Hypertrophy

Light easy warm up:
40# push press 10x
shoulder mobility stuff
2x through

On the machines today.  Felt strange to be doing machine work.
Seated Lateral Raise 1x8@130

Seated Rear Delt - 1x8@62#
Seated Military Press - 1x4@160
Barbell Curl 1x8x90#
Tri-Pressdown - 1x8@150
Dip - 1x3@45#

Then:
20 min recovery run
20 min recovery swim

Body weight - 205 (that's too heavy.  The goal is around 185-190 at 8-10%.  The reason being non other than I perform pretty well at 185-190.  

This week was tough to balance food, workouts, sleep, work, etc.  I lost some control over the diet and in my attempt to eat knowing that I was going to be adding more hours of work to my day (more calories) I got them from the wrong sources.  Next week will be another chance to dial things in a bit.  

Hypertrophy

Leg Ext - 1x18@150
Leg Press - 1x20@310
Seated Calf - 1x12@190
Hang Knee 1x21@20#
Then:
6x50m@ 60"
10x25m@ 45"
300m cool down

BW after swim- 202#

The tempo of the lift has a MAJOR impact on the number of reps I can do before failure, and "failure" is still a bit nebulous for me too.  Obviously the more momentum I have the more reps I can do, but intellectually I know that, the number of reps is not that important.  What IS important is consistency.  I have to be sure to keep the tempo the same or progress is immeasurable.  On hypertrophy days, my goal is a 4 sec tempo on the concentric and the eccentric portions and a 2 sec hold in max contraction position.  That's really, really slow.  Today I trained with Chad and I noticed that I was able to dig in a little deeper to the reserves.  Sqeeze out a couple more reps.  Put 10# more on the bar.  Let the ego do it's job a little and benefit from it.

The swim is starting to degrade into "recovery," which in my case means lackadaisical.  This month I'm going to try and get back on the wagon with diet, and steady state cardio and I'm going back and forth on adding an additional workout day.  Maybe go; T, W, Th, F?  Progress and adaptation are the measure of success, so if I try it, the number one thing I will look for is consistent progress from day to day workouts.

Apparently my "hem-hawing" is typical and transcending other aspects of my life.  It's interesting to realize because I never really thought of myself as indecisive, yet the feedback from workouts, introspection and other people in my life tell me that I was wrong.  I have been behaving indecisively in the past.  This explains quite a bit actually and it needs to change.  I wasn't always behaving like this, and now it's time to "turn the filter down."   

Hypertrophy

DB Flys - 1x8x60#
Incline Smith Press - 1x7@100
Close Grip Pull Down - 1x8@250
Bent Row 1x10@190
Then:
10x100m on 2:00 (holding 1:30's)
200m easy swim cool down

Hypertrophy

Leg Extension - 1x15@150
Squats - 1x15@205
Calf Raise 1x13@185
Hang Knee raise - 1x40; 1x35; 1x20

Then:
Easy Swim

BW - 202# after swim

Hypertrophy

Dumbbell Lateral Raise - 1x7 @ 25#
Bent DB Lateral Raise - 1x7 @ 20#
BB Curl 1x10 @ 70#
Press Down - 1x10 @ 130
Dips - 1x 4 @ 35#

Then:

Easy Swim 30 min.

Hyper

Fridays are my hypertrophy days.  My goal is to be 190 and <8% bodyfat.  I wrote about this the other Friday.  I feel hypocritical every Friday doing Hypertrophy workouts and being a CrossFit coach.

I was encouraged to actually make this blog about self-discovery and not just a workout log book...it's never easy being vulnerable and saying the thoughts/feelings that occur. 

For me, the biggest challenge is consistency.  Consistently doing the workouts over a long period of time.  My push, my personal challenge is to hit both my performance and my atheistic goals and I know that it comes directly from consistent attention and effort.  I have this thing in my head that form and function are the biggest measuring sticks that people use to judge my ability to coach them...the reality is I'm projecting.  Perception is always projection.  What I perceive is actually my projections onto other people.  The truth of the matter, the real painful thing to realize is that I judge my own ability to coach on my form and function, my physique and performance.   

Today's workout:
Warm Up:
build up to working weight on leg press (275)
Then:
Leg extentions - 150# 30x, then immediately
Leg Press - 315# 28x
Then:
Calf raise 125# 19x
then
Hanging knee raises 2x20, 1x failure

As you can see, doing leg presses and leg extensions, isolation of muscle groups is not "crossfit."  But in the end, I like body-building, it's fun to me and Mike Mentzer, Dorian Yates, Ellington Darden and the like (HIIT guys) are guys that I look up to in the bodybuilding world.  I like to follow a similar line of thought which started with Arthur Jones, Ellington Darden, then Mike, then Dorian.  Mike was a philosophical body-builder which speaks right to my soul.   

A CrossFitter who see's this would argue with me that doing full depth squats, or "functional" stuff is all i need to do, CrossFit is all I need to do.  I suppose. 

For me though, I like CrossFit, I like Gym Jones, I like Body-building, I like Adventure Racing (I only did one sprint so far though), I like swimming and water polo, I like a lot of things...can't I do all of them?  Do they have to be mutually exclusive?  I suppose that if I wanted to be at the CrossFit games I can't, but is that the only thing that matters?  I train to discover things about myself.  Dedicated effort to one thing is hard, maybe in the end I'm avoiding that because it's so difficult.  Focused attention for a long period of time is how you get to the top of the sport...am I avoiding it?

Then:
Recovery Swim

Today was just a recovery swim.  I worked on stroke drills for about 1 hour then got out.  It was nice to just float a little bit, swim easy and not have to push so damn hard all the time.   

Hyper

Light general warm up:
Then:
Lateral Dumbbell Raise 1x12@30#
Bent Dumbbell Lateral Raise 1x14@20#
Barbell Curl 1x 10@70#
Tricep Press Down 1x22@120
Bar Dips 1x 3 @25

Then:
Swim
2x15 (30"/30")
Rest 7:30 between rounds

Hypertrophy

I decided that my goal of 190# and 6-8% bf means that I need to gain a few lbs of lean mass, so I started doing some hypertrophy/strength work a la Mike Mentzer style since I had such great success with it in the past.  Although this first workout was more guess work then anything else because I don't know what weight I should be using, so I just guessed at something I thought was close and went for it.

Leg Ext. 1x 17 @ 110#
Leg Press 1x 26 @ 250#
Seated Calf Raise 1x 20 @ 90#
Sit up - 1x 60 @ 25#

The goal with Heavy Duty style hypertrophy work is 1 set to absolute failure, eccentric, concentric and isometric.  That is tough to do and according to Dorian Yates (my favorite bodybuilder of all time) said that it took him 9 years how to figure out how to mentally go to total failure on 1 set.  It's not easy to do.
So with this new revelation in mind, I think that I'm going to do 2-3 sets on these and lower the goal rep count a little.  Dorian style.

Then:
2x10 30/30 swimming.
So I did 10x 50yrd on the 60"
rest 5 min. between rounds

Next workout should be something more like:
Leg Ext. 3x 8
Leg press 3x8
Standing Calf 2x 8
Hang leg raise 3x20