Form Correction

As you all know, I had a bit of trouble with my power cleans the last time I tried to do them. That problem has been taken care of. This is pretty much thanks to my husband helping me with form correction, and timing. Now that I have that all right, I can do the cleans well enough. The form correction also, unfortunately, means that I'm not able to pull as much for it. It's alright, though. I think it will increase fairly quickly now that I have it right.

Aside from that, my training went very well on Saturday. All of my numbers went up except for the Power Clean, but that's okay. It's more important that I do the lift correctly, then get higher numbers and hurt myself. My bench press is moving beautifully, so I'm very happy with that.

I don't really have a lot to say. Here's to hoping that my overhead press increases tomorrow. I'll be happy if I get even a tiny movement out of it. I suppose it's time to move on to the numbers now, though! So here you go. Thank you for reading!

Squats: 215x3x5
Bench: 110x3x5
Power Cleans: 85x5x3

I Miss You Too

So, training was alright yesterday. It went about like I expected. Well, except for one of them, which I missed. It seems to be a theme for this week. This time, though, it may be a lack of good sleep or a lack of calories. I'm not sure which. It could be a combination of both.

My squats and deadlifts went well. Actually, my deadlifts went so well that I ran a couple of boys off from the squat rack next to us. I didn't realize it happened, I didn't hear what they said. According to my husband, though, they commented on the fact that I was adding more weight and then they left. I felt a little bad, but a lot triumphant. It always amuses me when guys can't handle a girl that's stronger then them. That may be petty of me, but I'm fine with that.

The overhead press, though, didn't budge. By all rights I should have been able to put the weight over my head, but I couldn't. There is no reason I shouldn't have been able to make a 2.5 pound jump, which is what I'm confined to at the moment because my upper body strength is no where near my lower body strength.

Next time, though, I should be able to get it. I'll make sure I'm sleep well, and eating enough. Other then that, though, there is not much to share. So, with all that said, on to the numbers! Again, thank you all for reading.

Squats: 210x3x5
Deadlifts: 230x1x5

Power Cleans: Fun and Annoying

Yesterday was a pretty good day of training. My squats went up, which shouldn't be a surprise since I dropped the weight down quite a bit. My bench also went up, which is awesome for me! My power cleans, on the other hand, did not budge. That part is annoying.

Now, so far as we can tell it's a mixture of a couple of things that may be causing the issues. By all rights I should have been able to jump to 100 pounds. Especially after doing that amount twice the last time. However, my timing is off on the jump I'm suppose to do. I'm working on that a bit. There is also a matter related to my anatomy that I wont go into detail about. Suffice it to say, though, that I'm swinging the bar our further then I should be.

So, I've been drilling myself with a super light bar that we have at home to get my timing down. The anatomy issue is going to take a bit of restrictive clothing to help alleviate the necessity to swing the part out so far. Hopefully, the next time I do them I'll be able to go to 100.

There really isn't more to talk about as far as that goes. I really can't wait until we can build our home gym. Being constricted to two hours because of the daycare has prevented me from being able to make jumps before, and it didn't help me in this case either. It wasn't the sole problem, but I didn't have enough time to try to correct my form before we had to leave.

So, with all that said, on to the numbers now. Thank you all for reading. It is appreciated.

Squats: 205x3x5
Bench Press: 107.5x3x5

A Couple of Resets

For those of you that read this blog regularly, you know that I've had some trouble getting past a certain point with a couple of my lifts. This hasn't changed, either. The max I seem to be able to rep for my deadlifts is 255, and the max for my squats is around 230. Now, I tell you this because I opted to reset them yesterday.

I wasn't excited about it, and I didn't want to do it. Unfortunately, there is sometimes little choice in resetting some of the lifts. So I did it. It shouldn't take me long to get back to where I was, but I imagine when I do I'll find that it's time for me to switch to the Texas method for those lifts. As much as I hate to do it, it's something that I knew would eventually need to be done.

My overhead press did not really budge. Even though the Strong Woman training seemed to help with my bench press, it did nothing for my overhead press. At least, though, I didn't backslide. My overhead reps had been 80 for 2 previously when I was doing the strict overhead press. I was able to do that 2 times again, but I couldn't do it for the 5 reps that this program requires. So, it's basically where it was before I switched my training.

