02/26/07 Deadlift, A Night for PR's

Deadlift 135x5, 225x4, 315x3, 365x1, 400x1, 455x1, 510x1, 555x1PR
Band Leg Curls
Band GM's
Calf Raises

Surprisingly I got my goal of 550 plus a bit for insurance. I spent the weekend helping a buddy remodel his house and spent the better part of saturday bent over painting trim. Needless to say the lower back was not fresh at all, I feared the worst....

At 455 I began to doubt it, at 510 I was almost positive I would miss it, but then something cool happened. Harold hit 460 for about a 20lb PR, now I was inspired. I was not gonna miss a PR on this night.

Now dont get me wrong, this pull sucked to high heaven, and it was slow as all hell to boot. But, I didnt hitch it and I got the lockout. I did not get 555 with quite the authority I was looking for, but all things aside I was quite happy, and quite fried as well in the lower back region...Woo-hoo 600 here I come bitch!!!

The rest of the workout was anti-climactic to say the least, just a bunch of crap with light bands to round out the evening...

Overall I was very happy with the performance of both myself and Harold. Since sticking with a normal routine for an extended period of time, he has achieved great gains. This goes to show any of you non-believers out there that Westside aint just for juicers. If you give it a shot, and actually stick with it, then you will make fast gains as compared to the traditional progressive overload approach and other outdated methods.

Take Home Points

Get a plan,
learn to train yourself,
Lift Heavy Shit,
Eat,
Sleep,
Repeat,
and of course Keep it Dark, Keep it Heavy!!!





No Nonsense Nutrition DVD

02/25/07 DE Bench

Speed Bench 205x9x3
Suspended Overhead Press 135x5, 185x5, 205x5, 225x5
Standing Low Cable Row 100x4x10
Bunch of shoulder crap.....

Good night, speed was dead on and felt really powerful, no inkling of shoulder pain. Switched grip on each set going from competition grip, to medium grip, to close grip.

Thought up this one at the last second. I suspend the bar in chains at eye level and performed shoulder presses from there. These proved quite brutal as the lack of momentum at the bottom made the movement very difficult. I will leave this in for 2 more weeks and see how things go.

The Low Cable Standing Row i got from Ano Turtianen's training log on elitefts. this movement felt good and really targetd my upper back, again, 2 more weeks of tis then i will move on.

Finished up with a bunch of shoulder traction type stuff utilizing mini bands, nothing too flashy and didnt keep track of reps and all that crap.....

Thats it for now, If you check the side bar, I have added a link to a free 8 day precision nutrition course offered from John Berardi, auther and creator of this great system. Be sure to sign up as it is free with no obligation. Who knows, you might learn something.


Keep it Dark, Keep it Heavy!!!



No Nonsense Nutrition DVD

Want To Get Lean but Stay Strong?

Greetings Readers,

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This program will show you how to prepare food for the week, how to shop for the food (an actuall super-market walk through with an actual client), and a bunch of recipes to get you to your body compostion goals.

Be sure to check them out....

Precision Nutrition

Gourmet Nutrition eBook

No Nonsense Nutrition DVD

02/22/07 DE Squat Day of the Bands

DE Free Squats w/Avg Bands 250x8x2
Saftey Squat Bar Good Mornings to pins 245x3x3
Giant Set-30s Rest Between
Mini Band Leg Curls 5x12
Crunches 5x12
SSB Calf Raises 245x5x12

Out of boredom comes innovation. Decided to ditch the box for speed work in my next mini-cycle for Dynamic Effort day. All I can say is wow, this really hits the lower back in a good way. The bands are trying to pull you forward and break your arch so you must force the issue. The reps were decent on the speed side, I could definitely tell when the bands kicked in as it was like the brakes were put on full blast. Next week I will up the percentage by 5% and check the speed. I also think I may add in some ME Band work in the near future which should provide some benefit if I am correct.

