Super Bowl
I had a pretty laid back weekend overall. Saturday morning I tried out CrossFit and it was fun. I’m going to go back this afternoon for a real workout. I’m sure it’ll be hard but that’s what I’m going for so I’m looking forward to the challenge. The only thing I really struggled with was the timing of the dip/hop/dip stuff in the jerk (you need to know about Olympic clean and jerks to know what I’m referring to). This is an example of a random clean and jerk (obv this isn’t me):
The clean is where you lift the bar up to the front of your shoulder. It’s like a combination of a power deadlift and a quarter front squat. Then the jerk is where you dip, hop a bit (to get some upward momentem on the bar) and then dip again to allow yourself to extend the weight above your head. It’s like you’re “cheating” on a press because you’re using the momentum of the weight to make it much easier to get it overhead… not to mention dipping your body away from the bar and then doing a slight overhead squat to stand up fully. It takes more timing and technique than it looks like to get it right. I’m sure I will get it but I was struggling to time it correctly at first.
Other than CrossFit, I didn’t do too much until the Super Bowl last night. I went up to a party with some friends here in Cayman and it was a good time. There was a hot tub, a few TVs, a “gambling corner” and a bunch of food. The Gambling Corner consisted of a large piece of paper tacked onto the wall where we made all sorts of bets. Most of them were pretty low limit because most of the people there were not degen gamblers like a lot of the people who read this blog. Here’s a picture of Gambling Corner:
I made a bunch of bets. I had the over on 26 in the first half for $5 (lost). I had the over on three rushing TDs for $5 (lost). I had Hartley in a three way $5 bet for who was going to be the highest scoring player in the game and I won against Addai and Garcon (+$10). And I had the Saints +4.5 for $100 in the only action I could get going all night. The bets were actually in Cayman currency which is pegged at 1.25-1 against the dollar so I actually won $125 USD. I’ll take it. I’m on an absurd run in sports bets (theoretical flips) and actual flips (ie, credit card roulette). I’ve won like 19 of my last 20 “flips”. Really sick.
In other news, sounds like there was a pretty sick snowstorm back home in the northeast. This is one of those moments that I am glad I live in Cayman. My dad sent me this picture of his car:
Yup, I will take 80 degrees, sunny and beaches over that.
Weight lifting update
It is absolutely amazing how fast you can improve at the outset of a weightlifting program. I know that a lot of it is like latent strength that you already have that takes a little bit of time to manifest itself in other lifts but, still, it’s amazing. I am already squatting 170 for 5 reps with good form. And my bench has jumped to 170 for 5 reps. And I tried 180 but I only managed to do 3. Deadlift I’m a little less positive about because I don’t feel like my form in the concentric motion is all that great. I can keep a straight back on the way up without much of a problem and I feel like I can do way more weight on the way up but I just don’t put the weight down in a good manner. My back bends a bit and I am worried that I will get injured if I don’t fix my form. I am going to re-read that chapter of Starting Strength in detail (only skimmed it before) to try and get it fixed. I’m also going to watch some online videos from reputable sources. Until I feel comfortable with it I am sticking with really light weights to make sure I don’t injure myself. The last thing I want is a back injury.
Not too much else going on. Mouth is still kind of healing. I’m not totally happy with it but I have a followup appointment tomorrow. Depending on how that goes I will decide whether I need to see someone else. I don’t have a really good feeling about tomorrow but I want to give the guy the benefit of the doubt because he’s been so nice so far. And he does seem to be qualified he just doesn’t seem like he’s really handling this particular healing all that correctly.
Oh, and I am trying out CrossFit. It’s hard to describe exactly what it is but it’s like a loosely formed group of independent affiliates who run gyms that don’t have machines in them. Just barbells, bars, etc. No Cybex machines, treadmills, etc. And they do a lot of total body exercise stuff and the workouts seem really good and really hard. There is a local affiliate in Cayman so I am doing the intro class on Saturday. I’m pretty excited about it.
