Sat, 22 Apr 17
Block 11, Wave 3 - Throws/Events
My next highlander competition (combo of highland games and strongman events) is a week away and the forecast was for rain all weekend. I considered not training or risking pushing training back to Sunday in hopes of better weather, but when a break in the rain came I decided to coffee up and roll out to the Unit and the field. I was able to get the standards set up before it started to rain again, but it wasn't a downpour, just a light, steady rain falling straight down. Throws went pretty well overall considering that everything was wet and slippery. Events after throwing were awful, but that was due to what I chose to do.
Weight Over Bar
1ea x 28 over 10'
1ea x 28 over 12'
1ea x 28 over 15'
2x1ea x 56 over 10'
1ea x 56 over 11'
2x1ea x 56 over 12'
I was having some issues with the timing of my release due to the handle being wet, but things felt really smooth and consistent today.
Braemar Stone
16' x 24 - R
19' x 24 - L
23' x 24 - R
23' x 24 - L
25' x 24 - R
23' x 24 - L
I only hit 3 throws on each side because that seems to be the magic number before I start to suck unless I am taking much longer breaks (5 minutes or more) between throws and since the rain was starting to pick up at this point, I was keeping my rest breaks shorter. The Scottish Tornadoes I have been doing on my upper body days have definitely helped refine the ugliness of my technique from shit to suck.
Yoke
2x150' x 250
2x150' x 340
2x150' x 430
2x150' x 520
I could feel my soul being rent from my body on the last 30-40' of these last 2 runs. It gave me flashbacks to the first time that I did a 775 yoke. See below for the full story.
Prowler Hi/Lo
8x{60' x prowler + 90 high handles/60' x prowler + 90 low handles} - The extra 10' added to my normal hi/lo distance of 50' plus doing it in the rain made these extra awesome today.
And now, the story of the origin of the Jesus Walks...
It was back in 2008 and 105k pro nats was up in Maine. We had looked at the events and laughed because one of them was a medley of 50' x 775 yoke, 50' x a vehicle push or pull, and 50' x 340 farmer's walk. Being young, dumb, and full of something that rhymes with dumb, Steve, Rob, and I decided we would try to do this event in training that weekend. I should note here that the most any of us had ever yoked up to this point was 700 back at our first amateur nationals in 2007. We set everything up using my Jeep Wrangler for the vehicle push. I was nominated to go first so Steve, who was keeping time, started me and I picked up the yoke and I saw my life flash before my eyes. I felt like the weight of the universe was pushing down on my traps where the yoke was resting and it felt so heavy that I couldn't even consider taking a step at first so I just stood there shaking and trying not to die. After what seemed like about 10 years had come off my life expectancy, but was probably more like a few seconds, I took one small step for meatheads, and one giant step for meathead kind - and dropped it. Not wanting to dishearten Rob and Steve, I think I made some kind of "joke" about having just crapped myself and get set and picked it up again. This time it hurt even more than before, which I had not thought was possible. I managed to take it about 15' or so this time before dropping it. And it hurt so damn much. Not in my spine or joints or in a way that I felt like I was getting injured, but more in a way that felt like my upper traps were being tenderized with Mjolnir and the lightning exploding from the hammer blows was simultaneously slow roasting my meaty bits in the process. This time when I dropped it, I didn't have enough in me not to admit I thought I might be dying. I took a solid 2-3 minutes of rest before I picked it up again. Pain exploded just like before and I didn't want to move because I was scared it would get worse. I finally reached way down in my ball bag and scrounged up what was left of my nads and started walking again. I dropped it 2 more times before completing the 50', which took more than 7 minutes with the rest breaks I was taking between drops. After crossing the finish line, I realized I still had 2 more legs left in the medley. I will say that pushing my jeep after that was the easiest thing in the world, but when that leg of the medley was finished I had the jello legs and could barely stand. And I still had a 340 lb per hand farmer's walk to do. I got set and tried with everything I had left to pick up the implements, but failed miserably. I tried a couple more times and realized I either had to drop the weight or quit the medley. My stupidity won the day and we took a 10 lb plate off the ends of both handles, taking my farmer's weight down to 320 per hand. I was able to grind out a pick here and stumbled for about 20' before dropping them. I managed to pick them up again, but only went a couple steps before my left hand packed its bags and went home for the day. After that I was unable to pick them up to finish and I finally admitted I was unable to finish the medley 13 minutes and change after starting it. Steve went next and bumped the farmer's walk back up to 340. He was able to finish the whole medley without changing the weight, but it still took him over 10 minutes to do. I still felt so trashed that I wasn't even upset that he had beaten me across the board in time, weight, and distance. Rob finished up the day and I held some hope that he would be unable to finish since he was barely 200 lbs and much less girthy through the waist than Steve and I were. My hopes held strong while he was struggling through the yoke, but when he picked up the 340 farmer's and started walking with it, I saw my place among my training partners for this event would be rear float in the stupid parade. He had a couple of drops on farmer's, but took 340 the whole 50', though in a longer time than I had. That wasn't really very comforting though since he had done more weight for more distance than I had on the final leg of what I had decided was the ultimate death medley. In retrospect, the fact that we all took 7-8 minutes to do just the first of 3 events in the medley was astoundingly idiotic and I would never do that or allow any of my training partners to do that now. At the time though, we were all pretty new to strongman, only having been training for a year or so and only having done 3-4 competitions each. There was virtually no information anywhere about how to train for strongman or what was good, bad, or ugly except for a couple of message boards. What I did learn from this was that no matter how much picking up the yoke hurts my upper back, the pain actually doesn't get worse when I start moving, so the faster I finish, the sooner I get to put it down. Also, you can't judge how good someone will be at strongman by how they look. This was proven to me over and over at competitions when there would be some huge, jacked and tan dude who looked like a destroyer of worlds, but would end up getting beat soundly by a relatively nondescript, normal looking guy.