SSD: Still not respectable

[stuffedsuperdud]

I was really sore for some reason from this relatively small amount of work. Much of it cleared up but my inner thighs were still seizing up these past few days. I have some busy evenings coming up so went in today.

Deadlift with bonus shrug:
135x10
225x10
315x10
335x10,8

Low back was getting kind of sore at the end plus I got kind of winded from huffing through my mask so the last set is missing two reps. Across from me was a smallish college kid casually doing 455 for doubles it's fine.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Misc training:
Was feeling aesthetic so the other day I did:

Bench:
45x a lot
135x10
185x8
195x8
205x5
225x3,1 Shoulda quit while I was ahead...
185x9

I didn't have a spotter, but was in a dedicated bench thinger with pins (Goddamn what doesn't Rogue make these days). So I was feeling pretty confident with the backoff set but ran out of gas on the 10th rep. Managed to rerack the left side but not the right. If I had kept my wits about me, I would have thought to slide my left hand over to help with the right. Alas I did not, and just dumped the right. No clamps because I am not a total moron, so the bar did the dump-whip thing and I ended with an empty bar on the pins, and had to shimmy out. It's fine.


Squat:
45x a lot. Knee problems continue to clear up, but I'm still quite focused on timing and technique and not just trying to Clarence my way up from the hole (but with 1/2 the weight he has)
135x10
225x8
315x8
335x8
345x8
225 tempo (very slow down, pause, very slow up) for some 3s - 5s mostly to stall because I didn't want to go back to work. This is also fine.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Some recent gym things:

Press (cleaned)
20kg x a lot
40x10
50x10
60x8
70x5
75x5x3

Push press (cleaned)
80x8,7

Snatch deadlift:
135lb x10
225x10
275x10
315x7,8

Snatch RDL:
225x10
245x10x2

So yea...doing work I suppose, and taking steps in the right direction. A bit of a wakeup call though, I ran into some people I hadn't seen in a year and they noted that I was definitely fluffier than a year ago, which coupled with turning 35 and being eligible for master's lifting was kind of of a wakeup call. I might actually have to take diet and cardio more seriously now? Should have started several years ago I guess but hey here we are.

[stuffedsuperdud]

I was out of town for work much of last week so training was a bi spotty, but here are a few highlights:

Tempo squat (very slow eccentric, 3s pause, up)
Lots of triples at 315-335lb range. Feels good to be able to do slow eccentrics without any pain below parallel

Good mornings with 135 for 8s and 10s, for lower back and glute health

Various DB work as the hotel gym allows (DB bench, one arm rows, single leg squat, etc.)

Everything is done under timed conditions (typically 2 minutes for bigger lifts and 0 for DB work)

I had a rude wakeup call the other day when, after a particularly lavish dinner with our newest client, I had a bit of trouble comfortably closing my suit jacket hahaha fuck. There's probably some cardio in my future. I mean, looking good is great and all, and one should be rightly respectful of the dangers of being fat, but I can slide a bit with those. If my wardrobe stops fitting though, well now THAT would be a catastrophe I'll do anything to avoid.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Press (cleaned)
135x3
145x3x2
155x3x2
165x3

Snatchy stuff (we're back!)
Extra high hang snatch to practice finishing the pull
40kgx4
50x4
60x4x2

High hang power snatch + low hang power snatch + power snatch 1+1+1
70x1x2

Snatch: 80 for 2 singles

So we didn't forget everything after all.

Snatch pull:
110x3x5 with exaggerated shrug for max swole

[stuffedsuperdud]

Did some RDLs up to 135kg for sets of 8-10, with shrug at top because you can never be too yoked. Also some DB work (up to 80lb one-arm rows for sets of 8-10) and KB farmers carries. Serious stuff. Like 2 pood for 50 yards. Boom.

[stuffedsuperdud]

my PT was curious what my squat looked like now that my knees are feeling better so I had a soft max-out. Not trained or peaked and actually worked about 30 hours already in two days this week taking care of a rush of client issues, so we'll call this a true everyday 1RM.

Squat:
45lb x 10
135x8
225x5
315x2
365x1
385x1
405x1 I did 405 for RPE = 9 or so a few weeks ago, so to treat this like a meet I considered this a first attempt of sort.
425x1 RPE = 9+
445x0 This was a longshot that ended in a mental failure and fatigue in general, as I cruised the weight smoothly down and then abandoned the effort just as I was coming out of the hole.

So it's not a total disaster but kinda sucks to be kicked out of the 200kg club. Will have to try to get back in in the next several weeks I guess. Still, 425 is the heaviest weight lifted in a 4 year period that included many training disruptions, so I guess I should be glad I didn't lose more ground...

[mgil]

Squatting 425x1 given all the chaos is pretty good.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Thanks Gilchrest. I updated my PT, who's been doing my rehab/prehab programming, and asked about the wisdom of shooting for a 500 squat as a near-term goal. She goes, "Uh so you are going try to do something you didn't do when you were four years younger, with 3 years of spotty training since?"

