February Update

Good evening blog readers. I was actually messaged a few days ago asking when my next blog post would be. I had another asking for a full experience of stick to strongman (sort of) in words. While I'm working on the latter, I can't help but feel honoured that people actually read this stuff. Cheers!

So, what's new? Well I've actually had (another) week off. I know right? Terrible. I literally had weekend to weekend off and started again with events at JT's. It wasn't a heavy sesh, but my shins were feeling completely healed and so I just wanted to work on my deadlift lockout. We did a bit of axle deadlift triples from height (using tires + plates) up to 210kg, strapless. These felt great, and the absence of straps was obviously doing wonders for my grip.

Ignore JT's little 'foooooong, misstaaa fongggg' lol.

After that, I just wanted to hit the upper body a bit more but didn't wanna aggravate my shins just in case, so just did a bit of light strict rep work with the axle too. 60kg for 3 sets of 10, except I failed the 3rd set. Never mind. Quite a small sesh but great to see JT and Simon and play with some different toys.

Another reason for going down to the cauldron was to collect my new single ply lifting gear. A lovely (lightly used) Titan F6 and Titan Centaurian are now mine! The suit is for 90kg and the shirt is 100kg. Challenge accepted!

105kg bodyweight, 90kg suit, eeeeeeeeeeasy.

The suit takes about 20 minutes to get on all the way with a bit of Tesco carrier bag lubricant! For anyone curious how it works, you just slip the bags over your thighs and use the slippyness of the bag to slide the 'sleeves' (for lack of better word) over your legs. Takes a bit of squirming about and little quarter squats to get it on fine but that's cool. I can't get the straps up by myself which is probably a good thing, meaning I should be able to get the most of equipped squatting.

As for the shirt, that's pretty much a perfect fit. It's for 100kg lifters but I have a relatively small upper body (work in progress!) so it slides on fairly easy by myself alone. Usually it's meant to take a bit of effort from a whole team of guys so I was quite proud to get it on first try.

I won't be trying any equipped lifting in my gym, sadly, as a) I want proper spotters b) want proper people to show me what to do and c) want to actually have plates at hand (We have like eight 20s to share between the entire gym). Hopefully should be attending properly equipped gym in the summer, and hopefully frequently before too.

The Warehouse Gym, home of British powerlifting record holders.

Anyhoo, that's about it at the moment. I'm looking forward to using knee wraps again as it's been forever since I used any form of non-raw style lifting and I've got that pair of Metal Silvers that need breaking in. 

Until next time guys, thanks for reading!

Training Update - Few Vids

So the other day I said I was feeling horrid in my shins still so I've neglected my legs for a while. That means the past week I've been benching, overhead pressing and working the guns to death. It's been fun cos there's only one thing I love more than exercising is lying down, so combining the two seems perfect. Anyhoo, lately I've been pausing my reps and feeling the benefits way more so that's my new thing at the mo. I've hit a 110kg paused double which is only a single rep from my 'bounced' PB, and I've definitely got more in the tank.  We'll see soon enough anyway.

Other than that, the only real lower body exercises I'm getting lately are deadlifts and while they're only getting hit once a week, I'm loving lifting heavy every time. Anyway, since 242.5 and 245kg fell in two weeks, the third week should have been another 2.5kg increment but I felt ambitious and it paid off.

250kg slightly hitched over the shorts but ah well

As you can see, my lockout sucks. But I really did try and not hitch the bugger and I reckon 247.5kg would have been a lot cleaner but meh. I've been instructed by friends who know what they're doing that working on deadlifts from blocks (14-18" inch) will definitely help out, and I plan on squeezing these in whenever I can. Sadly, my gym doesn't exactly have blocks and the lowest pin on the squat rack is 20", so I think I've just gotta batter my upper back with rows, lat pulldowns and other accessory lifts to fix the problem. The odd time that I can get to the cauldron or warehouse will be my block day though.

So today we went to The Warehouse Gym and did some events. Long story short, it was a terrible session for me, but I still enjoyed myself. There's no video, but basically I no-repped the car deadlift and conan's wheel, and didn't exactly blow away the axle either (with a massive 110kg single rep lol). But anyhoo, I still got in some tire flips and squats with chains. I've never used chains before but still had a blast with em and will definitely try to fit them into my warehouse sessions later.

39kg cast iron wheels, 20kg bar, 30-40kg in chains, quite light but nice to learn with.

If you're unsure on what's the purpose of metal chains clanging around at my feet, I'll explain. As I'm standing up, I have the full weight of everything on the bar. As I squat down, the chains rest on the floor, lightening the load. It essentially loads the top half of the squat with more weight than the bottom. My squats don't really have a sticking point at the moment mind you, so it's not something I really need to work on, but I imagine that once I start squatting in kit, the top half will require extra training so I'm getting that head start now. I've also mentioned it's really cool!

Speaking of which, I've since returned the Inzer Harcore deadlift suit I ordered a while back (as it hadn't even been sent yet!) and made a bargain purchase of a second hand bench shirt and squat suit from a former England's Strongest Man and GBPF record holder! (Yes that's a claim to fame). These look great, but I'll wait a bit til I train in them cos I'm a complete kit noob and will probably die training alone! So yeah, here's my new kit!

  

Only one more thing to say really and that's I finally dragged my girlfriend down to the gym the other day to try out some compound lifts. We weren't expecting anything great but she definitely blew expectations out the window whens she got the hang of most lifts straight away. We started off with a 25kg bench press, 60kg deadlift and 16kg zercher squat. We used the latter as a regular squat proved a little difficult for someone with fucking zero mobility caused by years of WoW and CoD (she is pretty good at those though), but either way, most impressive stuff.

I don't think she'll be coming back anytime soon but it's nice to see that with a little push, people get their arse in gear and give it a shot. Who knows, maybe you can too?!