SSB GM's were nothing spectacular, I set the pins at a normal failure point for the squat and would Good Morning the weight to the pins, pause and snap it back up. The Lower back was in Fry Daddy mode so I eased up on this as I have heavy Dead's with Harold on Monday.

This giant set is what I performed last week and is basically an attempt to puss out and avoid the EDT portion. I will perform this scheme one more week before I come up with some new EDT protocol to do....

That is all for ya'all, so until next time, Keep it Dark, Keep it Heavy!!!


No Nonsense Nutrition DVD

02/21/07 ME Bench (Deload)

RAW Bench 135x5, 225x3, 275x3, 315x3x3
3 Board Press Close-Grip (Wicked Pauses) 315x6x3
KB Rows 73x4x10
Oly Grip Upright Row 135x4x8

Took it fairly easy tonight, the shoulder was hurting so I did some recuperative crap after the fact.

RAW bench was ho-hum with very little effort, just wanted to get'er done....for the 3 board I was too lazy to change the load of the bar, so I changed the dynamics of the movement. These were done with a 3-4 second pause on the boards, then press. Takes all the momentum out of the movement, give it a try sometime and lemme know how you feel.....

The rest was nothing special, more of a product of my lack of motivation...thank god for De-loads.....because next week its time to bring it!!!

so until next time....Keep it Dark, Keep it Heavy!!!

No Nonsense Nutrition DVD

02/19/07 ME Squat, Deload.......

Free Squats RAW 135x5, 225x3, 275x2, 315x2, 365x1, 405x1, 455x1
Free Squats Suit w/Straps Down 455x2, 505x5x1
Band Assisted Conv DL 405x9x1
10 Minute EDT PR Zone
KB Swing Thru 73x5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5
Leg Raise BWx5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5

Took it easy today as it was a scheduled De-Load week. I was originally supposed to get to gether with Harold and do some DL's but the old lady apparently had other plans in the midst, so guess who's get squashed?

Anyway, did a RAW work up to 455 then threw on the suit bottoms, hit 455 for a double and went up to 505 for a bunch of singles. Nothing too taxing, I cant get over how the weight feels on the shoulders, this weight used to be scarey to get under, now its a simple unrack and go...I guess with confidence comes strength.

The Band Assisted Conventional Deadlift was a last second add in, I had wanted to Deadlift all day and didnt want to go too heavy as next Monday, myself and Harold are pull heavy. Plus, with it being a deload sort of week what the hell. I will add these in the future as a first accessory movement for triples with heavy weight to hammer the snot out of my lockout. I figure speed ought to benefit as well....time will tell

EDT Hammered me again, but the good thing is it keeps me warm in that cold ass basement, i end up with steam coming off me by the end of it all...I like hitting the accessory stuff in this manner as it works the GPP and builds the areas quite well. Anybody interested in EDT should click on the Staley Training Sytems link and give his site a visit. This method kicks the snot out of any other bodybuilding, body composition, body sculpting program out there. It's brutal, but well worth it.

Thats about it for me, lower back is feeling it this morning but thats to be expected. Shoulders arent sore from the meet anymore, the day after they were a bit sore, but what can you do. Now i have a couple push/pull's coming up that i have to get geared up for. one of these days a Full Power meet may come this way...

Keep it Dark, Keep it Heavy!!!

Bench Meet Results

Not a bad day at all....

1st attempt 400 Smooth to Lockout

2nd Attempt 425 Easy Peasy Lemon Squeasy

3rd Attempt 450 Holy Crap-Leg Drive Rulz!!!

Everything went better than expected. The unexpected help from actually having legs involved was phenomenal. I easily had anywhere from 450-500 in me, I totally underestimated myself and figure I should have went higher, if only 4th attempts for non records were allowable....

I weighed in at 230 with my winter garb on (boots, sweatshirts, pants, etc...). I figured I wouldnt make the 220 class as my home scale had me at 220 even, and the last time on Daves meet scales I weighed 2 lbs heavy, so I just stepped on the scale in street clothes, what the hell, so what, so maybe I would have gotten a better trophy if I hadnt. The actually 220 class I had smoked if I would have cut the weight.