She's not wrong, but I don't have to be thrilled about the answer either. Kinda hit home too the way age is a factor in discussions now.

She has me collecting everyday maxes on other lifts too, so today I went in and did a 1RM press at 185lb. So that's not a total wreck, I guess, but it was an RPE 10, whereas I did manage 200lb for RPE 9 or so last year, though that was an admittedly weird day.

I suffered another training distraction this week when my counterpart on the sales team (hyperemotional Latin guy named Ronaldo, a rich spoiled teenager in a 39 year old body) asked me to join him for a weeklong trip meeting with existing clients and doing some demos for potential ones. Hanging out with him was a mess because that dude is wound up super tight and I was constantly talking him down from ledges every evening, which left no time to train. The hotel gym sucked anyway.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Press doubles, E2MOM:
8 working doubles from 70 - 80kgs

Squat doubles E2MOM:
315x2
335x2
355x2
365x2
375x2
385x2
395x2
365x2
Coulda taken a shot at 405x2 but bitched out. Knees feel okay.

Farmers carries with a pair of 70lb kbs for 150' trips x 4. Forearms were really detrained...

I've been working 12hr - 14hr days 6 days a week for the past two weeks now as we try to lock in a new client, and sleeping about 5hrs a night, which is not conducive. The beauty of being a client-facing guy when we have to cover about 20 time zones. But that's what I wanted when I left the lab, I guess.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Hello peoples. I'm still alive and training, but my work schedule has been tough to lift consistently with. My lower back also started bothering me back in September which took a lot of wind out of my sails, as it sucked the life out of all of my lifts. Working with my PT has gotten me on the mend, but now there's something yucky going on in the back of my knee (PT thinks it's quad-related somehow?)

Anyway believe it or not I am doing a lot of fahves and sixes right now in a roughly LP fashion; the PT isn't as aggressive about adding weight but I did get my squat and dead up to the mid 300s for stuff like 5x5 or 4x6. For example, today was an easier day after 2 long weeks of work stress and I managed:

Deads
20kg x a lot
70x10
110x8
140x6
150x6x2
155x6 RPE = 7?

I also had a bit of a come to Jesus moment about bodyfat % and long term health. It's hard to maintain a restrictive diet with my job so I've been limiting the calories via IF, coupled with a 36-hour fast 1x week. While my back was bothering me, I also had a bit of a mental shift, and find myself less interested in chasing raw #s and more in training the mental focus required to lift. I've also recently fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole centered on asceticism, which the dietary restrictions and the meditative side of lifting ties into. It's been good for my mental clarity and whatever spiritual side my scientistic-materialistic brain can maintain.

[mgil]

Good to see you, young man!

[BenM]

Welcome back SSD, good to see you're still training! The shift in focus sounds interesting, you should talk more about it. I think a lot of us need to hear it.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Yea I'm still training. This is my prison after all. (Whatever happened to Brent Kim btw, the guy who coined the concept? Does he still lift?) For reference regarding my diminished numbers, I can currently squat and dead maybe 160kg for a set of 6 RPE 9 or so with little discomfort. My back and knees were bothering me for most of Q4 2021, but I seem to be on the mend now and feel a bit more like myself again.

@BenM So this probably belongs in the thread about anxiety, and I was kind of surprised to finally notice how many people here have discussed mental/emotional health issues despite great success in the gym and in various parts of life, but I've been having a bit of an existential crisis for a few months now. Dunno what prompted it, except perhaps that for most of my life I had some serious blinders on and had been focused entirely on my career, with the occasional break to go lift weights or talk to you lot about tailoring. Well now that I've finally gotten a foot in the door in the hellish machine that is American capitalism (and since we were all kind of on hiatus from lifting and dressing for the past two years), I've had time to step back and ask where the fuck this is all going, which sort of woke me up a bit from the highly passive and hazy existence I had been doing until now. It's suddenly a generally terrifying experience to be conscious and I don't have any good answers yet except for a revived interest in Buddhism, which I've been a dilettante student of since 6th grade, but in the meantime, I've been trying to be more present in every moment and to accept pain and suffering as an inevitable process of this illusion we live in, and the barbell has been helpful in training for both.

Hope everyone has been well this whole time.

[mgil]

I can understand your feels.

Do you also get any imposter syndrome feels? For me, I’ve scooted up to the top of the GS tables over covid because of senior talent retiring en masse and now I’m senior talent (at least I look old) and expected to play that role.

It’s all weird.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Hey @mgil! Congrats on getting to GS-1000 or whatever you're at. I imagine you're a true SME at whatever nerd thing it is you do exactly with those top secret boat things they wouldn't tell me about when I was in DC. If you need any references about how to deal with underlings, direct reports, etc. let me know. My old sales manager would be desperately reading these at the office, staying one step ahead of me, and some of it is actually useful.

