Does my bum look big in this squat rack?

kevpants wrote: »

Last week has been just dumbell related upper body stuff because a) I have no bar still and b) my apparently pulled muscle in my calf is actually some form of super aids for legs.

Have a physio appointment in the morning which is a bad sign since I rarely seek professional medical assistance. The timeline of this injury is as follows:

Sunday: Strain calf, swells up, apply ice, elevate.
Monday: Calf is quite sore to walk on but bearable.
Tuesday: Calf easier to walk on, announce to the world that I have super human powers of recovery.
Wednesday: Calf better again but intense burning twisting stabbing sensation in general leg area.
Thursday: Walking now completely fine but while at rest, especially at night, an intense throbbing nerve pain left me wondering if someone wasn't using my tibia to crow-bar the hatch of a Russian tank open, whilst the tank was on fire.
Friday: Nerve pain now extremely intense but coming in waves, when these waves arrive the glass in the windows around me visibly shakes and time itself slows down due to the intense galactical destructive power occurring just above my left ankle.
Weekend: A blurry mess of pain, beer and gardening. Attempted to distract myself from the feeling that the ebola virus has decided to re-group and ready itself for another crack at humanity by holding a team bonding exercise weekend in my sock by getting hideously sunburnt. Plan didn't work.
Monday: Decide to ring physio. Appearance of calf/ankle (cankle?) is the straw that broke the arthritic, suicidal camels back since the combination of weird bruising and sunburn has left it looking somewhat similar to Barney the dinosaur's ballbag.

kevpants wrote: »

Just back from 2 weeks in Spain, desperately trying to avoid work so may as well update this. Didn't do the GPC comp so sights are set on November for the Leinster open. Calf appears to be completely healed, splashing about in the pool really helped work out the tightness. Slept 10-11 hours a night on the hols which helped all my aches and pains ease a lot. Babypants slept in until 11 pretty much every morning so took full advantage of that. Really good holiday, feel rejuvenated and ready to gradually work towards the Leinster Open/ my next injury over the next few months.

Prior to holidays I managed to get my bench back up to 140kg paused with a bent bar (thus a deficit bench!) which was pretty cool considering I was <100kg. I still am actually, 99kg the day after getting back from hols. I think that’s the 3rd consecutive year I’ve come back either lighter or the same weight from hols. Wifepants hating me.

As far as how I’m going to train for the next 5 or so months. I haven’t really decided yet. Definitely going to try and keep the same kind of intensity up that I had before my latest mishap. Smolov really worked well for me but I need to think like a powerlifter and build a total this summer/autumn, not just a squat. Just on intensity, a little prediction, I sense a change in the winds of the American online strength training community away from “train smart, not hard” and all the de-loading towards a more intense attitude. A few things the likes of Dave Tate and in some of the articles on joke sites like TNation point to a revival of the attitude that you should train through tiredness and soreness and lift heavy and often. This is feckin gas. Maybe the US finally realises that their weightlifters are sh1te and the only powerlifting federations they excel in are multi-ply high squat bible belt federations where the judges (cousins) have a finger over the button for the white lights at all times because they don’t train hard enough.

I’ve been of the opinion for a long time that all this de-loading is ridiculous, just because I’m older than most lifters logs I follow and have no time to train (by comparison to people who are single/childless/students etc) I’ve been so jealous of those who claim to be overtrained or tired. If I organise my training enough around the important things in my life to get near overtrained in the next few months that will be awesome.

Kind of went on a meandering rant there without mentioning how I’m going to train… obviously I started Coan DL before my layoff. Undecided as to whether I should start over at that or if it’s unlikely I can get my squat moving up again while doing it. I might go for an ME Lower day every week on a 3 week squat/deadlift rotation. Basically how I originally trained the squat and deadlift in my early days. Will give me a chance to try out my wraps/ruin my new bar (which is in the post by the way) with heavy weights regularly too. One thing that’s for sure is I’m going to bench heavy and often. For the 2 weeks I was rehabbing my calf before hols I mentioned I get a 140kg bench. I got it by doing paused max effort heavy singles every 48 hours starting out at 130kg. It was a simple addition of 2.5kg a session and in 10 days 140kg flew up after a nice pause on my chest.

So in summary I don’t know what it will look like but heavy weights, more often than recommended and always looking for 2.5kg extra every time I train.