Green2Blue TB Log

[Green2Blue]

12/17/16
Strength (Operator)
Block 6.2.1

Primary Lifts (80% Training Max)

SQ 3x5@270 lbs
BP 3x5@200 lbs
WPU 3x5@90 lbs

3 min rest

Accessory Complex

Power Cleans
OHP
x3

1 min rest

Notes
-Hi

[Green2Blue]

A Few Steps Back

For those of you that have been following my log, things have been sort of leaning in this direction lately. But now it's hit critical mass.

I woke up yesterday with what I'm guessing is impingement pain in my left shoulder. I've never really experienced shoulder pain before. I probably caused it by jamming my shoulders into the correct position on my overhead press on my last MS workout, because I lack the mobility to do it correctly. In the last few months I've experienced my chronic hip pain, this shoulder pain, elbow inflammation, meniscus and patellar tendon pain in my knees, and a ligament pull in my neck that put me out of work for a week. If I want to push myself to be as high of a performing operational athlete as I can, can I really continue like this?

All of my problems are stemming from two problems. My lack of emphasis on technique perfection and my lack of mobility. I know why I ended up like this. I wanted to be strong. I wanted to train hard and heavy to get there and not waste time on unimportant things like perfect form and mobility. Well, I did get moderately strong. All of my lifts are in the advanced category and bordering on elite, for the EXRX scale. I also won't tell you that my strength hasn't served me well. It's been a literal life saver in my line of work. But the truth is I haven't gotten stronger in years. In those years I've varied my goals and worked on different things in order to maintain my motivation. However, because being strong was so important to me, because I was literally afraid of becoming weak, I just kept pushing and training as hard as possible. I couldn't take time to focus on mobility and technique because then I couldn't train as hard or as heavy.

It's time to change that. I'm getting injured almost constantly. I've hit a wall in my progress that I feel only improved technique can fix. And if I'm being honest with myself, I'm strong enough. Don't get me wrong, I want to be stronger, but I need to stop letting my fear of being week prevent me from getting stronger. I'm smarter than that. I've got the education. I need to start treating myself like my own client, and start training myself more with my head and less with my ego.

Going Forward

I don't know exactly what I'm going to do yet. I'm thinking I may finish out the week just doing movement practice during my MS days, then restart the block next week and knock 10% off all of my TM's. I'm currently debating increasing my sets for additional movement practice.

What I do know I'm going to do is spend at least 30 minutes from here on out doing warmup, pre-mobility, and unloaded movement practice prior to MS days. I've been doing this only minimally. And pre-mobility at least 15 minutes on conditioning days (this usually gets skipped all together). After all workouts I'll be doing at least 15 minutes of post-mobility. I'll also do one addition mobility/movement practice "workout" per day. I pulled the trigger on Mobility WOD so this is probably where I'll do that. All of this may mean less accessory expertises for now due to time, but so be it.

I dusted off my copy of Starting Strength and I've been scouring the Internet for instructional videos. Every single repetition from here on out gets done to the best of my ability in regards to technique. I know I may not have the mobility for it now, but until things are perfect nothing gets progressed. I'm also ditching the whole "squat to box" thing I do. I use it as a crutch and it's time to be done with it. I'll also probably get rid of my belt until my lifts are ready to be progressed. I believe in belts, but I need to start from the ground floor.

I'll probably have to go back into maintenance mode for my diet while doing this as well. I don't want to be in a caloric surplus when I'm not pushing myself physically. All conditioning workouts will proceed as normal. I'm also going to start setting up monthly chiro and sports massage appointments (an insurance perk I've never taken advantage of).

My reward to myself if I can do this, without missing anything for a full block, is a pair of Romaleos.

This self-intervention is overdue. If I want any chance of taking myself to the next level it's time to take a few steps back and start doing things right. I want to put myself in a position for TB to turn me into the kind of athlete I really want to be.

If anyone has any ideas on how I can better improve this plan I'm all ears.

[Barkadion]

G2B, I am sorry to hear about your injury. Seriously. Been there.

If I may suggest anything... It would be trying to get few good personal one-on-one training sessions addressing your movements. Not just the way you squat or bench but rather the way your body moves around. Then progress to the lifts technique. You'd be surprise how much you can learn about your body mechanics, mobility, flexibility and possible limitation by having professional overlook.

