You ever seen a bird trapped indoors? I don’t mean somewhere big like a sports arena or the airport but a little room with, as an added kicker, a bunch of big scary people in it? The bird starts whippin’ round like a 5 yr old on crystal meth and going for the windows without being real clear on the idea of glass. Whap!, Whap!, Whap-ity Whap!, in what has to be a headache inducing and life span shortening display the bird just keeps going for what looks like clear sky but ends up bouncing his cranium off of the glass like a billard ball. The worst thing to watch is that they keep doing it. BLAM! same result, BLAM! same result. You get the picture. THAT was my day at the gym. I’ve been working on rack pulls for just over two weeks now and tonight – after thinking I was making some progress – BLAM! same result. I’ve been working on rack pulls to fix a hole in my back squat. I even posted here about it. So with the same tone and haunted look in my eyes that a AA member has first meeting back after a bender I have to admit: I’m quad dominat. I do everything I can to cut my hamstrings out of the equation. Tuck my hips, check, lose abs, check, rounded back, check. And the rack pulls are my ticket out. My way to roll out the dusty old electro-shock machine, get a good clenched jaw wrapped around the cracked rubber mouth guard, and rewire my brain stem’s relationship with my back. But tonight I crash landed back in reality. I could barely hold it together. Had to drop weight. I some how got myself pitched all the way forward on the balls of my feet and managed to cut, you guessed it, my hamstrings out of my lift. Ok, deep breath, stop whinging, get on it again, and pull. By the end of my thrashing round I got five reasonable pulls at 115 Kg before I snuck out for home with, you guessed it, my muted hip tucking my tail behind me. No rack pulls tomorrow. Let’s just hope for a fierce cleansing fire to burn up all this frustration and self pity. It’s cliche but they say it’s darkest before the dawn. Lets hope so. Tomorrow’s another day.
Monthly Archive for December, 2008
It feels like New England weather came for a visit and after overstaying its welcome finally went home. Most importantly the roads look like they’re paved again. Over the last few weeks (man it feels weird to say that, has it really been that long?) we’ve had cold + snow + rain + freezing rain + ice. And because clearing roads isn’t something they really commit to out here our roads, after all the snow, went from packed snow (slick), to ice (super mind blindingly slick) to so veriform and deeply rutted (and still wicked slick!!), that it made me cringe at what was happening to my alignment. At this point a digression: A word on a subject near to my heart. Snow plows. Here’s an old school VT plow. Today they’re not quite that badass. Today they’re built out of a 10 ton dump with a huge blade mounted on the front and a monster pet/car/pedestrian destroying wing blade hanging off the side. I still remember with a twinge of fear the amount of damage done to a guard rail by one of these plows. In my snot nose punk days I had a job with the VT DOT and the guy I was riding with one day starts relating – pretty causually – “So last winter I was plowing the Lincoln gap”, which is a COMPLETLY SISSOR CRAZY steap notch in the green mountains that we were driving on at the time, “and I lost my brakes so I had to drop my wing on the guard rail and just ride it till I stopped”. This as I’m seeing completely trashed the guardrail I beams for like half a mile (and this was no wambie-pambie cable guard rail). If the machines ever rise and throw off the yoke of the human oppressors I’m going to be worried about the plows. Ok, ok this is totally the long way around but here’s my immediate point. It snows, I expect plows to come and clean up the roads, but what do I see? These little state body dump trucks with a tiny little blade on the front and a strip of rubber running along the business edge (got to save those road turtles) and this only on “arterial” roads. This is the city’s response to snow. The good old boys who are the business end of the VTDOT would die of shame if they had let a foot or so of snowfall spread over a week paralyze the city. I know, I know, it doesn’t snow all the time, it’s a waste of money, they just wanted to have the roads pack out so the 4x4s could move about without a lot of effort. All of this I know but it went on for more than a week. It’s just unacceptable. More than anything I think I’m embarrassed for them. OK digression over. No more confused ranting about snow removal. So as the title implies the roads have melted clear. The traffic is back and aside from having to use cat like reflexes ocationally to avoid the tangled clusters of chain/cable that have escaped their wheel well all seems pretty normal. I could go on about the bone head things I saw, my favorite being the huge 4×4 truck riding my back bumper with freezing rain falling out of the sky because the driver hadn’t figured out that putting it in 4 wheel drive didn’t double his breaking capacity – or the fact that his vehicle was 3 times as heavy as a typical passenger car, but it feels self defeating. I’m just happy it’s back to just raining. Let’s hope that’s it for this winter.
Workout tonight was a combo of a dumbbell complex and jump ups
Step 1:
With 35lbs dumbbell do a pushup, left arm raise to chest, right arm raise to chest, jump up squat hang clean, split jerk. Do 25 repetitions of this.
Step 2:
To a target just out of reach jump up and touch 100 times.
Repeat Step 1 and 2 three times.
It’s about 27 minutes of work – painful grinding work.
Sometimes you just have to admit you’re struggling. So I’m just going to come out and say it: my back squat is epically, egregiously, enormously stalled. For months I’ve been poking at 140Kg. As in back down to 132, take another linear run at it, start dropping the bar, form all over the place, and me frustrated enough to fall down and start chewing at the gym mats. It’s my hamstrings and my middle. A big soft chewy hole in the middle. The very center of what should be my get up and go. So hears how it goes down: bar is heavy so step one , I stay really upright and quad it – ok that’s rep 1 – I then go : “ok fix the hip drive” – so rep 2 – the moment I start to bounce out of the bottom my middle caves in, by erectors round and my hips tucks like a constipated cat straining beyond dignity to make his litter box deposit. So Michael takes pity on me. “Rack pulls”, “enough squats for you, need to get your back strong”. So set the rack bars to just below my knee, set up like a dead lift with very little shin angle, and “TIGHT!” back, chest up, and rock hard abs pull it up the leg. Holy crap. It kills my hams and erectors. I knew that I was cheating around that but this is evidence, immediate feedback as to exactly what is weak. So good, mission accomplished, I have a new path forward. Rack pulls and good mornings twice a week. Until my back is strong enough to be legally a lethal weapon. I’ll take my humble pie with a big dollap of whip cream and a cherry on tip please!