It's frustrating to see a lift stand still like that. Especially since I thought the training that helped my bench would also have helped the overhead. Still, there are some suggestions by Mark Rippetoe that should help with that in the long run. We'll see how it goes!

Anyway, here's the numbers now. I don't really have much more to say about the training day itself. It was alright, but certainly not great. Thank you all for reading, though!

Squats: 200x3x5
Overhead Press: 75x3x5
Deadlifts: 225x1x5

Back on the Wagon

So, I began Starting Strength again yesterday. I would have started it on Tuesday, but I had a stomach bug and was unable to complete my squats. I tried, though, I got to 195 on the squats before I had to leave. So, there was a bit of a hiccup, but things seem to be back on track.

Yesterday was a great day of training. I did squats, bench press, and power cleans. The squats and power clean were about where I thought they would be. My bench press surprised me. I'm back to doing three sets of 5 reps, so the amount for the bench and squats are lower then they were with the lower reps I had been doing, but I'm still happy with it.

I thought I would be able to do 100 pounds on the Power Cleans, and I did manage to do two sets for that amount, but they exhaust your muscles quickly so I couldn't do anymore then that. Luckily it didn't prevent me from finishing my sets at 95 pounds, so I'm still happy.

That's about all that I have to say for today. Thank you all for reading, I always appreciate it. Now, on to the numbers!!

Squats: 225x3x5
Bench Press: 105x3x5
Power Clean: 95x5x3

Back to the Basics

I want to start this off by saying that I know I look like I'm a bit erratic at the moment. I've jumped between a few programs, and it probably looks like I can't stick with one. Much of this has been exploration of what programs are out there. Some of it has been a search for a bit more variety then Starting Strength provides. Unfortunately, this has probably done more to damage my strength gains then help them.

With all of that said, I'm going back to Starting Strength. The reason I'm doing this is because the strong woman training I've been doing is fun, but it's not for beginners. I need a better base of strength before I can really make any progress with that programming. There are a couple of things that it may be time for me to move on with. My Deadlifts and squats, for example, are probably about as high as they are going to go on a linear progression. I'll try to make a few more jumps with them, but it probably wont be wrong until I'm doing Texas method.

Starting Strength should, primarily, help me build my upper body strength again. There are suggestions in the book that should help with my bench press and probably my overhead press as well. So, I'll be going back to that tomorrow.

I'm sorry that I've been somewhat erratic. A lot of it is the fact that I've been focusing far to much on what my end goal is. While it's good to have an end goal, it's also important to focus on what you are doing at the present and set short term goals as well. So, that's what I'm doing.

Anyway, that's about all I have for tonight. Thank you all for reading. I really appreciate it.

Awesome Training Days are Awesome.

Well, training went fantastic yesterday! Some of you may know this due to the post that my husband made on Facebook. For those of you that don't know, it was really really good! Everything went up a little bit. Some of my lifts may not have gone up as much as I wanted, but they all went up a little.

Now, that being said I had some trouble with the Snatch grip Romanian Deadlifts that I had to do. I think that the jump I made was a little to big, as I had difficulty holding the bar up the entire time. I did 195 lbs, which is 10 pounds higher then the last time I did it. I probably should have only made a 5 pounds jump, though. Still, I'm pretty happy.

I also had clean and push presses to do. These are a lot of fun, and I got triple digits over my head! This is a first. No form of overhead work as been over 95 pounds before. I put 102.5 up, though. I'm extremely happy about that.

We also had Klokov presses to do. These are presses that you push up from your back, instead of the traditional way their done. I got 82.5 up with that, which is a small increase. It's only 2.5 pounds up from last time, but it's movement.

That's pretty much it for today, though. It'll be more fun training tomorrow! I can't wait for it! As always, thank you all for reading.

Beginning Again

Alright, so my husband and I have opted to restart the Strong Man training that we've been doing. We want to be able to do the same things together on the same day, instead of me being a month behind him. I also had a bad week, and was going to have to do the previous week of training again as a result due to a lack of sleep.

