Alexx's Workout Log

Decided to start logging my workouts so I can have something to reference as I keep losing my log books once they are filled up as well as receive feedback from anyone wanting to chime in.

Well to start I just injured my shoulders and knee so my workouts have to reflect the injuries. Injuries aren't from working out, but from another sport. As a result of the injuries I cut back most work to just the FSPs (they don't cause any discomfort) and had to cut out manna training as that was directly hitting the injured area (still not quite sure what it is, but the pain is directly behind the arm pit area).

Here is the routine:

Upper Warm up - Wall slides, thoracic extensions, shoulder dislocates and german hang pulls.

Lower Body Warm up - Wall squats, lunges, front kicks, side kicks, arabesque kicks.

D1

A1 Press Handstands - 15 total reps, Straddle - decided to experiment with total reps instead of working on a set number of sets. In between sets I do sets of wrist pushups for sets of 12-15.

A2 Back Lever - 6x10 - half lay

B1 Rear Delt Flyes - 4x8-15

B2 Internal Rotations - 4x8-12

D2

A1 SLS Jumps/Vertical Jumps - 1x3, 3x5

A2 Scpaular Band Depression - 4x8-15

B1 SL Hip Thrusts - 1x5, 3x8-10

B2 GHR - 1x3, 3x5 - one finger help

D3

A1 Front Lever - 6x10 - Straddle

A2 Planche - 12x5 - close tuck/Manna

B1 Rear Delt Flyes - 4x8-15

B2 External Rotations - 4x8-12

D4

Fat Bar Hang - 4x30 seconds

A1 Scapular Band Depression - 4x8-12

A2 Reverse Wrist Roller - 4x2 trips - 50 lbs.

This is week one of an 8 week SSC during which I am hoping my shoulders will heal. The injured area seems to be the AC joint and something behind the rear delt area.

Saturday

Warmup with soft tissue work for the injured area then wall slides, thoracic extensions, shoulder dislocates and german hang pulls.

A1 Front Lever - 6x10 seconds - Straddle

A2 Planche Close tuck - 12x5 seconds* First time working this in a very long time. Stopped before as it was causing pain in the upper back area. Taking it very easy and seeing how it goes. Experimented with fingers back and liked it a lot better than fingers forward.

B1 Rear Delt flys - 4x15 - 5 lbs - Replaced the inverted row with these as it was causing shoulder pain in what feels like the AC joint.

B2 Elbow against body band external rotations - 4x8 - Red Band

Lower body warm-up

A1 Standing Vertical - 1x3, 3x5

A2 Single Leg Glute Bridge - 1x8 - BW ,3x8 - 25 lbs. - These are way harder than the bilateral version (probably since I've never done it before), still going from 300 lbs+ to 25 lbs. is kind of disappointing.

B1 Scapular Band Depression - 4x15 - Black and orange bands - Really like this exercise. This is the only time I am able to feel just the lower traps doing the majority of the work. Prone trap raises I felt them do some work but the middle traps still felt like they did most of the work, not at all the case with these.

B2 Reverse Wrist Roller - 2x3, 2x2 trips - 50 lbs.

*Shoulders - Soft tissue work and contrast showers have been making them feel a lot better. At some point during this cycle I'd like to go get ART done on both of the shoulders. Also just in case, I cut out climbing and playing around on bars so as not to aggravate the injury.

Week 2

Lacrosse ball soft tissue work for the shoulder girdle, upper body warm-up.

A1 Press Handstands - 15 total reps - *25 was way too ambitious.

A2 Back Lever - 6x10 - half lay

B1 Rear Delt Flyes - 4x6 - 7.5s

B2 Internal Rotations - 4x15 - Red band

*Possibly figured out what the the pain behind my shoulder was.The pain is where the long head of the tricep attaches, after massaging the upper portion of the long head the pain became substantially less. Makes sense that manna work really aggravates it. The mystery is how that area became so overworked.

D2

Lower body warm up

A1 SLS Jumps - 4x5 - 10 lbs

A2 GHR - 4x5 - one finger help - Not sure why but these were really hard today.

B1 Scapular band depression - 4x8-12 - Really cool to be able to see a pump in the lower traps.