I ended up 2nd, though the guy that beat me was listed as a 275lb competitor on the flight sheet...whatever, he had a dbl-ply metal shirt and only made 455 and missed 505 pathetically 2 times, couldnt touch once and got stapled when he did touch....

Holy sour Grapes Chris!!! JK, I got my goal, 400 in competition, the rest was gravy and made me realize I need to fix my current winter situation of no leg drive, I was way off in my calculations of attempts. But this is the game, live and learn right?

Overall am very happy with the results, my drunken hands cant emit the jubilation i am feeling at this moment, so i will leave it at that....

My conterpart, Harold T Estes, had a great RAW showing, going 290, 310, and a 320 near miss at 198, and that was RAW baby!!!......Great Job Harold!!! and to boot we may have picked up 2 more cohorts for North East Barbell.....Hey Louie, Here we come!!!

Just kidding, give me a few more years then I may beable to say something blasphemous like that and mean it, but until then...thanks for the inspiration!!


Holy exclamation points Batman!!!!


Keep it Dark, Keep it Heavy

02/12/07 SE Squat

High Box Squats w/Chains 135x3, 225x3, 275x5, 330x3, 385x2, 405x1, 475x3x3
SSB Chain Suspended Wide Stance GM's 185x3x12
Crunches, Mini Band Leg Curls, and Calf Raises......light weights high reps, didnt keep track.

Took it fairly easy tonight. It was called out as a ME night, but I opted for an SE night as I am coming down with something and dont want to hammer my CNS worse than it probably already is. Plus I am going over to Harolds house for Deadlifts next monday, and with the Bench Meet this saturday a nice easy training session was called for.

475 felt extremely light on the back, I remember a few months ago this weight felt heavy as balls...This weight was estimated to be around 80% of my best on this movement. Judging from the ease with the reps I could have gotten 6-8 reps in, but that was not the criteria to be met tonight. Still felt pretty productive as I kept the rest periods to around a minute. As per usual the lower back pumped up pretty good by the end. I really need to remember to hit that area with the Icy Hot next time.....

The Good Mornings were painful towards the end of each set. I had the chains set really low, almost knee level which made it hard to get under the SSB. I could really feel the erectors on this one for some reason. This movement is a pain in the ass with light weight for high reps. I hate high rep work to begin with much less this painful sort of shit.

The last stuff was all done to avoid EDT. As previously mentioned I aint feeling too well to begin with so the daunting task of EDT just wasnt going to happen tonight, so I set up a circuit and just did giant supersets with 30 second rest for anywhere between 10-20 reps for each. Friggin rep work!!!

For a lighter session it still felt productive and I dont feel I taxed my CNS so badly as to affect my recovery from this bug......for the rest of the week I will probably not post. I wont be going heavy and the workouts are gonna be with a minimalist approach to enhance recovery.

Now, Good Day Sir!!!

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02/08/07 Bench Meet Opener work

RAW warm up, 135x5, 185x3, 225x2, 275x1, 315x1

Shirted 365x1, Opener 405x2x1, 410x3x1CG

2bd Press 275x4x6

LAt Pull Down 120x3x12

Shrugs 255x12, 275x3x12

Light Hammer Curls 30x3x12

Tonight could have gone better, earlier in the week I had a recurrence of the tendonosis fomr squatting. Now usually this doesnt affect my benching but that was not the case tonight. That sucker starting hurtin after like the 3rd opener attempt. I believe it was aggravated fromthe awkard position I was benching in. From whqat Harold told me, and I could feel it, I was touching super low compared to last time, this placed alot of stress on my forearms, elbows, and wrists. Hence the aggravation.