Anyway, my first two days of training went pretty well. Only one of my lifts was higher then when I started this, which was disappointing. Still, at least I didn't lose anything in the last week, which is good.

The first day was press day. We only had a couple of things we had to do that day, and it included dumbell clean and presses. That's the on that went up for me. Last time I did 35 pounds on it per arm. This time I was able to go up to 45 pounds. I was happy about that, but it's the only thing that has increased so far this week.

Tuesday we had squats and deadlifts. These remained what they were last time. Though, the deadlifts were deficit deadlifts, and I may have been able to increase it had I made a smaller jump towards the end. I was still able to do 225 pounds for it. I almost hit 235 pounds for reps, so I think if I had been 5 pounds lower that I would have gotten it.

That's it for the training so far this week, though. It's been an interesting week so far. I'm hoping that something else has gone up as well, but we'll just have to wait and see as the week progresses. Thank you all for reading!

A Slight Setback

Alright, so Sunday night I got very little sleep. I got about four hours of sleep and that meant that I couldn't train the next day, when we had planned to. Now, with the holiday and all I couldn't go train Thursday and so it sort of threw my whole week off. So what I was going to do was train Tuesday and Wednesday. Since this training has me doing a couple of them back to back most weeks I figured it wouldn't be a problem. I was wrong.

The first day I had to find my 8 rep maxes for all of my overhead stuff. Overhead press, bench press, and the like. That wasn't a big deal. I did it, and some of them were surprisingly high. Higher then I thought they would be. My 8 rep max on the bench, for example, is 95 pounds. That's pretty good considering that my 5 rep max is only 115 pounds. Others, like my Overhead Press, were really low. It's not that surprising, honestly. I probably would of had 70 pounds on the overhead if I hadn't tried to do 75 pounds.

The next day was squat and deadlift day. I always love that day. I did my deadlifts first, and that's where the problems started. I was not able to pull 255 pounds for 5 reps, even though I should have been able to. I can pull 260 pounds for a few reps. Part of the issue is that I'm trying to change my form up a bit to make it more accurate. I was able to pull the weight once when I went back to doing the weight as I normally do it. It was way harder then it should have been, though.

So, I finally decided that I would just have to do a bit of light work. It occurred to me that the high reps from the previous day may have been why I wasn't able to pull the weight. We know I got more then enough sleep the night before, and I've been eating plenty. Sometimes, though, you have to learn these things the hard way. Next time I only have a three day week on this training I will not even attempt to do back to back days. Clearly it wont work.

Now, what I did after the deadlifts was just a few medium weight squats. This is 185 pounds for me. I was getting deep in the squats, though. I also corrected some form issues I had that should help me to go deeper when I do my work weight.

Thanks for reading! I appreciate it.

Some More Good Training.

So, I had some pretty good days of training. I had to pick up the 100 pound sandbag, but I didn't have to run with it this time. No, I had to pick it up and put it on my shoulder a lot of times in a certain amount of time. I did pretty good. Not as well as I had hoped, but pretty good.

There was something else I had to do that gained me a few odd looks. I wont go into detail about it because I don't want to give to much information out. However, I was able to do it with 315 pounds, which was awesome. So, between how odd the workout itself was and the fact that I had so much weight I got some strange looks. I'm sure they didn't understand what I was doing. it was purely a conditioning thing, though.

I also had to do some hang cleans. I couldn't get my grip right and ended up just doing power cleans. The later is more work because it involves doing a full dead lift every time you pick it up, whereas the hang cleans down. I did 95 lbs with that. That was on Thursday though.

The only other thing I'm going to go into detail about is the Farmers dead lifts that I had to do. There was a lot more that I did Thursday, but I can't give to much of the programming away. Anyway, the farmers dead lifts are suppose to be done with bars. We don't have access to the type of bars necessary for it, but we've improvised. What we've done is taken two duffel bags and put sand in them until they reach whatever weight we need them to be at. Mine were at 80 pounds each. I had to pick them up for time.

I had a video that I wanted to show you of the farmers deads, but for some reason it wont let me upload it. I'll try again later, or try to post it to Facebook. Thank you all for reading, though.