B2 Hexagonal dumbbell holds - 4x30 - 30 lbs - Switching this to fat bar hangs since it doesn't feel like it is training what I want it to train.

*Shoulders: Decided to roll on the spot directly where the pain is yesterday...bad idea, woke up this morning and the pain is much worse.

On a separate note played around with some tumbling skills in the gym yesterday (stayed away from handsprings though because of shoulders, not even sure if I can still do one). To my surprise, tried and did a front half and even managed a full. Back full is long gone though as I can barely get a quarter rotation (always struggled with twisting on back tumbling though). Going to start putting in the time to train a few skills I always wanted but never got to train like Tong Fei, aerial cartwheel (never had a consistent one) side flip and an arabian.

Soft tissue work and stretching - concentrated on the upper back area and found a lot of tender spots around the traps and spinal erectors. Debating weather to start working oversplits for front splits since I want the actual splits on floor to be very easy.

Shoulders - feeling much better in general - some pain remains with resisted abduction on the left shoulder and the posterior right shoulder area is really ticked off after some soft tissue work. Now I am thinking it's the subscapularis as abducted internal rotation is really painful (really strange injury in my opinion).

Worked side saltos, managed a few but pretty sure I am cheating the take off (I think mine just becomes a front tuck with an early quarter turn).

Upper Body Warmup

A1 Front Lever - 6x10 - Straddle - Becoming easy already (been a while since I worked just the static position). Retractors feel like the weakest link here.

A2 Planche - 6x10-15 Planche Leans - Switched to planche leans as something was feeling awkward in the shoulder, leans were fine though.

B1 Rear Delt Flyes - 4x6 - 7.5s

B2 External Rotations - 4x8 - Red Band (did them in the abducted position)

*All this tumbling got me some nice shin splits. That's not surprising though since last time I tumbled and worked on skills regularly was over 5 years ago. Hopefully will heal over the weekend.

Tried and did a OAC on the left arm, no loss in strength but the shoulder just feels unstable. Didn't try one with my right arm figuring if my strong arm feels unstable the chances of injuring the right arm were pretty good.

Skipped Leg Session - Jammed my left knee tumbling :|, and my right knee was just getting better haha. The injury isn't bad, should heal much faster than the right knee but I didn't want to make it worse.

*Right shoulder feeling better again, took a bunch of hot mineral baths and contrast showers over the weekend. Haven't tried to see how much it healed since I just want to rest it up and not do anything to aggravate it. But I sure am glad that I don't have a sharp pain behind my rear deltoid anymore every time I slightly abduct and extend my shoulder.

*Upper back starting to get stiff again from planche work. I've tried to play around with a bunch of different techniques and shoulder positions but it's very hard to tell what it is since the pain builds up and isn't acute. Unless the stiffness gets bad to a point of where I think it'll cause an injury I'll keep the planche for the duration of the cycle trying to figure out the pain before putting the planche to the side again.

Anyone have any tips? The stiffness is hard to pinpoint but it is in the middle back area and it is the most prominent when turning the torso. So the stiffness on the right I feel the most when twisting right. I excluded planche work for almost a year since I thought if I built up my upper back the stiffness wouldn't appear but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Upper body warm-up

A1 Press Handstands - 15 total reps, Every other set did 12 wrist pushups - I'll elevate the feet next time since these are getting too easy.

A2 Back Lever - 6x10 - half lay *While pulls seemed to stress the bicep area the most, statics I mainly feel in the shoulder and chest area and there is no significant stress on the bicep which is huge for me since before I could barely even hold a close tuck with palms back because of the bicep strain. I am going to be very happy when I can do back lever pulls in a full lay position for sets of 8.

B1 Rear Delt Flyes - 4x6 - 7.5

B2 Internal Rotations - 4x10 - 2.5 - Abducted

Hey,

With your shoulder, is it worth going to see a physio or someone in the field to diagnose for you? I think if you have more certainty of what the injury is then you can plan workouts around that.

Gavin S said:

Hey,

With your shoulder, is it worth going to see a physio or someone in the field to diagnose for you? I think if you have more certainty of what the injury is then you can plan workouts around that.

Getting ART done next week , hopefully it will help and the professional will able to better tell me how to avoid it in the future but so far it is just an acute injury from work that needs some time to heal.

