Patrick Smith's Training Journal

As you've stated, consistency is the key. Right now we may be crawling, but soon we will be able to walk and then run. We're not learning to run to race ahead of someone else, we just want to run too.

I get inspiration out of every log I read, whether the person is "super human" or not. To me knowledge is the most important thing. There's all sorts of ways to get stronger, but knowledge/experience will help you choose the best way for yourself.

Eventually you'll be posting that you can DL 500 lbs and someone will be able to go to your posts and see how you got there.

Keep up the good work!

LaughingTiger said:

As you've stated, consistency is the key. Right now we may be crawling, but soon we will be able to walk and then run. We're not learning to run to race ahead of someone else, we just want to run too.

I get inspiration out of every log I read, whether the person is "super human" or not. To me knowledge is the most important thing. There's all sorts of ways to get stronger, but knowledge/experience will help you choose the best way for yourself.

Eventually you'll be posting that you can DL 500 lbs and someone will be able to go to your posts and see how you got there.

Keep up the good work!

Thank you, LaughingTiger. You encourage me very much!

This morning:

Today was focused on prehab, skill work with a little endurance, and a mini-workout. The prehab was comprised of 20 minutes of tough foam rolling all over my back and legs, and then lacrosse ball work on my hips and glutes. The skill work was focused on jumping kicks, spinning kicks, and jumping spinning kicks. The mini-workout was focused on calves, traps, neck, flexibility specific strength, grip, and wrist strength.

In less than an hour I will do the MWOD. The one for today is about shin splints--which I do not have--but Dr. Starrett says that if you don't have shin splints just do soft tissue work around your ankles. Normally I would follow the MWOD strictly, but in this situation, I think the MWOD of yesterday would be a LOT more beneficial for me than the ankle stuff. So, I'll either do both or the one from yesterday.

I was so tired and sleepy today that I literally only had energy to study, read, and otherwise attempt to expand my intellectual abilities all day. I also had a headache that felt like Thor himself was playing blacksmith with my head was the anvil. Seriously, I sat in a dark room with a light reading and studying almost all day!

Except for a little over an hour this morning, in which I did a LOT of prehab and mobility stuff. First of all, I spent nearly thirty minutes using the foam roller and lacrosse ball all over my legs, particularly the psoas, rectus femoris, the vastus muscles, and glutes. Really, every where that I felt discomfort. With the foam rolling, I have all my body weight resting on the point of contact with the foam roller (less with the lacrosse ball), since I balance with my hands but both my feet are off the floor. I also did a lot of work on the calves.

I also did the MobilityWOD (not today's, it was not uploaded at the time), which included lacrosse ball work for one minute on the gap/pouch located directly above the knee cap, and then, directed at opening up the same gap, I did a particular exercise where I pinched the lacrosse ball between high calf and my hamstring, just off to the side of being directly behind my knee. In short, it was painful for my calf and pleasant for my knee cap.

Then I spent 10 minutes in the bottom squat position. That left my knees a little sore, but they recovered quickly and then felt better than before.

Then I spent about 30 minutes relaxed stretching going over the Blair Lowe program once or twice. That felt good.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's training! I have the WODs arranged in a 28 day cycle that Swarvoski made, and I have gone through a month of WODs and put them all into a text file matching the 28 day cycle. I can just consult my WOD chart and I get the WOD. Tomorrow is all pulling:

Complete four rounds:

60 sec Shuttle Run or just 60 sec run on treadmill

5 Clapping Pull-ups

6 FL Circle Pulls

5 – 360 Pulls

I have a question if anyone is reading this. Clapping pull ups are too intense for me right now, so I'll switch them out with regular pull ups. Any suggestions about what I can substitute for the FL circle pulls and 360 pulls?

Thanks!

I'll just do a bunch of pull ups for the WOD today. I really need to work on them anyway. 5x3-5 most likely, with a lot of control.

Afternoon workout/WOD:

Very thorough foam rolling and lacrosse ball work plus very thorough warm up (all three of Ido's routines plus bridges and leg swings)

Lots of slow and well controlled pull ups, various grips, mixed in with lean push ups, lean diamond push ups, and dead lifts.

Finished up with about 30-40 minutes of "wall tennis."

I just watched an inspiring video of somebody doing tons of one armed pull ups:

Spent all morning rushing around, walking, carrying heavy objects, and sweating profusely... This afternoon, did 20 minutes of very tough foam orlling and lacrosse ball work plus THREE Mobility WODs in a row. Then I play some light tennis for a while.

