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Kill, Maim, Slay. Vol. 1 - I'm Seeing Red


richcottrell

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1 hour ago, JHenze646 said:

So let me get this straight... every time you run, sprint, or jog something gets hurt or aches?

why are you still running?!? Seriously..

By that “do not do it if it hurts” logic, I would never be allowed to bend either...

regarding the running and pain, the problem is arthritis.   I have let it rule me for too long.  I ended up not joining a gym, so I am trying to get some cardio in.  A rowing machine would be nice but I do not think I have the room for one.

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Most grip events do have a long distance, cardio component - maybe try aggressive walking? 

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16 hours ago, richcottrell said:

By that “do not do it if it hurts” logic, I would never be allowed to bend either...

regarding the running and pain, the problem is arthritis.   I have let it rule me for too long.  I ended up not joining a gym, so I am trying to get some cardio in.  A rowing machine would be nice but I do not think I have the room for one.

Rucking is an excellent option and easily turned into a family activity. 

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48 minutes ago, Andrew Dube said:

Rucking is an excellent option and easily turned into a family activity. 

Funny you mention that as Rogue has their weight vests slightly discounted for Black Friday, and because I am looking at loosing a total of 20lbs from be summer heaviest, I was thinking I should think about getting plates that would equal those 20lbs....

so how did you get into that and what is the best resource to learn more about starting off proper?

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Don't waste your money in the beginning,  just put heavy stuff in a backpack and head outside.  You'll figure out the details just by doing it

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https://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/ready-to-ruck-how-to-get-started-and-what-to-buy

I'd agree not to buy a weight vest (at least not for this). Don't put weights in a backpack either. Pack your bag with useful stuff, snacks, water, extra layers, activities for the kids. Maybe some field guides, my kids love identifying plants. Maybe as you get stronger you'll need to add some weight to keep progressing but pack it smartly in with your other stuff so you don't just have some plates banging around at the bottom of your bag. Your kids might be a bit old for this now but carrying them in purpose built carrier would be ideal. I used to do this quite a bit with my boys. I still carry the youngest on longer trips. Find some nice trails near you. Like I said it can be a great way to spend time as a family too. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

REALITY Check:
I will most likely miss that 74kg weight class as my weight is back over the 170lbs mark.

 That is even with watching myself on Thanksgiving Day through the weekend... (except for that 30 pack of Michelob Ultra i polished off).
As a matter of fact, I thought Thanksgivng Day was going to be one of those single days when I would drop a solid pound or more.  I work the ThanksGiving parade in Philly every year, so I was outside from 5:30am right through 3 or 3:30pm;  and I went from the night before right up to noon without eating anything.  It was a real cold day in Philadelphia too.  They were saying it was the coldest recorded thanksgiving in almost 100 years.  I figured with working on an empty stomach and fighting to stay warm, my body would have burnt through some fat, and my lunch was still a qualified super low carb affair.
For dinner i ate mostly a pile of white meat turkey but i did have a single slice of apple pie that night with a single small scoop or ice cream, so maybe even though I skipped the mashed potatoes and stuffing, those sweats ruined the whole thing.

With just a little over a week to go, I think I missed the 74kg goal...
I did drop a size on my belt in the past 5 weeks!  I should be proud of that at least.

Time to stop thinking about my belly  and start visualizing where my grip is strength is at.
Looking for some help on the EURO, as until the last month, I never consciously trained it.
My basic approach so far was timed holds as David Horne recommends in is Beginners Grip Program.

Last night I did another Euro hold workout.  I will post the actual workout later, but I have a question to ask because I just finally weighed my Empty Euro.  Up till now I would refer to the first set as with "Empty Euro", and then only record "Euro plus 20#" for example for the next sets.  Typical hold time was 15 seconds.

Anyway, turns out my Euro is 54lbs.

So far, the heaviest I have gone in those timed holds is Euro plus 30# bare-handed, and Euro plus 35# with thin leather gloves on.  I am sure I could have gone a little heavier, but I always just slowly worked my way up in 5# jumps.  In the next Euro workouts I will try to push the envelope more because I probably only will have two more Euro sessions before Gripmas.  That said, I do not want to tear the skin with only a week or some before the big day.

So this Euro Pinch question is for Gripmas;
 Looking at the weights I have been working with, should I truly expect those timed holds to grant me the more pinch power then the last three years?  
[in the previous years I did not train the Euro at all]

Here are my previous Gripmas Euro PR's:
Gripmas 2015 = 128.73 [48mm]
Gripmas 2016 = 118.38 [???mm]
Gripmas 2017 = 131.67 [46mm?]

