Thanksgiving was great yesterday. Had a massive feast at Attossa’s. Lots of prime rib, smoked turkey, potato salad, Mac and cheese, and more. 

I keep hearing people talk about how turkey is the worst part of dinner and besides the fact that I hear that sentiment every year and it’s pretty old by now, I also just disagree. You will find no solidarity in me with that cliche small talk - smoked turkey is delicious and I will buy a giant turkey leg from the fair, beach boardwalk, etc. every given opportunity.

Going to a second dinner tonight at Elizabeth's parents 2 hours away so this morning to save time, I did:

Squats (high bar): 275 x 20
Super-set with deadlifts: 275 x 20

Pictures from yesterday:

Thanksgiving workout:

Bench press 

225 x 3

255 x 3

285 x 6

Close-grip bench press 

230 x 10, 10, 9

Super-set with lying dumbbell rows: 115s x 3 x 10

Giant sets:

Incline dumbbell flyes: 50s x 3 x 10

Incline dumbbell press: 50s x 6, 5

Plate spider curls: 45 x 15, 12

Felt strong under the bar and felt like I had another rep of 285 in me if I wanted to grind for it. 

Watched World's Strongest Man 2002 with my girlfriend before lifting and she's getting familiar with the athletes. Man, the production values from that era were so fun: lots of wacky camera angles, silly skits, and radical techno music.

 5 minute jump-rope round in the morning, followed by an uncounted number of crunches and reverse crunches.

Evening:

1 round, 3 minutes shadowboxing

2 sprints up Heart Attack Hill

8 minutes of HIIT on flat ground

.

Woke-up with my back feeling stiff, which was a surprise since it's been feeling good lately. Different pain from what was plaguing me until recently - this is more like when you're sitting down in a poor position for too long and you get up. Only theory is that I slept so deeply that I slept through a certain position instead of naturally shifting during slumber because I woke-up to use the restroom later in the night than I usually do, closer to my alarm time.

My lunch routine is normally a 5-10 minute walk followed by a 10-15 minute nap in a room at our warehouse before returning to the office. Instead, I went on a longer walk today to the pull-up bars on the trail and did a 1-minute dead hang.

Overhead press 

145 x 5

165 x 3

185 x 3

Giant sets

Overhead press: 145 x 3 x 8 + 8 overhead shrugs at end of each set

Chin-ups: BWx8, 30x3x10

Reverse hyper single-leg curls: 8 plates x 3 x 10

Dumbbell chest flyes: 50s x 3 x 10

Super-set with dumbbell curls: 50s x 10, 8, 

Shoulders were sore from low bar squats yesterday and I contemplated resting them until tomorrow, but I decided to knock this out on the weekend instead of after work. Didn't even attempt going past 3 with 185.

Squats (low bar)

325 x 5

375 x 5

420 x 5

315 x 17 (high bar)

Walked away after this, and there was an extended rest period between 420 and the set of 315 to allow my back to decompress and not slam it with too much weight in a short period of time. It worked: I walked away with no pain. Was beginning to forget what that's like.

Pleased with how light 420 felt.

Did a massive Costco haul last night. They have ground bison back in stock so I bought several to store in my freezer.

Bench press

205 x 5

235 x 5

270 x 7

Close-grip bench press

230 x 3 x 8

Super-set with lying dumbbell rows: 115s x 3 x 8

Spider plate curls: 45 x 15, 12

Super-set with dumbbell flyes: 50s x 10, 10

Decent session. Not much of an increase from last month, but I've also been undereating and have maintained a bodyweight of around 200 lbs. I can eat more in the mornings to remedy this. At work, I haven't been eating any carbs until 1pm except for a handful of almonds to go with my egg + bone broth mugs.

I've done spider curls whie lying chest-down on a bench with dumbbells before, but using a weight plate really put some incredible tenson on the biceps with such a light load. Similar feeling to preacher curls. Started out easy but by rep 10 my biceps were on fire.

Haven't been taking protein powder much lately. Had a couple nights this week where I made a casein shake before bed but otherwise I've just been eating whole foods. Took advantage of a Black Friday deal to treat myself to Metabolic Drive, so I'm looking forward to protein puddings before bed again and chocolate shakes at work. Might get some Superfood on sale as well since my multivitamins are running low.