Ahg! I was really, really looking forward to training tomorrow morning because I got my FSP and WOD stuff organized and because I did not do any organized training (did plenty of unorganized training through regular manual labor, though), but I have to go to work early tomorrow morning and I won't have time!

At any rate, I will be able do my Tang Soo Do class tomorrow evening. I look forward to Tuesday's WOD.

This morning:

Spent most of the morning walking around and pushing, lifting (one side), and maneuvering a 400lb piano. Heavy sucker.

This evening:

After a thorough soft tissue session, I went to TSD class intending to practice with the rest of the class, but we had a new guy and I had to instruct for most of the class.

At least I did a medium intensity contract/relax stretching session before sparring.

Wow! Great day!

This morning, I was feeling pretty bad (slightly disoriented and stomach ache), but refused to skip training because I had already missed yesterday's because of work. My re-designed FSP warm up went great! Very sub-maximal and focused on holding the proper form.

Now that I'm doing the FSP correctly, I have restarted my 28 day WOD cycle, which begins with a dynamic pushing day.

Summary of WOD: 4 rounds, 3 minutes rest between each

* WHS

* Clapping push-ups on knees (I wanted to keep the intensity down, but I still performed the movement as intensely as I could)

* PB dips with foot support

* Standard dips on 14" blocks with foot support

* Pull-ups (I added these)

I felt so darn good after the WOD that I was compelled to add a finisher of:

3 rounds, 1 minute rest between each round

* WHS

* Mixed grip pull-ups

I've adopted the habit of resting for 3-4 minutes after my FSP warm up before beginning the WOD, in which I get a little water and do some extra prehab stuff like Ido's shoulder routine (the one with the external rotations).

To anyone who has not yet begun to practice the FSP, I highly recommend you begin! When done properly, they really prime you for the WOD. If you do them right, like I have just started doing, they are not a burden!

Also, my nutrition lately has been almost perfect. I am keeping VERY close tabs on everything I eat, which includes a summary of each meal and rough estimation of gram quantity of each macronutrient. I am keeping it roughly within 2600-3000 kcal a day. My main fault has been eating water melon (because I couldn't reach the amount of carbs that I needed with just vegetables) and slightly low protein intake here and there.

For example, this is what I write out as the day progresses:

6.20.11 (150F, 190P, 140C) (Goal = 160F, 190P, 140C = about 2500-3000 kcal)

Meal 1 - 75F, 40P, 15C (fried eggs with EVOO and raw cucumbers)

Meal 2 - 00F, 00P, 15C (water melon)

Meal 3 - 40F, 70P, 20C (hamburger patties with ketchup and mayonaise and pickles)

Meal 4 - 00F, 00P, 15C (cucumbers)

Meal 5 - 25F, 60P, 00C (Roast beef with salt and pepper)

Meal 6 - 10F, 20P, 20C (canned sardines with cucumbers in vinegar)

Meal 7 - 00F, 00P, 65C (water melon)

Comments: Only ate the water melon because I was so far behind in the carbohydrate count. Without grains or too many beans, it's hard to bring the carbohydrate up to where it should be.

I write it out in a simple HTML-like code writer application that is super, super bare-bones. It's so nice and simple that it helps me stay focused on what the whole point of documenting my nutrition.

I'm pumped! I have an awesome kicking session and mini-workout scheduled for tomorrow. 8)

One day I'll have to put more thought into nutrition. Right now, I just try to make sure I have a few servings of fruits/vegetables that are red, green and orange everyday.

LaughingTiger said:

One day I'll have to put more thought into nutrition. Right now, I just try to make sure I have a few servings of fruits/vegetables that are red, green and orange everyday.

What's that saying? "You can't out train a crappy diet."

Regretfully, I don't have access to any orange vegetables, but I have cherry tomatoes and an abundance of cucumbers.

Patrick Smith said:

LaughingTiger said:

One day I'll have to put more thought into nutrition. Right now, I just try to make sure I have a few servings of fruits/vegetables that are red, green and orange everyday.

What's that saying? "You can't out train a crappy diet."

Regretfully, I don't have access to any orange vegetables, but I have cherry tomatoes and an abundance of cucumbers.

Right now, I figure I'm putting in enough good things to keep the bad from crippling me too much.

My reds are usually tomatoes and red peppers.