Now.. there is a chance that you might be in need to address it differently. For instance.. switching to some different big 3 variations, doing unilateral exercises for a while, addressing little things like anti-rotation work or shoulder stabilizers, or hip flexors.. Things like that can save your life and rebuild yourself for the future progress. Another golden thing is consistency with proper mobility drills and soft tissue massage. But I would still get to all of those things using professional assessment and evaluation to begin with.

I am sorry. I don't mean to preach or to teach. I've screwed up myself before. And I was to stupidly proud to accept help from outside. I've paid for that by pain and money later. I am just sharing my very expensive personal lesson.

Good luck, man. You can get through that. It won't kill you. It will make you stronger.

[Green2Blue]

G2B, I am sorry to hear about your injury. Seriously. Been there.

If I may suggest anything... It would be trying to get few good personal one-on-one training sessions addressing your movements. Not just the way you squat or bench but rather the way your body moves around. Then progress to the lifts technique. You'd be surprise how much you can learn about your body mechanics, mobility, flexibility and possible limitation by having professional overlook.

Now.. there is a chance that you might be in need to address it differently. For instance.. switching to some different big 3 variations, doing unilateral exercises for a while, addressing little things like anti-rotation work or shoulder stabilizers, or hip flexors.. Things like that can save your life and rebuild yourself for the future progress. Another golden thing is consistency with proper mobility drills and soft tissue massage. But I would still get to all of those things using professional assessment and evaluation to begin with.

I am sorry. I don't mean to preach or to teach. I've screwed up myself before. And I was to stupidly proud to accept help from outside. I've paid for that by pain and money later. I am just sharing my very expensive personal lesson.

Good luck, man. You can get through that. It won't kill you. It will make you stronger.

Honestly the injury is minor, it'll heal in a day or two. But it keeps happening, so something needs to change.

I'll be having a 3rd party start looking at my movements for sure, forgot to mention that. I've got an LE buddy with a strong lifting/fitness background that I'm going to start boxing with. He's going to be an impartial critic for me. As far as having an actual career strength coach look at it, those just don't exist around here.

Not preaching at all, I appreciate the input and will consider what you've said.

[J-Madd]

A Few Steps Back

For those of you that have been following my log, things have been sort of leaning in this direction lately. But now it's hit critical mass.

I woke up yesterday with what I'm guessing is impingement pain in my left shoulder. I've never really experienced shoulder pain before. I probably caused it by jamming my shoulders into the correct position on my overhead press on my last MS workout, because I lack the mobility to do it correctly. In the last few months I've experienced my chronic hip pain, this shoulder pain, elbow inflammation, meniscus and patellar tendon pain in my knees, and a ligament pull in my neck that put me out of work for a week. If I want to push myself to be as high of a performing operational athlete as I can, can I really continue like this?

All of my problems are stemming from two problems. My lack of emphasis on technique perfection and my lack of mobility. I know why I ended up like this. I wanted to be strong. I wanted to train hard and heavy to get there and not waste time on unimportant things like perfect form and mobility. Well, I did get moderately strong. All of my lifts are in the advanced category and bordering on elite, for the EXRX scale. I also won't tell you that my strength hasn't served me well. It's been a literal life saver in my line of work. But the truth is I haven't gotten stronger in years. In those years I've varied my goals and worked on different things in order to maintain my motivation. However, because being strong was so important to me, because I was literally afraid of becoming weak, I just kept pushing and training as hard as possible. I couldn't take time to focus on mobility and technique because then I couldn't train as hard or as heavy.

It's time to change that. I'm getting injured almost constantly. I've hit a wall in my progress that I feel only improved technique can fix. And if I'm being honest with myself, I'm strong enough. Don't get me wrong, I want to be stronger, but I need to stop letting my fear of being week prevent me from getting stronger. I'm smarter than that. I've got the education. I need to start treating myself like my own client, and start training myself more with my head and less with my ego.

There is a lot of wisdom in these remarks. It's this revelation in your thinking that leads me to believe that you will still be killing it thirty years from now! Take your time, and get this business sorted out patiently. It's the best thing you will ever do for yourself trainingwise.

[Moz69]

A Few Steps Back

For those of you that have been following my log, things have been sort of leaning in this direction lately. But now it's hit critical mass.