As for planning workouts around it I just removed everything that stresses the area. I doubt that even someone in the field would be able to tell me what gymnastics moves would stress the area and which ones won't, more than likely they'll just say don't do what hurts and I am already doing that.

I also E-stimmed the area tonight so I'll see how that helps or hinders.

Soft tissue work with lacrosse ball and stretching. *Did a decent pike press handstand after stretching the hamstrings, need to push my hamstring flexibility more to make it consistent.

-qtqx16u8JM

Decided to add in some high repetition work on recovery days and see how it goes. In a circuit (yep my endurance sucks):

30 Pushups

10 chin ups

30 Reverse Leg Lifts

40 Lunges (20 per leg)

40 Single leg Deadlifts (20 per leg)

Didn't notice any noticeable difference after using the e-stim but will continue to apply it for a few more days.

Also with tumbling I am becoming concerned with joint stress on the lower body since I suddenly went from just very basic jumps in training to tumbling 4-5 times per week. Since I still can't do weighted work for knee extension I changed day 2 and 4 to look like the following:

Day 2

A1 SLS Jumps - 1x3, 3x5

A2 Scapular Band Depression

B1 GHR -1x3, 3x5 - one finger help

B2 SL Hip Thrusts - 1x5, 3x8-10

Day 4

Fat Bar Hangs - 4x30 seconds

A1 Scapular Band Depression - 4x8-12

A2 Reverse Wrist Roller - 4x2 trips - 50 lbs.

Lower body warm-up

A1 SLS Jumps - 1x3, 3x5 - X

A2 Scapular Band Depression - 4x10 - Black, red and orange bands* Need to order more bands.

B1 GHR -1x3, 3x5 - one finger help

B2 SL Hip Thrusts - 1x5, 3x8 - Elevated

*Shoulders just feel strange, I think it's just soreness since I did a bunch of pike press handstands yesterday. The external rotators in my right shoulder are sore, this is a bit baffling as I did no external rotation work since last week (maybe from e-stim?).

Tried to pinpoint the pain a bit more by seeing what hurt the most. Muscle-ups (the transition and above) cause some discomfort, manna work and v-sits still aggravate them but not as much, handstand pushups caused the most discomfort as well as a sharp pain in the right rear delt area. Did this so that when I go in for therapy I can give an accurate description of what causes pain.

Did some OAC when I visited a gym, 2 with RA (not in a row) 1 with LA and no discomfort or feelings of instability. Very pleased with no loss of strength in these since I haven't done them in 4 weeks.

Had a guy walk up to me and say how only the genetically gifted can do stuff like this, I was floored. It's nice that I've gotten to a point where people are thinking I am genetically gifted but it took me close to two years to obtain the skill and this is despite the fact that I trained up to chinning with weight first and was always pulling dominant. Genetically gifted hahahaha.

*The more I train my depressors and retractors the more I am realizing how much of a weakness they are for me. Really started to notice how they are the first to give out on front lever work and after trying the manna I came to the realization that I need to scale things back and work on the advanced L-sit to really get the proper shoulder position.

Nice pike press.

Some day I hope to be considered "genetically gifted" too!

artisticfitness said:

Nice pike press.

Some day I hope to be considered "genetically gifted" too!

Haha thank you.

Upper body mobility

A1 Front Lever - 6x10 - Straddle - Really hard today, maybe because I played around with Iron Cross pulls in the morning.

A2 Planche Leans- 6x10 - close tuck. L-sit/Manna (really focused on retracting the shoulder blades on this which made it significantly harder).

B1 Rear Delt Flyes - 4x6 - 7.5

B2 External Rotations - 4x8 - Red band

*Did some high bar swings on strap. The stretch from the swings in my shoulders and the hang really made them feel a lot better (they weren't hurting or anything before hand, just felt really good afterward). Giants is another move that I've added to the list of skills that I want to obtain.

A1 Fat Bar Hangs - 4x30 seconds

A2 Prone Ys - 4x12- 2.5 lbs Tried prone Ys and I can finally feel the lower traps doing the work. The band depression really helped. Unfortunately I can not go over 2.5 lbs. at the moment since when I do I don't feel the lower traps doing as much work.