My greens are usually green peppers, cabbage, broccoli, or any other green vegetable.

My orange is usually either oranges or orange juice that has some pulp in it, but I'll have carrots sometimes as well.

Those foods along with meat and "junk" food usually have me feeling good most of the time.

I doubt I'll ever count calories, but I may try to cut back on some of the snacks.

LaughingTiger said:

Right now, I figure I'm putting in enough good things to keep the bad from crippling me too much.

My reds are usually tomatoes and red peppers.

My greens are usually green peppers, cabbage, broccoli, or any other green vegetable.

My orange is usually either oranges or orange juice that has some pulp in it, but I'll have carrots sometimes as well.

Those foods along with meat and "junk" food usually have me feeling good most of the time.

I doubt I'll ever count calories, but I may try to cut back on some of the snacks.

Cabbage! I forgot to mention that. It's great with everything.

I don't count calories as such, but I try to come within 10-15 grams of my general guidelines. Primarily because I'm pretty goal oriented right now, and although I'm not hurrying, I don't want to wait any longer than necessary!

Plus, I haven't been doing too well with nutrition (consistency) in the past few months, so I feel that I have a lot to make up for. When I'm in fantastic shape, don't have to scale back on the WODs terribly much, can jump over tables, have a BF% of lower than 7, and can out kick, out maneuver, out think, and out jump everyone within my immediate vicinity, I will relax. I will also move, because I will need some sort of competition.

Awesome day. Again, I had a fairly bad stomach ache, but I took some Gas-X for it (although it wasn't even semi-related to indigestion) and for some reason it cleared it up.

After a very thorough soft tissue session (about 20 minutes), I performed a very thorough warm up which included Ido's routines, a bunch of leg swings (around 72 front back side), back arches, and bridges. I was feeling great by then, so I jumped straight into my kata practice, trying to drill into my unconsciousness the perfect form with power, speed, and balance. I went through all the kata I know just once with perfect form, move by move, and then once more through the top seven high level and more challenging kata. I haven't done that kind of practice in months, and my endurance is still poor (getting better, though), but I maintained my HR at about 120-160 BPM for the entire kata practice session (which lasted about 30 minutes).

Then, although I was running late, I couldn't resist (literally, I couldn't. I was extremely compelled) the urge to do the kicking workout, too. So I proceeded to go through about 100 fairly difficult kicking variations, starting with the simplest and easiest, and then progressing to the more difficult and into combinations. I felt so dang great after that, again, I felt compelled to perform the scheduled mini-workout despite my drastically going over time limit.

The mini-workout went over wrist, neck, trap, and adductor strength. For the adductors, I took the great idea of a member here, and lowered my rings to about 6" above the floor. Then I put on a 40lb weight vest on, put my feet in the rings, and then while holding the cables attached to the rings, I simply performed inverted adductor flyes with a five second static hold at the bottom. I also performed mixed stance (front/side or "martial arts split") inverted flyes. Very difficult, but I think that it will end up being hugely helpful to my flexibility.

I am extremely optimistic! As per my training routine, I will repeat my kata, kick, and mini-workout routine this Saturday. I have a tournament (not a big one, but one I'd like to win) coming on the 16th of July, and I feel this will really me get into shape for that. My sort of legendary (only a little in my area) hook kick and spinning hook kick already felt better at the end of the session.

Nutrition-wise, I was practically forced to eat a lot of red kidney beans today because I needed the protein, and there was nothing else to eat! I know it's not the best thing to eat, but at least it wasn't the giant chocolate chip cookies that my sister made yesterday (mmmm...nomnom). At least I took a bunch of these digestive enzymes that had bean specific enzymes in them.

Flawless nutrition today. Gotta make up for eating those beans!

Training for this morning was all giant sets of FSP + tempo FBE. I did one less set of each warm up FSP because I had to do some of them again very soon. The WOD covered l-sit tuck hold plus slow tempo muscle up (I did it with a huge amount of foot support), german hang plus good mornings, and hollow holds plus banded torso twists.

I was in the middle of my warm up before I remembered that I had forgotten my soft tissue work, so I decided to do it before class this evening. The class will include relaxed stretching, kata practice, and sparring.

Okay!

This morning:

Really (I mean really!) thorough soft tissue session, FSP, and WOD. The WOD was a dynamic pulling WOD, but I scaled it down to an endurance and semi-maximal strength WOD with 60 second KB swing, pull-ups, towel chin ups with feet support (only way I can do them), isometric chin-up hold at top for 10 seconds, and finishing up with deadlifting. It went great, and I was careful to get about 25g of protein every 30 minutes after the WO for about 3-4 hours.