I woke up yesterday with what I'm guessing is impingement pain in my left shoulder. I've never really experienced shoulder pain before. I probably caused it by jamming my shoulders into the correct position on my overhead press on my last MS workout, because I lack the mobility to do it correctly. In the last few months I've experienced my chronic hip pain, this shoulder pain, elbow inflammation, meniscus and patellar tendon pain in my knees, and a ligament pull in my neck that put me out of work for a week. If I want to push myself to be as high of a performing operational athlete as I can, can I really continue like this?

All of my problems are stemming from two problems. My lack of emphasis on technique perfection and my lack of mobility. I know why I ended up like this. I wanted to be strong. I wanted to train hard and heavy to get there and not waste time on unimportant things like perfect form and mobility. Well, I did get moderately strong. All of my lifts are in the advanced category and bordering on elite, for the EXRX scale. I also won't tell you that my strength hasn't served me well. It's been a literal life saver in my line of work. But the truth is I haven't gotten stronger in years. In those years I've varied my goals and worked on different things in order to maintain my motivation. However, because being strong was so important to me, because I was literally afraid of becoming weak, I just kept pushing and training as hard as possible. I couldn't take time to focus on mobility and technique because then I couldn't train as hard or as heavy.

It's time to change that. I'm getting injured almost constantly. I've hit a wall in my progress that I feel only improved technique can fix. And if I'm being honest with myself, I'm strong enough. Don't get me wrong, I want to be stronger, but I need to stop letting my fear of being week prevent me from getting stronger. I'm smarter than that. I've got the education. I need to start treating myself like my own client, and start training myself more with my head and less with my ego.

There is a lot of wisdom in these remarks. It's this revelation in your thinking that leads me to believe that you will still be killing it thirty years from now! Take your time, and get this business sorted out patiently. It's the best thing you will ever do for yourself trainingwise.

Well said J-Madd a lot of wisdom. I'm nowhere near as knowledgeable as yourself or the previous posters but the only bit of advice I can give is ROMWOD has worked wonders for me. My knees no longer hurt walking up the stairs, my shoulder pain is hit and miss but nearly gone. My hip pain had gone until I was a **** in test week but its on its way out again.

Also TGU's for shoulder stability has helped.

I wish you the best of luck mate in your journey, i'm a 100% positive you'll get there, stay strong and just remember its a fight in another form

[Green2Blue]

I appreciate the support everyone.

Last night was my first night of MOBWOD. I really enjoyed it. I've never used any kind of program where someone tells you what to do as you do it. I enjoyed it a lot. Closest thing I've ever had to a coach.

Movement Practice
-Limber 11 with some added ankle, thoracic, and shoulder mobility.

-I've recently been really working on my ankle mobility. I didn't realize that I was only working it in the path of least resistance, in a forward-medial direction. I've learned just last night what's really preventing me from keeping my knees in line over my feet in the squat is my forward-lateral ankle mobility. It's more of a joint mobility issue than a calf flexibility issue as there's no tension in the calf when I do it. At least now I know.

-Went through squat and bench today, completely unloaded. So the biggest relegation I had was elevating my heels (for now). This really made the squat more manageable without the massively wide stance I've used in the past. It also solved the above problem of ankle mobility. Elevating my heels is a temporary solution though, I plan on continuing with my mobility emphasis until I can get a full deep squat without elevated heels. I do plan on training in oly shoes in the long run, but I don't want them to be a crutch.

-The other two things I learned in my movement practice session was a need for improved thoracic mobility and shoulder mobility. I had to try pretty hard to remain in thoracic extension in the bottom of the squat. For my shoulder mobility it was pretty tough for me to keep my wrists straight, something I've just ever bothered with in the past.

-Finished up with 15 minutes of static stretching.

Hill sprints tonight.

[K.B.]

A Few Steps Back

For those of you that have been following my log, things have been sort of leaning in this direction lately. But now it's hit critical mass.

I woke up yesterday with what I'm guessing is impingement pain in my left shoulder. I've never really experienced shoulder pain before. I probably caused it by jamming my shoulders into the correct position on my overhead press on my last MS workout, because I lack the mobility to do it correctly. In the last few months I've experienced my chronic hip pain, this shoulder pain, elbow inflammation, meniscus and patellar tendon pain in my knees, and a ligament pull in my neck that put me out of work for a week. If I want to push myself to be as high of a performing operational athlete as I can, can I really continue like this?

