman training. I rounded off last night with trying to work on my keg presses–I need to be able to lift a 70lb keg overhead twice for this strongwoman meet–and trying the duck walk. Both were unsuccessful. I need to do a little more research on different ways to get a keg overhead, since I think I’m a little held back by my relative lack of strength and the fact that my arms (the rest of my body) is so much smaller than everyone else’s relative to the keg.

Training Log – Accessory Work

One of the good things about keeping a public training log is that now I feel accountable to a very small but supportive audience! Thank you all for the Twitter support.

Okay, so I didn’t do much more on Saturday beyond some ab rolling, but on Sunday T and I went on a 7 mile hike. He mentioned something while we’re hiking about being pleased with himself for having done 20 minutes of activity every day for an entire week, which then reminded me of that pretty worthwhile lifestyle goal to shoot for.

Enter today. I was planning on going to the gym, doing two heavy work sets of back squats at 180 lbs and some heavy bench pressing. My uterus was not very keen on this idea, so after hemming and hawwing, I decided to go home instead. I’m lucky in that I usually only have one bad day of cramps, so I decided to take a leisurely 25 minute walk home, and resolved to do some accessory work in prep for the Strongwoman meet in September.

The aforementioned fitness accoutrements in our apt:

25 lb dumbbell, ab roller, 24kg/52lb kettlebell

For the sake of some elevated heartbeat time and in order to feel like I haven’t been wholly slacking off in the face of an upcoming meet, I did 3 rounds of 7 ab roller.. ab rollingness (?), 5 one-handed dumbbell jerks per side, and at least 30 seconds of kettlebell holding.

The ab roller time is to strengthen my core, since I have to engage it in order to do any decent overhead (either shoulder or jerk) work. The dumbbell jerks were mostly to practice the movement of getting under the weight; my upcoming meet involves a 20kg one handed “press” but jerks are allowed and my ability to jerk a weight is much, much better than pressing a weight, even with a push press. The kettlebell holds were basic grip work and I held it for 30 seconds initially, then 45 seconds+ for the last two rounds. I have small hands and so much of strongwoman work is being able to hold the implement at all, so honestly any grip work I do would be a huge help. (Quite frankly, it doesn’t hurt my deadlifts either.)

look at where my thumb actually meets my index finger!

For the sake of consistency, this should probably be my go to for the next few weeks if I don’t make it to the gym. Hopefully I can continue feeling accountable to all of you, and keep this up!

ETA/Reality check: This is my first time doing gripwork in awhile, my forearms are going to feel like trash tomorrow. Hooray.

Breaks are OK

I was supposed to go to the gym yesterday–I try to follow a MWF schedule, with an occasional trip on Saturdays thrown in. I’m also trying to go on Saturdays more often since I have the Charm City Strongwoman meet coming up and I need some additional time training with the implements. So ideally, I would’ve gone yesterday, and then made my way to the gym this morning to play around with a 50 lb keg.

What actually happened: I got home from work early, felt like trying to go from my apt to the gym was too much a mental barrier (more on this later), and I didn’t go since I had plans to meet up with some friends later that evening. I told myself that I would make up the time & go Saturday morning and do both barbell and strongwoman work.

I tried getting myself out of bed at a reasonable time to do both the Farmers’ Market (we have a CSA share) and the gym, and I just could not do it. You see, my husband and I have only one car between us for financial/lifestyle reasons, so when I usually go to the gym, I take a bus line that is close to my office (three neighborhoods to the south) to go to the gym (in a different part of town). Getting to the gym from my apt is doable, but requires a bus transfer (relatively time-expensive) or uber (relatively $$-expensive).

Mental barriers are a big issue when it comes to lifestyle tweaks or changes! I’ll leave that as a post for later.

Anyway, I am trying not to beat myself up about it all morning, and I’ve been about 85% successful. You see, I’ve been lifting very consistently (at least 3 times a week) for the past three months. Usually my lifting goes through cycles related to life events: I lift consistently for about three months or so, and then a trip/meet/event comes up that disrupts the schedule, and then I get back to it. I did have a trip last weekend but it wasn’t really long enough to really fuck with my schedule. The truth of the matter is this: I’ve been increasing my weights a lot and have shattered a lot of PRs (which has been fucking awesome), and my body is just fucking tired. I’ve just reset my back squat while I’m pretty close on resetting everything else. Also: my back aches a bit, my calves are inexplicably tight, and my energy level is low.

Note on “resetting”: in a lifting program you’re usually consistently adding weight on a daily or weekly basis, depending on how new you are to lifting. At some point though, everyone hits a wall, and in response you take a break, knock off 10-15% of your highest working weight, and start all over again. It’s normal.

So instead of lifting this morning, I spent the morning listening to the Nujabes Pandora station and walking to, within, and from the nearby Farmers’ Market. It’s been pretty relaxing and mentally refreshing. Got my veggies, did some meal planning for the week (I need to check in with T to finalize it and get the final groceries for the week), and I’m planning to do some needed cleaning around the house for the sake of mindless (mindful?) work.

Tomatoes, pattypan, tomatillos (for salsa), shishito peppers (for salsa), basil (for Thai beef dish)

[I also got some eggs and sausage too, in case you were worried about my protein intake.]