I never got imposter syndrome because for that, you need to at least think that others perceive you to be competent, whereas for me, my neuroticism and general self-criticalness made it impossible to believe this. Instead I just assumed I was bad at anything I did and that I was lucky for whatever crumbs my superiors in the moment (teachers, colleagues, bosses, girls who used me as a sidepiece for when they were bored, etc.) gave me. I know some of you guys have yelled at me for this in the past as it related to getting laid, but jokes aside, that was like 5th priority behind everywhere else I was doing this to myself.

This is probably the part where my colleagues assume correctly that my family is mostly uneducated blue collar immigrants from a communist hellhole, i.e. everyone constantly walks around carrying a cross of guilt and shame that you are not suffering enough in the name of....what exactly? I mean, why bother leaving the Old World when you voluntarily suffer all the same in New, right? At least there you understood the language and culture. Anyway, so this was my world for a long time, one that almost celebrated unnecessary pain, indecisiveness, and helplessness. Fatalistic too, but fuck if we aren't going to loudly bitch about it while we're here. Stupid, I know, but that was my fish bowl for the longest time and it wasn't until I was in grad school that I learned that while you can't control everything, you'd better control at least a few things, or else the world will take that over for you too.

The past few years though have been huge for me career-wise, so you might say that I am actually growing into imposter syndrome, if you can believe that. I can recognize that my work efforts do yield tangible benefits for my coworkers, the company, and hopefully in a small way the world, but I still cringe whenever my boss says anything nice about me.

That said, these recent work improvements, along with finally having basic life things like vacation days and a 401k, have for better or for worse given me way too much time to shake off the blinkers and start asking scary existential questions like what the point of all this is, what I am doing with myself as we hurtle through the cosmos on this rock, what is the meaning of any of this, etc. I mean, I was so dialed in that I had completely lost the forest in the trees, but now I find myself completely freaking out at the sight of the forest.

Unfortunately the first person I mentioned this to was a recently and bitterly divorced evangelical Christian coworker, which didn't prove helpful. I then overcompensated by asking the militant atheist bartender at the place I am a regular at, which also didn't do much. Eventually, I found out that my old grad school classmate has gone in deep with some variant of Tibetan Buddhism, which has been the most helpful, or at least, the least not helpful?

brb I should copypasta this into the anxiety thread. Interestingly half that thing seems to be about flying, which I do almost every week with no issue.


Anyway, re: lifty things, my back discomfort has been coming and going, so I've been going easy still, but I did manage recently:

Deads:
20kg x a lot
70x10
110x8
140x6
150x6x2
160x6x2

Squat:
20kg x a lot
70x10
100x10
125x8
140x6
150x4
160x2
140x6x3 backoff

My back felt better after all this, but then my left calf and Achilles flared up, and it's bordering on funny now how I'm playing whack-a-mole with miscellaneous pains.

[mbasic]

so I've been limiting the calories via IF, coupled with a 36-hour fast 1x week.

How do you accomplish the 36 hr thing?

For me 24 is easy ....but just figuring out how to logistically go 36 has been a problem

[stuffedsuperdud]

@mbasic I usually eat a bit too much on Sundays, as that is when I visit family or friends, so that's a natural pre-fast prep. I'll cut it off around 8PM, and then just go until about lunchtime on Tuesday, so it's actually a bit longer than 36 hours. Monday afternoons are usually tough as I'm also usually kind of stressed by the day's activities, but I just remind myself that I am not really starving, it's just my lizard brain and primate body panicking, and get over it. I'll feel better by evening and then it's just a matter of going to sleep. When I wake up on Tuesday, I typically don't feel hungry at all, and will actually oftentimes be in ketosis. I'll eat lunch like normal, and it'll be as if nothing had happened.

TL;DR The discomfort only lasts from hours 18-20 or so, and 8 of the extra 12 hours is a sleep cycle anyway, so it's not so hard.

[simonrest]

Hey ssd, good to read you are back and dealing with shit. Dealing with shit is hard, but it’s the hard things that are the most worthwhile.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Hey ssd, good to read you are back and dealing with shit. Dealing with shit is hard, but it’s the hard things that are the most worthwhile.

Hey hey yea. It's quite obvious looking back that my workaholism was really just me trying to run away from life's hard questions, and then suddenly I didn't quite have to keep on hammering away anymore and it jolted me into a new tier of existence. Better late than never to start trying to sort these things out, right? What have you been up to?

My back is still kind of sore, but it does not seem to be impeding the strength as much so that's good. Recent highlights:

OHP (muscle cleaned):
20kg x a lot
40x10
50x8
60x6
70x4
80x2 RPE 8 or 9...so that's still there...

Clean pull:
80kg x 8
110x8
140x6
150x6x2