All of my problems are stemming from two problems. My lack of emphasis on technique perfection and my lack of mobility. I know why I ended up like this. I wanted to be strong. I wanted to train hard and heavy to get there and not waste time on unimportant things like perfect form and mobility. Well, I did get moderately strong. All of my lifts are in the advanced category and bordering on elite, for the EXRX scale. I also won't tell you that my strength hasn't served me well. It's been a literal life saver in my line of work. But the truth is I haven't gotten stronger in years. In those years I've varied my goals and worked on different things in order to maintain my motivation. However, because being strong was so important to me, because I was literally afraid of becoming weak, I just kept pushing and training as hard as possible. I couldn't take time to focus on mobility and technique because then I couldn't train as hard or as heavy.

It's time to change that. I'm getting injured almost constantly. I've hit a wall in my progress that I feel only improved technique can fix. And if I'm being honest with myself, I'm strong enough. Don't get me wrong, I want to be stronger, but I need to stop letting my fear of being week prevent me from getting stronger. I'm smarter than that. I've got the education. I need to start treating myself like my own client, and start training myself more with my head and less with my ego.

Going Forward

I don't know exactly what I'm going to do yet. I'm thinking I may finish out the week just doing movement practice during my MS days, then restart the block next week and knock 10% off all of my TM's. I'm currently debating increasing my sets for additional movement practice.

What I do know I'm going to do is spend at least 30 minutes from here on out doing warmup, pre-mobility, and unloaded movement practice prior to MS days. I've been doing this only minimally. And pre-mobility at least 15 minutes on conditioning days (this usually gets skipped all together). After all workouts I'll be doing at least 15 minutes of post-mobility. I'll also do one addition mobility/movement practice "workout" per day. I pulled the trigger on Mobility WOD so this is probably where I'll do that. All of this may mean less accessory expertises for now due to time, but so be it.

I dusted off my copy of Starting Strength and I've been scouring the Internet for instructional videos. Every single repetition from here on out gets done to the best of my ability in regards to technique. I know I may not have the mobility for it now, but until things are perfect nothing gets progressed. I'm also ditching the whole "squat to box" thing I do. I use it as a crutch and it's time to be done with it. I'll also probably get rid of my belt until my lifts are ready to be progressed. I believe in belts, but I need to start from the ground floor.

I'll probably have to go back into maintenance mode for my diet while doing this as well. I don't want to be in a caloric surplus when I'm not pushing myself physically. All conditioning workouts will proceed as normal. I'm also going to start setting up monthly chiro and sports massage appointments (an insurance perk I've never taken advantage of).

My reward to myself if I can do this, without missing anything for a full block, is a pair of Romaleos.

This self-intervention is overdue. If I want any chance of taking myself to the next level it's time to take a few steps back and start doing things right. I want to put myself in a position for TB to turn me into the kind of athlete I really want to be.

If anyone has any ideas on how I can better improve this plan I'm all ears.

Some food for thought, have you considered breaking your strength trg into smaller blocks;

3-6 weeks strength (Operator, Zulu, etc)
2-3 weeks SE (or focus on mobility/correctives trg, yoga/stretching, dial back the max-strength or do minimal amount)
1 week rest
repeat

Or variations of the above;

3-6 weeks strength
1 week mobility/stretching/movement drills (no heavy lifting)
repeat

For natural athletes 40-50+, shorter periods of sustained effort can be a more tactical approach, versus grinding on for long periods of time.

[Green2Blue]

A Few Steps Back

For those of you that have been following my log, things have been sort of leaning in this direction lately. But now it's hit critical mass.

I woke up yesterday with what I'm guessing is impingement pain in my left shoulder. I've never really experienced shoulder pain before. I probably caused it by jamming my shoulders into the correct position on my overhead press on my last MS workout, because I lack the mobility to do it correctly. In the last few months I've experienced my chronic hip pain, this shoulder pain, elbow inflammation, meniscus and patellar tendon pain in my knees, and a ligament pull in my neck that put me out of work for a week. If I want to push myself to be as high of a performing operational athlete as I can, can I really continue like this?