Now that I know that empty Euro Weight, sadly my timed holds are well bellow the single rep max:
84# for 15 sec
89# gloved for 9 sec.

Also,  anytime I touched this Euro... it was set for 52mm, which also happened to be the size it was set for when I bought it.

 

 

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On 11/29/2018 at 10:14 AM, richcottrell said:

.

So this Euro Pinch question is for Gripmas;
 Looking at the weights I have been working with, should I truly expect those timed holds to grant me the more pinch power then the last three years?  
[in the previous years I did not train the Euro at all]

 

 

No. You have failed.

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1 hour ago, JHenze646 said:

No. You have failed.

I agree, training should clearly make you worse - the euro may actually lift you now at gripmas

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Also Michelob Ultra.....no surprise you had to drink 30 of them - great work on the weight loss over the past 5 weeks! Keep it coming!

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2 hours ago, JHenze646 said:

No. You have failed.

 

15 minutes ago, Anton.Torrella said:

I agree, training should clearly make you worse - the euro may actually lift you now at gripmas

Wait guys...isn't this my week to get on his case?  I want 2 weeks in a row now.

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You get the entire trip to gripmas face to face - two men enter car, one man leaves

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  • 1 month later...

164.5....

more later, but not bad considering the last three weeks were all “cheat days”!

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I did not get a shirt yet that says I survived Christmas 2018, but I think i deserve one...

i was also lucky enough to catch Strep Throat from my wife just last week, but thanks to Penicillin I am almost back to full speed.   

My dasement office gym became the secret gift wrapping place, so just yesterday I was finally getting all the papers OFF my desk... which means that table I was using for gift wrap, was covered in Health Care paperwork, along with Tax prep and god only knows what else...

saturday’s Goal will be to get rid of it all and to take down that table and to start training again .., as I basically have not done anything since Gripmas... and my Gripmas was a poor showing...

But here we are:

2019 - Time to get back on the bus!

 

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I finally got the folding table out of the office gym...

rolled out some Blobs yesterday... I still need to buy a long board so I can both protect my bench from the cats claws, and to build a proper “loading platform”, but this worked out for a little bit of “Little Blobs” yesterday afternoon...

D0AC28E2-436E-4484-831F-4816DA15F885.jpeg

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1 hour ago, DAVE101 said:

Came for the blobs, stayed to ask about the bending.

Hope to finally start the bending on Friday or Sat... 

just tonight I retrieved 4 new pairs of IronMind bending wrappps from my washer and dryer.  Taking the old advice to wash them a few times before properly chalking and folding them.   I have other older pairs or IMPs but my plan is to have a bunch of pairs equally broken in so I can possibly break up kink days from sweep days, or train the DO (which is all I really trained before) along with some Reverse and/or DU.

i still need to wrap my head around actually training, but thanks for asking.  How is your Blob work going?

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22 hours ago, richcottrell said:

 

i still need to wrap my head around actually training, but thanks for asking. 

Seriously? How about this...

Find a handful of calisthenic, light weight, or band exercises that let you warm up and prep for bending. Do them. Than do 6 easy bends in singles double over hand style. Finish with a few minutes of Indian club work. Done. Do this three time a week for the next four weeks. Post a picture of the actual bent steel. Then get back to me for part two.

You don’t need a complex routine or strategy. You need to train consistently!

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9 hours ago, JHenze646 said:

You don’t need a complex routine or strategy. You need to train consistently!

Hmmmm, how do you spell consistently again?

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21 hours ago, richcottrell said:

Hmmmm, how do you spell consistently again?

Sure. Absolutely. You spell it, “D-O-T-H-E-W-O-R-K”.

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  • 4 months later...

About to crawl out of my turtle shell...  no bending to report, but including today, I now enter my 23rd day staying sober (so no Benders for me in a while).

feeling good about that so now it is time to get moving and training again... just in time for summer

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  • 3 weeks later...

 No real grip work to report, except for some daily thick bar pull-ups (doing a very light and loose take on Greasing the Grove).  The pull-ups have gotten easier but I am still doing less then 10 at a time, so I have a long way to go to just get the pull-ups strong again let alone the grip stronger from the thicker bar.

I am still off the bottle — 5 solid weeks now.  At first the belly dropped noticeable size, but I have let myself eat too much ice cream in the past few weeks to see a real difference on the scale... so this week I will add no ice cream to my Alcohol ban.   I leave for a hiking trip in Scotland in less then three weeks, so any weight I drop now,  will be happily gone when I hit the trails.  My diet these days is mostly low and no carb.
 