Reverse Wrist Roller - 4x2 trips - 50 lbs.

30 Pushups

10 Pull-ups - I swear 10 of these is at least 2x as hard as a OAC.

30 Reverse Leg Lifts

40 Lunges (20 per leg)

40 Single leg Deadlifts (20 per leg)

Soft Tissue work and stretching.

Ordered Glucosamine Chondroitin MSM, Magnesium Chelate, Fishoil and Vitamin D. I don't use Glucosamine on regular bases but I do like to take it to help injuries heal. While I never liked performance supplements (never noticed any real difference with protein or creatine) I do like things like fishoil, vitamin d and magnesium as I noticeably sleep better and get sick less often.

Tuesday - Week 4

Upper body warm-up

A1 Press Handstands - 15 total reps, Every set followed with a set of 10 wrist pushups. - Progressing poorly on these, the quality is increasing for every repetition but I am unable to increase how many reps I can do in a row. I suppose quality beats quantity though

A2 Back Lever - 6x10 - half lay

B1 Rear Delt Flyes - 4x6 - 7.5

B2 Internal Rotations - 4x6 - 5 lbs - Abducted

*Woke up feeling like I was hit by a truck. Wrists ached (need to switch to bar work for press handstands), back was super stiff. On the upside shoulders felt great and the knees are almost totally healed. Wrists are same as knees, hurting from tumbling so no big deal there just need a break but the back is super stiff from planche work. When the upper back gets this stiff pulling injuries are quick to follow so I'll be dropping planche work in favor of manna work.

Thursday

Lower Body Warm up - added side lunges/squats.

A1 SLS Jumps - 1x3, 3x5 - X - Switched to vertical jumps as they don't aggravate the knee injuries. It doesn't matter to me what I do for speed work so this change doesn't inhibit my workouts.

A2 Ys - 4x6 - 5 lbs. Woooho did 5 lbs. and felt the lower traps working. Not only that but I can now see a clearly defined difference in my back between the upper, middle and lower traps.

B1 GHR -1x3, 3x5 - one finger help

B2 SL Hip Thrusts - 1x5, 3x6 - Elevated - 25 lbs.

Crazy week with work for me so I got no stretching in so far. Will try to make one up on Sunday.

Upper body warm up

A1 Front Lever - 6x10 - Straddle

A2 Manna - Advanced L-sit - 6x10 - Bent leg

B1 Manna supported holds - 4x15 - focused on retracting the shoulder blades. I did manna holds mainly because the retractors were just too fried to do anything productive on rear delt flys.

B2 External Rotations - 4x8 - Red Band

The shoulder retractors are starting to fee like they are on overdrive on this day. Front Lever and advanced L sit holds are both very easy but focusing on actively retracting my shoulders makes both of the exercises much harder but I suppose it's better that I noticed the weakness in the retractors now rather than much later.

No grip work, decided to rest the wrists.

Did my new shoulder prehab routine that I will start doing next week on Day 1 and Day 3 instead of having a Day 4 (to keep progressing on my shoulder prehab work).

Shoulder Prehab circuit 3x:

Band Rear Delt Flys - 12 - Red Band

Ys - 6 - 5 lbs.

Internal Rotation - 6 - 5 lbs.

Band External Rotation - 10 - Red band

Finished with wrist curls (extension and flexion) 20 reps with 5 lbs.

Circuit 2x:

30 Pushups

10 Pullups

30 Reverse Leg lifts

40 Lunges

40 Single Leg Deadlifts

Soft tissue work.

Changed routine for the final 4 weeks of the SS cycle (I don't normally modify my routines this much throughout the cycle but had to be flexible this time to see what the injuries responded to and what made them worse).

D1

A1 Press Handstands - 15 total reps, Straddle - Will do these on bars until wrists heal, that should be interesting.

A2 Back Lever - 6x10 - half lay

Shoulder Prehab Circuit - 3x

D2

A1 Vertical Jumps - 5x3 - This doesn't seem to be making the knees worse but I am not sure if its inhibiting their recovery. Edit: talked to a physical therapist and he highly recommended dropping jumps until knees heal (since they aren't healing as fast as I had hoped this seemed like a good plan) as well as doing some quad dominant work with a pain free range of motion. I'll have to play around with some exercises to see what feels good.