Also, this afternoon during my lunch break I walked to the chin-up bars on the trail near my work and did a 1 minute dead hang. I like this set-up because the bar is high so I can hang with my legs fully extended, which feels great on my back (no pain today, by the way). Also did my usual 5 minute jump-rope in the morning after waking-up.

 Didn't partner up like usual yesterday at boxing. Instead, after skipping rope and shadowboxing, we did footwork drills using rope ladders, 2 rounds on the heavy bag, and then an easy circuit of various exercises like goblet squats, push-ups, medicine ball throws, and a few others. Ended with ab work and stretches. 

The ab exercises seem regressed my back a little, as I woke-up with the left side feeling pain, although nothing debilitating. It's anything that has me holding my legs low to the ground that treats me the worst, like flutter kicks and lying Russian twists.

Deadlifts

405 x 5

455 x 5

515 x 0, 0

Super-set with wide chin-ups: 2 x 10

30 second dead hang

First time in awhile that I've had to walk away after missing a deadlift rep, but I felt like I had no power today when trying to handle 515. However, this is also the first time in awhile that I've moved a decent amount of weight with my lower body and suffered no back pain afterwards, so my spirit was very high while cleaning up. I remember having crushed my last heavy squat workout but back pain had set in before I started gingerly putting the plates away and it was a lame feeling seeing the loaded bar I had just lifted 30 minutes earlier and knowing I couldn't do that now. It was a much more energetic, chipper clean-up session here.

I'm thinking it'd be a good idea to bring back power cleans before deadlifts again. They really primed me to break the bar off the ground and I had one of my most consistent deadlift runs while including them.

Bad and good news about boxing. I tried to sign-up for Tuesday sparring over the weekend, but the class was already full. Our gym is moving across the street to a bigger building in January, though, so hopefully class capacity will be bigger and sparring will be expanded.

Overhead press 

135 x 5

155 x 5

175 x 6

140 x 10, 10, 10, 9, 8

Super-set with chin-ups

Bodyweight x 10

15 x 10

30 x 10, 10, 10

Giant sets: 3 sets each of skullcrushers, chest flyes, and dumbbell curls for 5-10 reps starting with 50 lb dumbbells and dropping to 35s when I could no longer hold my arms up.

 Really got a lot out of boxing yesterday. After the standard 3 jump-rope rounds of 3 minutes, I used the mirror during shadowboxing to practice keeping a more exaggerated shell after watching an online tutorial and noticing during sparring that I tended to stay too upright when in-fighting. I'm still getting the hang of boxing real close instead of only relying on reach and assuming I'll have that advantage over everyone I face.

Fittingly, I partnered up after with the big dude who made me want to get better at close-range combat in the first place. Practiced countering the jab with 1-2s and other simple combos that started with a left hook.  After we took turns jabbing and countering, we each did a round of non-stop 1-2s rotated with non-stop upper-cuts in 30 seconds intervals. 

We changed partners after this entire medley and my second partner was skilled to the point that we were both a blur when it came to the non-stop 1-2s/upper-cut rounds and our coach came by to compliment us. At one point my red gloves were flashing over his black ones and it looked downright psychedelic, like a kaleidoscope of leather. After awhile of being in a rhythm like this you have to make sure you don't let yourself start thinking, thereby losing the flow.

Back has been feeling excellent, but I don't want to squander that. This weekend I'm scheduled for a heavy deadlift session and I'll be very careful about that to experiment what I can handle. After deadlifts, instead of split-squats I'll either do belt squats or I might just walk away and do the accessory exercises later in the day/the next day. Goal is to not wake-up in pain the next day.

Got a lot to catch up on. Started my deload over the weekend.

Friday:

Overhead press

95 x 5

115 x 5

135 x 5

115 x 4 x 10

Super-set with chin-ups: 4 x 10

Keg curls: 150 x 20

Saturday night: 3 mile jog followed by a 20 minute walk.