Going to spend some time each day for the last few weeks before my flight breaking in my boots as I add weight to my old pack.  Maybe I can put a thick grip onto a 15 or 25lb sandbag to add a little grip work to those days.  I am not planning on taking any grip stuff with me on this trip.
 
When I get back in July, I will bend again.  I promise.  
 
Like for real.
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  • 3 weeks later...

OK, the thicker grip pull-ups stoped yesterday, as well as the hikes with my "heavy" pack...
Leaving in two days for my Scotland Highland trip.  I will be living out of a backpack and sleeping in a tent and attending the Ceres Highland Games and later hiking The Great Glen Way.

Weight is stable at 170 these days...
we will see how heavy,--or light-- I come back from this trip.
Been sober for 7 weeks now.  That is the longest I have been sober sense i was 18.  While me belt size is now one smaller, I am still too fat for my old size 32 pants!
I hope to have a positive update on that in two weeks...

Going to stay off the internet for two solid weeks so I wish you all well in you training, as I take a trip to get ready to start my own grip training again.

When I get back I WILL:
1) get bending again
2) Finally get "that" Ultimate Blobzilla trainer finished (are you listening Conspirancy Dave101???)
3) show you these "other" mini pinch challenge implements another Big Daddy of grip helped me make
4) Either dust off these grippers, or sell the lot!!!

 

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  • 6 months later...

2020 has begun...
I have not really set any resolutions, but as I look at my growing belly I can think of one.

About two months ago I started lifting weights once a week at my kid's gymnastics school.  They have a simple barbell set and a nautilus style multi station machine, and the head coach has encouraged to use it.  I have been taking advantage of this for the past two months.
My middle son takes two classes there each week, so I have been making Sundays my "back day"
I never did deadlifts in my life, and was very worried about opening up an old back injury, but so far so good.

I am not deadlifting anything close to what most grip guys can do on an axle, but 255lbs I am already reminded why I started going grip in the first place.  I have a weak grip!  
Sets with 275lbs are as heavy as I have taken myself, but I think I will be good for 300lbs.  The legs are definitely able to lift more, but the grip always seems to fail first.

The whole workout takes me about an hour.  I start with  4-5 sets of Shrugs [reps in the 10 range]  done with abdominal work ; then I do 4-5 sets superseting a rowing motion with an overhead press [reps in the 10 range].
I give myself at least 2 min between sets.

Then I move into the deadlifts [lifting without shoes on], always starting with an empty bar.  As the weighs move up, I switch from 2 min rest periods to 3 min, and then to 4min. and for the final set I might give myself a 5 min rest.
Now I am going to put my numbers down, please do not laugh.. Here were the numbers from two workouts ago
45# for 10
95# for 10
135# for 10
205# for 8
235# for 5
255# for 5
275# for 3

What I really need to do is pick some sort of grip exercise as a "finishing move" because like I mentioned, I feel like my grip is my weakest link in the deadlifts right now.  Sometimes I can literally feel my left hand slipping.
Last week I had to do the deadlifts on a different barbell while I was on family vacation.  It was very lightly knurled and I really struggled with the grip.

That said, some point I will have to bring some of my own weights from home as the Gymnastic set up ends at 305, or 315...

I was going to leave two of my "beater" 45# plates I picked up off a fellow grip guy.  They are both "Standard Barbell" brand, but after finally putting them on a digital scale, I realized they are very different castings.  One is 45# while the other is 48.8#.  On closer inspection while they are the same brand, the rims and hubs are both very different on these plate.
I guess I will have to bring two of my nicer used plates instead.
The other plan would be to eventually switch the deadlifts to deadlifts with the Manus grips on the bar

Back to 2020 planning.
1)  proper belly reduction.  
-- I fought it last time, but I will take a before picture this time.

2) General Health.
-- I have not been to a doctor in years.  At 44 years young, this is very stupid of me.

3) Flexibility
-- while I am like the Tin Man in the morning, I really need to get into the habit of nightly hamstring work

4) Focused strength work
-- so far i think the Gymnastics School workouts will help me a bunch even if they are only once a week.
along with this theme of focusing, I might even sell off some of my grip stuff.  I do not really need the money, but I think if I have less tools in the tool box, I might actually use the ones I have.

Well that is all for my, good morning 2020... time to now start cleaning my office/gym.

 

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