Sigh, mouth fail … plus some lifting
As I said in the last entry, I am having some trouble recovering from some mouth surgery that I had. It’s now been 10 day since the surgery and I’ve been back to the doctor about five times. He’s been amazingly friendly and helpful about it. He even came into the office on a holiday Sunday (this past Monday was a Cayman holiday). But, unfortunately, he hasn’t quite been able to clear up the problem. To explain a bit, I had a benign cyst removed. It was blocking a salivary duct (ie, where saliva is let out into your mouth, particularly when you’re eating) so it had to come out. After it he took it out, things actually felt way better — for about 36 hours. I had the surgery done on a Monday afternoon and when I woke up on Wednesday, it was absolutely killing me when I tried to eat. Normally I would consider this to be standard considering I had an open wound in my mouth along with some stitches but… it hadn’t really hurt much the day before. After a few days of some really bad pain whenever I tried to eat/chew/swallow/etc, he eventually pulled out a stone (like a kidney stone but in the salivary duct) this past Tuesday. Yesterday it felt a lot better and the swelling went way down. But, today, it has kind of regressed and gotten a bit worse again — although not nearly as bad as it was over the weekend. I had xrays done and they don’t show another stone so right now his plan is for me to finish my course of antibiotics (started on Monday) and see how it feels in a few days. I’m still skeptical that there isn’t something else in there blocking the duct but I obviously have to defer to the doctor for the time being. We’ll see how it feels.
In another event in my recent medical woes, I had a pretty minor break on my left ring finger a few weeks back from a flag football game. Nothing too bad but it definitely hurt pretty bad for a week or two. It’s actually starting to feel better now and I’m starting to use it again (although no football yet). So I went to this new gym which just opened up a few days ago and got in a relatively short workout last night. It’s amazing how fast cardio goes. My cardio last night wasn’t even close to what it was even two weeks ago. I’m sure it will return quickly but I was struggling to even do two moderately fast miles on the treadmill. Before the finger & mouth problems when I was working out 4-5x/week, I was doing four miles at good speed without much trouble. I will work on it to get it back.
I also have recently been inspired to do some real strength training. I’ve lifted weights and whatnot for probably about 15 years now. I think I started when I was 12… maybe 13. So I have spent a lot of time in weight rooms but I’ve never really done “real” exercises. I have never done any serious squatting, deadlifting, power cleans, etc. I have done them on and off but never for real where I do them routinely, track progress and focus hard on form. And wow did it show. I actually did three sets of squats and three sets of deadlifts and the weights were pathetic. My legs and upper back are so sore. Granted I was really focusing on form and not on weight amount but I could barely do three sets of squats at 85 lbs. They were real squats though with a full range of motion. I can’t believe how sore my hamstrings are. I expect to make a bunch of gains pretty quickly as I improve my form and gain core strength to be able to stabilize the weight on my shoulders through the full range of motion. Then, of course, I will plateau and make more normal gains over the course of time. I’m hoping to be able to do 3 sets of 5 reps of body weight squats by the WSOP. Hopefully that’s a reasonable goal. I am not going to rush it if I don’t think I’m going to make it but it is the goal that I have in mind.
As opposed to the exercises I just rattled off, the one respected power lifting exercise that I have done before is bench pressing. I haven’t done it with a free bar in years because it is kind of scary to push yourself when you don’t have a spotter and there’s no safety bar to stop the weight. I am a big proponent of occasional sets where you go until “failure” in order to get stronger. And that isn’t possible with a bench, a bar and no spotter. However, when I was in college and I lifted with my friends, I would actually push myself pretty hard on benching when I had some help if I was about to drop the bar on my chest. Sometime during my sophomore year I weighed around 220 lbs and I was benching 275 one rep. I could bang out 6 reps at 225 without a problem and I am pretty sure I remember doing at least a few sets of 10 reps at 225.
So, as far as bench press goes, I actually have a decent background in it. And it’s part of my new strength routine so I started it out a bit higher than most beginners would do. I currently weigh 175 and I put it at 135. For most people of my weight, they need to train to get to this weight. When I was benching regularly, I could do 135 probably 20 times before I even felt anything. So I didn’t expect much of a challenge. I was wrong, it was actually kind of hard. Much harder than I remember it being. I guess, until I did that exercise last night, I didn’t realize how much stronger I was when I was 20 as opposed to now. Obviously it has a lot to do with training and weight but it was amazing how different 135 felt compared to six/seven years ago. I was able to do three sets of 8 reps without much of a problem but the bar felt heavy and I don’t think I could have done, say, sets of 12.
So, long story short, I am going to focus on squatting, deadlifting and bench pressing a lot. As well as some other of the big power lifts. I really want to build up real strength and, more specifically, core strength. I want to be able to do a full pistol (can’t come all that close right now) with either leg and there’s really nothing else like these exercises to build up that sort of strength. Things like yoga are great and all but I just don’t think they do it with the same level of efficiency and speed. I will update this over time with progress updates (or lack thereof)!