A2 Wrist extension - Not sure what I'll do here as the wrist roller aggravates the wrist.

B1 SL Hip Thrusts - 3x4-6 - with weight.

B2 Half GHR - 3x5

D3

A1 Front Lever - 6x10 - Straddle

A2 Manna - 6x10

Shoulder Prehab Circuit - 3x

After D1 and D3 will have a recovery day where I do soft tissue work, flexibility work, high repetition circuit, and mineral baths.

*So far this cycle did exactly what I wanted it to do. Shoulder pain is gone (I can resume manna training), the right knee injury healed (although I got two new ones from tumbling), strengthened my retactors and activated my lower traps and got a wrist injury (this is a mistake on my part, I ignored an old surgery injury thinking it would go away on it's own. It didn't, only got worse. Now I have to baby the wrist and do some high repetition work for it.

Week 5

Upper body warm up

Soft tissue work for quads and right forearm.

A1 Bars Press Handstands - 10 total - This is much harder for me than floor, I think part of it is that I do no handstand work on parallel bars. This is good as I wanted to work handstand presses on bars for a while now, thanks to this injury I am now forced to

A2 Back Lever - 6x10 - half lay - This does aggravate the wrist injury slightly, if it's still doing that next week I'll have to figure something else out (maybe straight arm flys on rings, as I am using the back lever mainly as a bicep conditioning exercise).

Shoulder Prehab Circuit 3x:

Band Rear Delt Flys - 15 - Red Band

Ys - 6 - 5 lbs.

Internal Rotation - 8 - 5 lbs.

Band External Rotation - 10 - Red band

Edit: I think the extra rotator cuff work is too much too soon as my shoulders tired out at work and felt a bit achy (it could also be because I was spotting a new skill but I like to tread on the side of caution). So until it strengthens up a bit more I will change the prehab to this:

3x

Ys - 6 - 5 lbs.

Rear Delt Flys - 12-15 - 5 lbs.

Manna pulls (not sure what to call these but bent over starting with the arms in the hanging position and pull as high as I can) - 10 - 5 lbs.

Day 1 - Internal Rotation - 8 - 5 lbs.

Day 3 - External Rotation - 10 Red Band

*Did a few handstand pushups and was completely pain free wooho. The wrist on the other hand is becoming kind of worrisome, definitely need to see a physical therapist about it.

Soft tissue work, stretching.

Circuit 1x:

Pushups - 30

Reverse Leg lifts - 30

Lunges - 40

Single Leg Deadlifts - 40

Ice bucket and hot bucket for the wrist maybe? That sucks.

I am making Bulgarian Rows a permanent priority for me. I noticed that adding a slight external rotation aspect to them makes a big difference, it feels more effective.

I made my shoulders all kinds of sore too a few days ago, between moving heavy objects for 12 hours (culminating with a 700+ lb fire safe.. ugh) my back and shoulders are exhausted. Even my elbows need rest. But! The good news is that we have a proper workout room! I think you'll like it. Now that the kitchen remodel is winding down we'll have to meet up here. You'll like my mom's place, it's a great training ground. And we can work the slackline properly!

slizzardman said:

Ice bucket and hot bucket for the wrist maybe? That sucks.

I am making Bulgarian Rows a permanent priority for me. I noticed that adding a slight external rotation aspect to them makes a big difference, it feels more effective.

I made my shoulders all kinds of sore too a few days ago, between moving heavy objects for 12 hours (culminating with a 700+ lb fire safe.. ugh) my back and shoulders are exhausted. Even my elbows need rest. But! The good news is that we have a proper workout room! I think you'll like it. Now that the kitchen remodel is winding down we'll have to meet up here. You'll like my mom's place, it's a great training ground. And we can work the slackline properly!

That's awesome, I am looking forward to trying out that slackline with proper length. Yeah I am really noticing a huge improvement in shoulder health after concentrating on retraction and depression a lot more. I think I am going to leave that routine of Ys, rear delt flys, and manna/victorian pulls in permanently (got that idea from you).

The wrist is worrisome only because I tore that ligament before, but it seems to be responding pretty well to supination/pronation weighted work as well as ulnar deviation. This might be something I have to start doing permanently to strengthen that area.