Later on, I, while reading through Pain Free, did some of the knee E-cises and then studied while standing up (!) for a few hours. That was tough, because I am so used to studying while reclining in a nice soft chair, but I worked through it. I imagine that it will become easier the more I do it.

After studying, I played some wall tennis this afternoon, which was FUN (!) but not very taxing.

Also, my skin calipers came in today! They are cheap $15 ones, but still good enough for a rough estimation, I think. I tried it a few times in the area that they recommend at (about 4" above your right hip and about 1-2" to the left, pretty much). As I expected, I'm about 14-15% BF. Well, I'm eating strictly paleo, training six days a week with about 10 separate sessions, and moving around for a lot of the time when I'm not training, does anyone think cutting to 10% in a few months sound unrealistic? I'm seriously having trouble getting more than 100g of carbohydrates by eating almost exclusively vegetables. Isn't that almost optimal (at least traditionally) for leaning out?

Sadly, I will not be able to train tomorrow morning. I have an important even to go to and nowhere to train before I have to leave... I will still do a LOT of prehab soft tissue work, a few (yes, a few) MWODS, some knee E-cises, and then play some wall tennis later on in the day.

Dang dang dang! Everything is going great, but I have an activity tomorrow morning, scheduled for right in the middle of my regular training time. I only just found out about it an hour ago... and it's such a purposeless activity, too.

At any rate, I'll get my soft tissue work in before my TSD class in the evening. That's really annoying, though. Two Monday's in a row...

Haha... what a funny turn of events.

It turns out that I was able to do my soft tissue work, FSP, and the WOD this morning, but I will not go to class this evening. FSP+WOD is more important, though, so I'm happy.

WOD 6.27.11 included cossack squats* with 40lb weighted vest, killers with weighted vest, and then deadlifts with 115# and the weighted vest The original WOD called for sprints in place of cossack squats, but I had no room. It also called for GHR instead of deadlifts, but I had no GHR station inside... The cossack squats were intended, at first, to replace the dynamic sprint, but with the 40lb vest on, I swiftly realized that the exercise had become on of semi-maximal strength.

*Youtube video of cossack squats -

Today was a pretty good day for me. Despite the inconvenient activity this morning, I managed to get in around four hours of reading/studying. I'm trying to reduce the time I am allowing myself to use the computer so that I am simply FORCED to read all the books that I need to, if only because I have nothing else to do! And I got my ACT scores back from actstudent.org! I got a 26 and full dean's scholarships, which is just what I need right now with all this financial stuff going on.

I am now avidly reading Pain Free. Although I have had the book in my possession many times in the last few months, I have repeatedly failed to do anything but pick it up, leaf through it, and then move on. Now, though, with college feeling so close, and my interest in physical therapy, athletic training, and general health once again so inspired, I enjoy it immensely!

Regarding physical therapy, my knees have felt so good lately (probably because of all the MWOD stuff and 20+ minutes of intense soft tissue work daily) that I don't really feel the need to go through the knee pain program in the Pain Free. I will probably proceed to the daily conditioning program (I have no idea what it's like yet), and decide whether I should add it to my day's routine. As it is, I am getting an all-around light experience of the specific problem programs since I enjoy going through the routines as they are being described in the book. Today I sat in the supinated groin stretch (I think that was the name) for over 15 minutes each side while I read the book.

Unfortunately, I have another inconvenient activity tomorrow morning in the exact same time frames, and I reschedule my training like I did today. I will have to reschedule another way.

I was gone all morning and when I got back I felt too tired to train (mentally), but I played it cleverly. I tricked myself into getting motivated to work past the fatigue (lol! it worked!) by cleaning my room and doing MWOD and soft tissue stuff. Before I did, though, I had this conversation with myself:

Self 1: I'm too tired to train! I haven't slept well for the past few days, so I can take a break.

Self 2: You missed last Monday and Saturday... you're already behind. Plus, you really do want to train, but you think you're too tired.

Self 1: I won't do the FSP and WOD, but I will do my soft tissue work. That's too important to skip.

But after I did my soft tissue stuff, I felt motivated to train, and so I did a light FSP circuit (not my regular one, because I hadn't set up my rings or PBs) to warm up (in addition to the soft tissue, which usually warms me up fairly well), and did a bunch of sub-maximal wall handstand holds supersetted with chin ups. It felt good, and I finished with some WT.