I was also having shirt placement issues, the last set it cut in pretty bad after screwing with the placement, I didnt touch and pushed it back up. I will just go with the normal set-up for me on this shirt, which is an inzer ephdhpephddhdhdp~~~~~~~~~~~!!! Going forward I will plan in more gear work as I definitely slouch in this area, and if I plan on lifting in gear, I better learn how to use it.

Now, I got a bench meet next saturday and figure I should beable to hit all 3 lifts if I hit the ice hard and pop some anti-inflammatories before the warm up, but we'll see. My only goal for this meet is to hit 400 in comp. Considering I hit the 405/410 with no leg drive (slippery floor) and stiff back, this should fall easily.

Until next time....Keep it Dark, Keep it Heavy!!!

02/06/07 ME Squat

High Box Squat w/Chains 135x5, 225x3, 275x2, 315x1, 365x1, 405x1, 455x1, 505x1, 525x1, 555x1PR
Conv Block Pull (Mid Shin) 405x3, 455x3, 505x3

Though it looked short, this workout took around an hour, and I cut off the accessory crap so I could get my ass upstairs and watch American Idol....Fuck that!!! Seriously, I tweaked my knee and back a bit this weekend in the friggin snow and god was my back giving me shit tonight. It was so tightened up I had to lay down on the ground between sets, I figured it would be shitty, but this was no fun. So tonight I will do my accessory crap with some stretching thrown in for good measure. I also see a good Ice Down coming.....

Anyway, tightness and all I hit a PR @ 555, last weeks attempt at 550 was one as well. I forgot I added around 15 lbs of chain to my configuration which explains wy I was having a harder time with this movement, duh!! This sucker was a grind and i rounded over a bit at the mid way but managed to finish, guessing 620 at the top and around 570-580 on the box.......

Was scheduled to do Wide Stance Good Mornings, but as I am planning on possibly switching my stance for a March Meet in Ware, Ma. I figured I better get started and hit the top end of the lift as it appears to be a weakness on this stance for me. i feel extremely fast off the ground with the conventional stance but the top end gets a bit hokey for my taste....in the coming weeks I will take measures to fix this and hopefully end up with a stronger DL....

Keep it Real Lucille!!!

02/04/07 DE Bench-200th post!!!

DE Bench w/Mini's 155x9x3
3 BD CG BP 315x3, 365x3, 385x3, 395x3
10 Minute EDT PR Zone
Lat Pull Down 120x5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5
Shrugs 255x5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5

Fast night, shoulder didnt feel half bad after some Icy Hot. The minis are always a great measuring stick for how the shoulder is doing, if during the first warm-up its painful, then I know I'm in for a long session. But not tonight, all felt good after the warm-ups, everything was fast and therapeutic....

Three Board Close Grip Bench Press felt strong. All reps were paused and held at lockout, feeling good as all sets were strong minus the leg drive due to the coldness of the basement. Come meet time I should benefit from the carpet grip. Guess we'll see....

EDT portion I ran out of gas as my nutrtion was not what it should be this weekend, but what can you do, I aint getting up on stage in a thong any time soon so I'll take it.....

Thats about it, the superbowl is on and I got some money on those fuckers the Colts,....so until next time....Keep it Dark, Keep it Heavy!!!!

02/02/07 DE Squat....Time for Change?

SSB DE Box Squats 225x8x3
Conventional DL 405x3, 425x3, 455x3, 505x3PR
10 Min EDT PR Zone
Mini Band Leg Curls x5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5
SSB Calf Raises 245x5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5

Well I think it may be time to swap my dead lifting style.....but more on that in a bit. It was cold as hell in the basement, the inside temps have caught up to the outside temps as previously stated. This happens every year with this house, it will stay fairly warm for about 2 months into winter then Bam!!! Cold as Balls.

