Training Log: Entry 3745

AM WORKOUT (0359 natural wake up)

TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCOL GREY MAN Week 5, Workout 3

MAIN CLUSTER

Axle bench press
4x6x246

(2) Texas Deadlift Bar Mat Pulls
14x440

SUPPLEMENTAL CLUSTER

Lever belt squat
4x10x250

Dips
3x10x75
8+2x75 (weight swung too much)

Axle curls
4x10x83

ASSISTANCE (performed in an unbroken circuit)

Reverse hyper
3x15x360

Hanging leg raise
3x10

Notes:

• Was not quite as motivated to tackle this today. Relied on the reality that I simply don’t have an option to delay this workout, since Wed is our busiest day of the week, and I had breakfast waiting for me when I was done.

• Felt very strong on the bench. As I was doing it, thought to myself “I feel like a 300lb bencher again”. It’s been an interesting journey trying to come back to where I was with a healthier approach. For you turbo nerds, this is like Final Fantasy IV, where you start out with Cecil as a dark knight, and he’s powerful, but his attacks take away from his hit points and are ultimately self-destructive, and then you start over as a level 1 paladin, you’re weaker, but you now can heal, and you can eventually grow to surpass your previous self.

• Holy f*ck at those mat pulls. If you’re observant, I missed the grab for the power rack and ended up just falling to the reverse hyper to rest. Definitely blew out some blood vessels, but feeling stronger than I expected. MUCH better than where I was last training cycle at this weight.

• Lever belt squats are really feeling good on the legs. Knee is healthy enough that I can focus on that. Dips were good: final set the weight just got a little too wild on me. Curls are feeling good. I’ve actually noticed my arms have grown, specifically because I normally roll up my sleeves at work, and I noticed I can’t drink my coffee anymore when I do that, because the sleeves compress my arms too much to comfortably raise the mug to my mouth. That’s a real “non-scale victory”

• Which, speaking of the scale, I weighed in at 81.9kg this morning. Part of that was sweating a bunch at Tang Soo Do (more on that in a minute), but I still afforded myself to throw an extra slice of corned beef on my plate as a result. I’m leaning into this recomp/reverse diet phase, since it seems to be working, but, in turn, I’m going to course correct when I see things going a little off kilter. With me eating only 1 meal yesterday, I recognize it was a little on the small side.

• Tang Soo Do sparring night went really well. We had 14 students in attendance, so it was a large bracket. I sparred 3 black belts, with a match with the Valkyrie in between the first and the second one. By all accounts, I won every match, but the final match against our senior black belt went into overtime and I scored a beautiful jump roundhouse to his ribcage…and the judges ruled that he scored a bodypunch on me. We both stared at each other in disbelief, and the black belt even pointed at me and went “Uh, no, he got the point”, but it’s baseball rules. I took satisfaction in us both recognizing it. Our dojang also implemented double elimination that night, so after that was done, I got to spar 3 more matches (2 against senior students, 1 against the Valkyrie), wherein I won the first two and lost a hardfought match the the Valkyrie at the end. It was an excellent test of endurance and I had to stay light on my feet. My matches against the black belts required me to come up with some individual strategies to address their unique tendencies (kinda like playing “Punch Out” back in the day) while I’m still trying to wreck everyone’s game by sparring Tang Soo Do using Bas Rutten’s fighting stance. Knees and hips have been happy enough to be able to pull that off, but we’ll see how tonight goes with 90 minutes of sparring.