T and I have a number of weights and fitness accoutrements at home, so I plan to do some accessory work at home just so I’m not completely slacking off. I’m actually looking forward to it too: I love barbell work but lately I’ve been feeling a bit itchy and I’ve been wanting to work other things into it. Signing up for the Charm City Strongwoman meet has been well-timed, since it gives me an excuse to do and use all sorts of other equipment.

Anyway, I’ll do another post about what I end up doing later!

Training log/recap – for Wed, 7/29/2015

Since I’ve started lifting five years ago, I’ve kept training logs of everything I’ve done. They’re usually pretty straightforward: what lifts did I do, what were the weights (warm ups and working), and for how many reps.

However, there’s definitely a mental and emotional aspect to regular strength training as well, and I suspect that it’s worthwhile to pay attention and track those aspects too. Sometimes you can go into a lifting session feeling crappy from a bad day at work, only to feel a lot better thanks to endorphins and a successful lift. Sometimes the reverse happens.

Also, one of the comments that has stuck in my mind from my first Toast article was essentially “do you have any mobility issues? you make these movements sound very easy” which was not my intention at all! I’m constantly tweaking and shifting one aspect of my lift on a regular basis to improve my lifts. I’m going to try to track those modifications here too.

Basically, I’m doing these training recaps for two reasons: 1) to track progress and 2) to show anyone who is new-ish or unfamiliar with lifting that there’s a lot of ups, downs, and readjustments.

First lift yesterday: shoulder press, SS style. The goal was to do some reps at 71 lbs; I managed to do 5 singles last week, and then a back off set. I did 3-4 doubles, and then after getting some feedback regarding the lift, I did two back off sets of 5 at 63 lbs. (A back off set is when you lift more reps at a lower weight, and is usually done when you’ve done a challenging weight but want to practice getting the form right in that session in order to build better muscle memory.)

About that feedback: I was told that I wasn’t “catching the bounce” at the bottom of the shoulder press. Are you confused by that phrase? I was. One of the things I’ve learned only recently is that I can’t just nod along to cues and feedback from coaches; in order to really understand and learn what they were trying to teach me, I’d have to ask follow up questions because I don’t have the best understanding on how to engage my body’s muscles for a specific task. I asked things like:

• “how can I do that but still keep my back tight?”
• “oh, so it’s okay to let my shoulders drop in order to ‘bounce’?”
• “should I be doing this as I use my hips?”

Anyway, still feeling a bit goofy and sensitive (it’s PMS time for me, which means a lot of emotional sensitivity), I did the back off sets. I was going to post a video that I thought as taken of the set, but alas..

The shoulder press is my least favorite of all of the four lifts I generally do (squat, deadlift, bench, and press) and it’s the most finicky. Also, for context, my 1RM (which I don’t typically test) going into this calendar year is 65 lbs, so being able to work up to do reps at 63 lbs is great, and even doing singles at 71lbs is even better.

Focus of this lift: allow your shoulders to relax enough to be able to do the goddamn bounce.

Second lift: sumo deadlifts. The working goal was doing a set of five at 225lbs. This is a lot for me; I’m 130 lbs and my current 1RM is a conventional deadlift at 240lbs. I switched to a sumo deadlift in order to see if I could lift more with that style instead of conventional.

As I’ve mentioned before, 225lbs hold a special place in my quirky heart because it’s two wheels! Two 45lb plates on both sides! Wooo! Also, my long term goal is to be able to deadlift 2x my bodyweight (so 260lbs) and I know that if I can do a set of five at 225lbs, it means that that goal is much more likely to be reached. It might even happen this year.

As you might imagine, I had a lot of emotional energy tied up in this particular lift. I’ve been looking forward it since the previous week when I did 220lbs for set of five, and took care to eat carefully and well (this means eating enough, having carbs with every meal) just so I could have the fuel for the lift.

As it happens, I did not complete the set of five.

What happened? Honestly, I set up to do the fourth rep, tried to pull and I felt like I had no more tension in my hamstrings. None. Nada. It might have something to do with my set up, but honestly I was probably just tired because it’s heavy for me. It started feeling like a real struggle at 215lbs, and this my first time going through sumo. I had to hit a wall somewhere, and honestly, doing 225lbs for reps is still a pretty significant PR.

I’ll try for five reps at 225lbs next week, but if I don’t get it, I’m mostly (90%) okay with that.

Focus(es) of this lift: remember to have your chest over the bar, keep the bar on your shins even though it’s a sumo deadlift and it still feels weird.

Third lift: bicep curls! Okay, this probably seems out of place, but I will be doing the Charm City Strongwoman contest (more about that on another post) and biceps are my weakest link when it comes to Strongwoman events. Aside from being 5’2″. And struggling with presses…

Yes, all I need to do is work on my biceps for this competition.

Seriously though, every time I spent a 2 hour session training Strongwoman events, my biceps and forearms are incredibly sore the next day. I’ve started off with 3×8 bicep curls at 12lbs. That felt pretty easy today and I knocked it up to 3×10 bicep curls. I might be able to do 15lbs next week! ;D

I’ll probably delete this.

Potential future posts:

• Thoughts/insights from lifting sessions
• Profiles on other women of color who lift things. It’ll mostly be people I know/know of, mostly training with weightlifting, powerlifting, or strongwoman movements.
• ???
• Cool pictures, because why not?