Sunday, after a 5 min morning jump-rope round and breakfast: 

Dumbbell Romanian deadlifts:

125s x 3 x 10

Super-set with wide-grip chin-ups: 3 x 8

Walking kettlebell lunges

50s x 3 x 16

Monday morning before work, another 5 minute jump-rope round. Evening was home boxing training:

8 minute jump-rope round

3 rounds, 5 minutes each on the heavy bag

20 minute jog

Tuesday evening was a combined squat and bench deload:

Squat

225 x 5

245 x 5

295 x 5

Bench press

135 x 5

165 x 5

200 x 5

Crazy bells bench press

145 x 4 x 10

Super-set with lying dumbbell rows: 80s x 4 x 10

40 second chin-up

Also, Saturday morning was another amazing breakfast at Mix Huevos with Elizabeth, except this time i went ahead and got a drink before my meal. Went and saw Predator: Badlands afterwards, which was Disney corny but still really good.

Never posted how Halloween went, either, but it ended up being a really good Halloween party. As soon as I stepped in the backyard, one of Elizabeth's coworkers asked me to arm wrestle. As Rambo, I could only accept with pleasure. My left arm crushed him in seconds, but my right arm (the surgery one) had to fight him a bit. I had also done Boring But Big a few hours earlier so I wasn't at peak strength. It wasn't hard, either, but it took a while of waiting him out in gridlock to finally beat that side. Had some good drinks and then spent a lot of time talking about snakes with someone else after. Weird but fun.

Also, played a bit of Tekken 4 this morning before work. Been liking it a lot. 20 years after playing Tekken 5, too.

 Squats

365 x 5

415 x 3

465 x 1

Drop-down to 405x5, 315x8, 225x10, 135x10

Reverse hyper leg curls

6 plates x 20, 20

I'd been putting this squat day off to let my back recover and it's been feeling excellent the past several days. Unfortunately this still took its toll. Everything felt fine until the last set of leg curls, funnily enough, and even then it was faint pain. No problem, I figured; I'm done now anyways. But as the night wore on, my back slowly began to feel worse and worse. Same problem spot that's been getting my attention lately: lower right side.

While recently reviewing my training log, I noticed that my back tends to like the softer side of my reversable mattress more when it's in pain. Sure enough, I flipped it to the soft side and when I woke-up to use the restroom, my back didn't hurt at first. Same deal in the morning. Eventually, back pain set in again, but that's a promising confirmation considering that waking-up is typically very painful after a back injury.

I have a scheduled deload coming up, and I will almost certainly replace the heavy deadlift day this week with something lighter. I also have belt squats in my arsenal for when it's time to lift heavy.

Bench press 

235 x 5

265 x 3

295 x 4

Close-grip bench press: 225 x 10, 10, 10, 10, 9

Super-set with dumbbell rows: 115s x 5 x 10

Incline chest flyes: 35s x 12, 50s x 10, 35s x 10

Super-set with alternating dumbbell curls: 50s x 20, 50s x 16, 35s x 20

I could have sworn I already did this workout and hit 290x3, but turns out that was last month. The passage of time was alarming but the gains up for that. Felt like I had a 5th rep of 295 in me, but Jim Wendler advises not going all-out on the top sets when doing Boring But Big. 

Halloween last night was as good as a low-key night could be. I had a dentist at 9:00 a.m. this morning so my girlfriend and I stayed in and watched Halloween episodes of King of the Hill, Simpsons, and The Office. King of the Hill won. We even managed to squeeze in a little roleplaying game time before bed with Champions of Norrath for PS2.

Edit: Ended up going to a Halloween house party the next night thrown by one of Elizabeth's co-workers and that was surprisingly awesome.

Sparring on Thursday was undeniably a fun one, but a bit frustrating in that I once again started out too nice. I’ve sparred this guy before and he tends to go VERY light, to the point that I had to recalibrate my power because I’d just got done doing hard rounds with someone else. This time, it started out that way but he soon switched to harder shots that caught me by surprise. A few times my defense fell apart when he flurried as I fell back into that dumb habit of trying to parry multiple punches, but because his guard was always low, I caught him with a lot of jabs, crosses, and hooks as he was rushing in. We both ate a lot of shots to deliver our own.

My corner coach was the uncle of my previous Muay Thai coach so that was awesome. He advised between rounds to get low and dig to the body because his elbows tend to flare out. I ended up catching him with some hard body shots at the start of round 3. After taking a few of these he surged forward aggressively, some of which I blocked and others that I ate, but he slowed down a lot after this. I heard his corner coach yell out that the round is almost over and to make things count, but he didn’t really come alive after that early round flurry while I ended by peppering him with 1-2s.

My cardio held up awesome. Didn’t get tired and wanted to go more rounds.