All of my problems are stemming from two problems. My lack of emphasis on technique perfection and my lack of mobility. I know why I ended up like this. I wanted to be strong. I wanted to train hard and heavy to get there and not waste time on unimportant things like perfect form and mobility. Well, I did get moderately strong. All of my lifts are in the advanced category and bordering on elite, for the EXRX scale. I also won't tell you that my strength hasn't served me well. It's been a literal life saver in my line of work. But the truth is I haven't gotten stronger in years. In those years I've varied my goals and worked on different things in order to maintain my motivation. However, because being strong was so important to me, because I was literally afraid of becoming weak, I just kept pushing and training as hard as possible. I couldn't take time to focus on mobility and technique because then I couldn't train as hard or as heavy.

It's time to change that. I'm getting injured almost constantly. I've hit a wall in my progress that I feel only improved technique can fix. And if I'm being honest with myself, I'm strong enough. Don't get me wrong, I want to be stronger, but I need to stop letting my fear of being week prevent me from getting stronger. I'm smarter than that. I've got the education. I need to start treating myself like my own client, and start training myself more with my head and less with my ego.

Going Forward

I don't know exactly what I'm going to do yet. I'm thinking I may finish out the week just doing movement practice during my MS days, then restart the block next week and knock 10% off all of my TM's. I'm currently debating increasing my sets for additional movement practice.

What I do know I'm going to do is spend at least 30 minutes from here on out doing warmup, pre-mobility, and unloaded movement practice prior to MS days. I've been doing this only minimally. And pre-mobility at least 15 minutes on conditioning days (this usually gets skipped all together). After all workouts I'll be doing at least 15 minutes of post-mobility. I'll also do one addition mobility/movement practice "workout" per day. I pulled the trigger on Mobility WOD so this is probably where I'll do that. All of this may mean less accessory expertises for now due to time, but so be it.

I dusted off my copy of Starting Strength and I've been scouring the Internet for instructional videos. Every single repetition from here on out gets done to the best of my ability in regards to technique. I know I may not have the mobility for it now, but until things are perfect nothing gets progressed. I'm also ditching the whole "squat to box" thing I do. I use it as a crutch and it's time to be done with it. I'll also probably get rid of my belt until my lifts are ready to be progressed. I believe in belts, but I need to start from the ground floor.

I'll probably have to go back into maintenance mode for my diet while doing this as well. I don't want to be in a caloric surplus when I'm not pushing myself physically. All conditioning workouts will proceed as normal. I'm also going to start setting up monthly chiro and sports massage appointments (an insurance perk I've never taken advantage of).

My reward to myself if I can do this, without missing anything for a full block, is a pair of Romaleos.

This self-intervention is overdue. If I want any chance of taking myself to the next level it's time to take a few steps back and start doing things right. I want to put myself in a position for TB to turn me into the kind of athlete I really want to be.

If anyone has any ideas on how I can better improve this plan I'm all ears.

Some food for thought, have you considered breaking your strength trg into smaller blocks;

3-6 weeks strength (Operator, Zulu, etc)
2-3 weeks SE (or focus on mobility/correctives trg, yoga/stretching, dial back the max-strength or do minimal amount)
1 week rest
repeat

Or variations of the above;

3-6 weeks strength
1 week mobility/stretching/movement drills (no heavy lifting)
repeat

For natural athletes 40-50+, shorter periods of sustained effort can be a more tactical approach, versus grinding on for long periods of time.

Honestly I've always wanted to implement some sort of a "week 7", where I deload and do SE. I always saw it as a way to deload as well as fit in SE work. Adding extra mobility work is a great idea. I think I haven't always done it up until now because of bad timing, but with your recommendation I'll make an emphasis to make it happen.

I actually was planning on doing a few shortened cycles of Zulu coming up, but I hadn't decided yet how to implement the weekly TM percentages. Any recommendations on percentages for a 3 week cycle?

I appreciate your input.

[J-Madd]

3-6 weeks strength
1 week mobility/stretching/movement drills (no heavy lifting)
repeat

For natural athletes 40-50+, shorter periods of sustained effort can be a more tactical approach, versus grinding on for long periods of time.

This sort of plan is definitely working really well for me! Green2Blue, you aren't in that age range yet, but there is nothing wrong with preemption.