Decided to do my Speed work with the Safety Squat Bar and No Belt, surprisingly these were fast as hell. I went with 50% of my SSB Max and will up the percent to 55% next week. Again, these felt about as fast as regular bar speed work. By the end of these (30 sec rest between sets) my lower back was tight as hell and took a good 5 minutes to settle down when finished....all worth it I figure....onto DL's

Now I havent pulled heavy conventional Deadlifts in god knows how long. I always thought the sumo was easier and that I was better suited for it. But the more I do sumo, the more I have found that if the technique is off by just an inch, you will struggle with what should be an easier weight. Plus I am finding that my back seems to be a strong point on this stumpy ass frame of mine. Add to this that last week when, for shits and giggles, I did some speed pulls with a Conventional style, it was fast as hell. I think I may have mentioned that in my post....I thought I was on to something...and I guess I was.....

The 405 was easy as it was supposed to be, the 425 I figured to be my barometer for how this would pan out, well that flew too....Hmm....onto 455 I guess. This too flew up and seemed easier than I anticipated, what is going on here? The DL style I dismissed early on in my training is outperforming my old trusty Sumo Deadlift?

Load the bar to 505 maestro!!! (Turns out Im the Maestro in this case)....The first two were pretty fast to lockout, surprised the hell out of me, on the third my grip started to fail but held up long enough for lock out....I was pretty friggin psyched to say the least, hopefully this wasnt a first time romance and next time it all goes south. Stayed tuned to find out....All sets perfromed with complete stop at bottom, no bouncing, not that my floor would give much rebound, but figured I would throw that in. I have never pulled 505 Sumo, and cant say I've tried it, but I marked this a PR.

Next up was EDT....This was pretty anti-climactic to say the least. I tossed in SSB Calf raises as I neglect this area of my body as much as I do forearms...I've always considered these area to be non-value added in the world of Powerlifting, but tonight, and the next three weeks I will curb my Dogma....

Thanks to all for tuning in, so from my frozen ice-box to yours....Keep it Dark, Keep it Heavy!!!!

01/30/07 Me Bench Brrrr......

2Bd Press w/Chains 135x5, 185x5, 225x3, 275x3, 300x3, 325x4x2
CG 4 BD Press 325x3, 365x3, 385x3, 405x3
EDT 12 Min PR Zone
P-Rows 225x3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3
Rear Delts 50x3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3

Hot Damn it was cold in the basement!!! This made for hard footing and no leg drive on the pressing. The coldness of the rubber on my sneakers coupled with the coldness of the rubber matting made for some slippery good times.
This combination made it extra hard on the pressing as trying to stablize, drive with the legs and stick to bench were all compromised. Thats what you get for training in a sub-zero basement huh? But at least I got no gym membership and I get to tear ass with reckless abandon...tonight was especially rotten I might add.

Anyway, the 2BDs were brutal, my lower back kept cramping up from the other nights ME Squat workout, those Chain Suspended Good Morning's really hit me good. So to add to slippery footing I had to compromise my already crappy arch. But all things aside I feel it was a productive workout, if anything it reinforced that you have to overcome crap and still perform under less than optimal conditions.

The CG 4 BD was a pleasant surprise, my last workout I only worked up to 365 for like 5 sets of 3, and if memory serves me correct that was all I had in me. Tonight the weights felt light on this movement. I performed all reps (on the 2BD as well) with around a 4 second pause after unracking/setting, complete pauses on the boards after the sink, and 4 second pause again at lockout. I read an article from Metal Militia in an old Pl'ing magazine where they performed board work in this fashion, lemme tell you, this shit hurts and will drastically cut the poundage you are able to use. I'll work this method into the mini-cycle I am currently in, and decide later if it proves productive.

I am really digging the EDT Triples portion of this training, the rest periods and low reps allow you to apply maximal force on each rep. I believe this will help me to control my body better in the long run. Rather than having muscle fibers firing inefficiently, this will help me to control it more. Good shit man!!

Thats all from my frozen neck of the woods...I really should move the hell out of New England, nothing here but frozen testicles and winter time depression.....

Keep it Dark, Keep it Heavy!!!