I wish dairy, and subsequently whey protein powder, did not cause me to break out. Protein is fairly scarce in my home right now--especially now--and I sure could use that extra protein. I have ordered some egg white protein (which Slizz warns could cause indigestion, hope it won't), but I found a place online where you can buy 10 lbs of whey for around $70 bucks. That's so insanely cheap per gram that I could practically hit myself for not being able to handle dairy. I'm willing to do some crazy stuff to get used to it, though. I wonder if I started taking dairy specific digestive enzymes that my body would get used to it. Sure could use some advice about this. Most people seem to think that either dairy causes you to break out or it doesn't, but you can't do anything about it. That doesn't make sense. From what I've read regarding the dairy and acne connection, it's not the lactose that causes it, but the hormones from the goat/milk (goat appears to be less problematic, however) somehow collect with sexual hormones in your skin pores and causes the break out. Hmmm. If it's that simple, then it makes me wonder why everyone doesn't have skin problems from whey.

What a curse!

After a thorough soft tissue session and warm up, I did my kata and kick practice, followed up with inverted adductor flies.

I did a lot of relaxed stretching throughout the afternoon, as well as some MWOD stuff.

The egg protein powder arrived today, and I tried it out. It's the worst powder I've ever encountered. I tried mixing it with a variety of liquids, but it refused to dissolve properly. It just bubbles up into small hard bubbles and then foams. Almost like soap. I'm just glad I didn't get two pounds!

Have you ever tried hemp protein powder or brown rice protein powder? I don't use supplements now, but used hemp protein powder in the past. Sometimes I just mixed it with water, other times I threw the powder into the blender with some fruit and vegetables.

I wanted to write a few lines yesterday, after seeing that you ordered a very cheap protein (as I understand), but I hoped you would receive a quality product. Unfortunately, not everything that's cheap is necessary good. I don't know about that egg protein, but last year I read a consumerlab.com report, they tested some creatine products and few of them failed testing. It means that the quantities and/or qualities that were advertised on the label were not true. I know how it is to be short of money with regards to supplements, but less might be more sometimes.

ps: sorry to hear about your protein story.

LaughingTiger said:

Have you ever tried hemp protein powder or brown rice protein powder? I don't use supplements now, but used hemp protein powder in the past. Sometimes I just mixed it with water, other times I threw the powder into the blender with some fruit and vegetables.

I haven't tried hemp or brown rice powder yet, but if I can't figure out what's causing me problems with whey, then I'll probably have to default to something like them. To be frank, though, I'd much rather spend some money on getting my BioSig done (if I can find a practitioner) and finding out what is actually causing the problems with whey, and THEN getting a bunch of whey powder in bulk to reduce costs! Hopefully I will be able to find some sort of practitioner within a few hours drive. I can't afford to fly!

deodatus said:

I wanted to write a few lines yesterday, after seeing that you ordered a very cheap protein (as I understand), but I hoped you would receive a quality product. Unfortunately, not everything that's cheap is necessary good. I don't know about that egg protein, but last year I read a consumerlab.com report, they tested some creatine products and few of them failed testing. It means that the quantities and/or qualities that were advertised on the label were not true. I know how it is to be short of money with regards to supplements, but less might be more sometimes.

ps: sorry to hear about your protein story.

You understand correctly, my friend! If the egg powder had been at least remotely drinkable in anything but a smoothie drowned in cream I would not have had too much of a problem with it. I've been choking down disgusting concoctions for a long time, and the taste generally isn't all that much of a problem.

------

FSP + WOD this morning, as usual. The WOD was focused on shuttles, box jumps, squat jumps, and depth jumps. I couldn't do the shuttle (no room) so I replaced it with a 60 second sprint (sort of) on the old treadmill. It felt good.

One of the problems with the treadmill running is that it's nearly impossible to run on the balls of your feet (POSE, I believe).

The WOD for today was a ring series plus statics. I should have simply replaced the ring series with some FBE, but I forgot. I mostly did a bunch of FSP, which was preceded by a lot of soft tissue work.

Later on, I played about 40 minutes of intense WT in the hot, hot, hot weather.

This day was practically a disaster! My alarm clock didn't go off, wasn't set, or didn't wake me up because I ended up waking up two hours late! What a catastrophe...