My training History: I trained less than one year before competing in my first powerlifting meet as a teenager back in 1983. Before leaving the sport in 2005 I achieved my elitefts status in the 198,220,242,275 & 308 weight class. Throughout these years I did have a 3 year run in the bodybuilding world. Loved the training didn't like the competing aspect so I went back to my first love, powerlifting. Injuries have been a part of my life ever since I can remember and were the biggest reason for leaving the sport (I can no longer hold a squat bar on my back). I have degenerative joint disease, have had two shoulder surgeries (right shoulder now needs replaced), one full hip replacement, knee surgery, herniation's in all three regions of my spine, Bone spurs in places I didn't know you could get them, planter facetious, tendinitis and bursitis. I can't even begin to list the number of muscle tears I have had, surgical and non surgical. I am "The Mashed Up Meathead" and this is my story.
You can find my training log archives HERE and my most current training log posts HERE.
My best lifts are behind be but my best training is yet to come.
* Unless otherwise noted the tempo of the work sets is about 1/2 of what most would consider normal. In most cases, if I did the set with normal temp what I fail at with 8-10 reps in training I could do for 20 reps with a normal tempo. This is to keep the joint stress down while increase the stress on the muscle. I have found this to work best for me provided the conditions listed in my training history above.
Training log: Biceps.
My training session today was a little bit different than what it typically would be, because I have some people coming into town this weekend, so I'm going to be training on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Trying to scramble to figure out what body parts to train, and what I would be training on each day, became a little hectic, because my work week was a little screwed up as well.
Unfortunately, the way this worked out, the only thing I trained tonight was biceps. That's it.
I started with about ten minutes of walking, because it's nice out. It's not too hot. I've been walking outside instead of using the treadmill, aside from the fact that our treadmill's broke. After that, I did dumbbell curls first, with three to four warm up sets of ten to fifteen reps, and then I did four work sets of eight to ten reps, with each set to failure. When I do dumbbell curls I only work one arm at a time, and I keep my palm facing up the entire time. I try to get the greatest range of motion I can. I go at a slower tempo. Probably about half the tempo that you would see most people doing that are doing dumbbell curls, and I don't use a whole hell of a lot of weight. This session tonight, I used twenty-five pounds for one set, and then I think forty pounds for the last three sets.
After that, I did a loaded stretch off the back of the glut-ham raise, one arm at a time with a forty pound dumbbell, and with this I tried to ... You got to play around with it a little bit to find the feel, to actually get a good bicep stretch. You don't want your arm completely straight. You want it slightly bent, but you got to kind of torque your upper body, and twist your wrists a little bit to find the best stretch that you can find, then hold it. I like to hold mine for about a forty-five count.
The second exercise I did was one-arm preacher curls on a preacher curl machine. For that, three warm up sets, ten reps, and then four work sets of twelve to fifteen reps, each one going to failure. Once again using a slower tempo. On the preacher curls, I do not go all the way down. I go about 3/4 of the way down. I do that to keep the stress off the elbows, and also to keep the tension on the biceps. I do not do a loaded stretch at the end of this exercise because of the elbow position.
Face curls were my next exercise. The way I do this, is I grab the fat v-bar with the four inch grenade handles attached, and I put it on a cable that is about face level, and then I stand back and I use the four inch grenade balls in each hand, and then curl towards my face. I'll hold the contraction for a second, and then bring that to an absolute, total stretch. On this, I think I probably had five warm up sets, because it was a little bit harder to gauge what the weight was going to be, and then I had four works sets of six to eight reps to failure. Then on this one I did do a loaded stretch for forty-five seconds as the final set.
Concentration curls were my last exercise, and I'm almost embarrassed to say this, but my goal here was just to work the negative, or the ecentric. I did a couple warm up sets with fifteen pounds of ten to fifteen reps, and then grabbed a thirty pound dumbbell and did four reps, using a fifteen second ecentric or negative, lowering the dumbbell, and did four reps with each arm, just for one set. That wrapped it up.
I had a little bit of time left before I had to get home, so for the first time in a long time, I did four sets of standing calf raises. Nothing major, because it really doesn't matter when you haven't trained your calves for months. It kind of doesn't matter what you do, your calves are going to get sore as hell, so I just did four sets of twenty reps with a quarter of the weight on the machine, whatever that is. I didn't even pay attention. I just know my calves are going to be killing me in the morning. That was the end of the training session.
As I noted, I have people coming into town this weekend, so tomorrow, Casey Williams is coming in with Yessica, and he's going to be working on his bench so there's ... As I noted in my last training log, there's some issues that we want to try to help sort out on his bench press.
I recruited Matt Smith to come in to help me out a little bit, because there are some technical issues, and some muscular issues, and having a another set of eyes is really helpful, especially when you're dealing with a lifter of Casey's caliber. You got to really nit pick to be able to find what the exact problem is, because it's really hard sometimes to be able to find out if it is what you think it is. The other problem that I personally run into when I'm trying to help advanced lifters is, I forget to look at the basics, because I'm so used to looking at the more advanced things from being around top lifters for most of my life, that I will overlook a lot of the really simple stuff.
Matt is really good at finding those really simple things, so it's a good balance. He's also really good at finding the really complex things as well. I'm looking forward to that.
I'll be hitting shoulders and triceps on Friday, and then on Saturday I'll be training with John Meadows, and we'll be doing back again. We have some people coming into town that are five, six, four weeks out from a meet, who we're going to be squatting so I want to be able to help them out. Look for technical flaws. Look for things that they have that we can dial in a little bit before the meet, and then on Sunday, I'll be training chest with whoever is in there left over from Saturday. I'm not too sure who's going to be in there on Sunday. That will kind of round out my week.