Alexx's Workout Log

Soft-Tissue Work

Warm-up

Wide Arm handstand - 6x10

OAC - 3x2 - Assisted

SLS - 3x8 - 50 lbs.

Because of the new schedule at work I had to change my days from Wednesday, Friday, Sunday to Saturday, Monday, Wednesday with prehab days on Sunday and Thursday and Stretch on Tuesdays.

Week 4

Warm-up

Straight-arm Work - 3x10

Front Lever - 6x5

Single Leg Archer Hold - 3x30

Internal Rotations - 3x8 - Red+Orange

External Rotations (Changed to Cressey's "No Money" Exercise) - 3x10 - Orange Band

Abducted External rotations - 3x8 - 20 lbs.

Wrist Pushups (Flexion, Extension, and Finger Tips) - 3x15

Finger Extension - 3x30 - Green Band

Toe Raises - 3x30 - 65lbs.

*Swimming practices start on the 15th. Shoulders are feeling good with no injuries or aches. Wrists responding well to no handstand work and high rep work. Shin splits have become quite a bit better but I've been mainly just resting them.

Warm-up*

Internal rotations - 2x12 - Red+orange band

External Rotations "No Money" - 2x15 - Orange Band

Abducted External Rotatios - 2x10 - 20 lbs.

Scapular Pushups - 2x20 - Black Band

Wrist Pushups (Flexion and Extension) - 2x15

Finger Extension - 2x30 seconds - Yellow Band

Jefferson Curls - 2x12 - 45 lbs.

Toe Raises - 2x30 seconds - 65 lbs.

*Since I've been doing more joint intensive training (tumbling) I looked into how to increase my recovery even more. An old tip I got from a friend was instead of doing cardio to do the warm-up on days I am not even training. He had good results in recovery as well as fat loss from that(I am not looking for fat-loss) so I decided to give it a go. I increased the numbers on all my kicks to make the heart rate go up a bit more.

Here is the article that a friend of mine got the idea from: http://www.trickstutorials.com/content/recovery - it's an article on recovering from tumbling/tricks but the tips work well for any type of training. (In case anyone is interested in checking it out). The website has a lot of good stuff on nutrition and training in general and I've always been a fan of the author's take on training.

Because I'll be starting swimming practice next week I decided to lower the volume on my prehab days to let the rotator cuff recover more, I am not sure if it's a good or bad idea but I'll see how it goes.

Soft-Tissue Work

Warm-Up

Iron Cross - 6x10

Front Lever - 3x2 Pulls - Half Lay

Side/Back Kicks - 3x12 Black band

*Did running tumbling two days ago and my shin splits and knees are now slightly achy. I think I've come up with a theory for my joint stress problems though. Since I took a 6 year break my tricks have remained at relatively the same level while my strength and weight have both increased. Since when you first start you don't pound your body with a ton of rebounding your joints get used to it over time and here I am stronger and heavier pounding on my none strengthened soft tissue. As a solution I decided to cut back on running tumbling and only do a little at a time and with moves I can easily control while focusing on other things like standing skills and practicing the harder moves on just the trampoline.

Alexx, what do you do for internal rotation, and why? Or do you mean anti-internal rotation?

RandomHavoc said:

Alexx, what do you do for internal rotation, and why? Or do you mean anti-internal rotation?

Laying down on a table on a table or bench with the shoulder abducted to 90 degrees and rotating the arm towards the back (basically the opposite of external rotations).

Why? The Subscapularis is an internal rotator, it also plays the important role of supporting and stabilizing the front of the shoulder. Unfortunately all too often the subscap becomes dormant due to too much prime mover internal rotation work (lats and pecs do all the work while the subscap does very little).

Another reason is that this is my prehab/recovery day and the point is to get as much blood pumped into as many shoulder joints as possible. With this exercises I am hitting most of the rotator cuff, the one exclusion is the supraspinatus but I've had amazing results with other techniques for it (amazing because it use to be an ongoing problem after I received a bunch of partial tears to it).

I am curious as to what you mean by anti-internal rotation? Wouldn't that just be external rotators work?

I guess my wording is not quite accurate. You know how when you have a lack of internal rotation, as you try to increase the range of motion, your shoulder wants to lift off the ground to permit the movement? The act of preventing the shoulder from lifting always made me think me limiting how much I can internally rotate, and thus I called it anti-internal rotation. But I don't think my terminology is correct. I just wanted to confirm whether you were doing what I was imagining.

RandomHavoc said:

I guess my wording is not quite accurate. You know how when you have a lack of internal rotation, as you try to increase the range of motion, your shoulder wants to lift off the ground to permit the movement? The act of preventing the shoulder from lifting always made me think me limiting how much I can internally rotate, and thus I called it anti-internal rotation. But I don't think my terminology is correct. I just wanted to confirm whether you were doing what I was imagining.

Ah ok. Yeah the exercise has the added benefit of that as well but my primary goal is subscap activation.

That's just keeping the scapula stable, which is really important. The last thing you want to do is train the scaps to go every which way under load lol!

slizzardman said:

That's just keeping the scapula stable, which is really important. The last thing you want to do is train the scaps to go every which way under load lol!

Yeah that one is really hard to retrain, I am speaking from personal experience.

Me too, what a pain. I'm finally starting to get the hang of using my lower traps and lats for stabilization on the right side instead of my upper traps firing and elevating the shoulder!

slizzardman said:

Me too, what a pain. I'm finally starting to get the hang of using my lower traps and lats for stabilization on the right side instead of my upper traps firing and elevating the shoulder!

For me it's a conscious thing, as soon as I forgot to think about activating lower and middle traps everything goes down the drain. And it seems like unless I tell my shoulder girdle otherwise the natural thing for my shoulders to do is always the wrong thing on most movements.

Wednesday

Soft-Tissue Work

Warm-up - Wrists are feeling better with no pain so I decided to add upper trap work back in my warm-up. I didn't want to push it so I just did 3 sets 15 second handstands instead of my handstand presses. As long as the wrists don't start hurting again I'll continue the handstand warm-up for the rest of the cycle.

Wide Arm handstand - 6x10 - This is becoming pretty easy.

OAC - 3x2

SLS - 3x8 - 50 lbs.

Today

Warm-up - Because of all the extra kicks I've doing my aerial had become quite a bit stronger. I can pull one of from standing but it's not consistent. I've now set my sights on learning the side somersault from beam (side somersault but it start with an aerial take off).

Internal Rotation - 2x30 seconds

External Rotations - 2x15 - Orange Band

Abducted External Rotations - 2x6 - 20 lbs* Did these sitting down instead of standing up and they were a bit harder.

Scapular Pushups - 2x15 - Black+Red band

Wrist Pushups (Flexion+Extension) - 2x15

Finger Extension - 2x30 - yellow band

Wrist Lever - 2x30 seconds

Jefferson Curl - 2x12 - 45 lbs.

Single Leg Toe Raises - 2x30 seconds - 65 lbs.

Warm-up

Iron Cross (Assisted) - 6x10*Wooho not sure what changed but my body finally figured out how to make the lats do the brunt of the work. My lats were super sore after this and I felt very little pressure on my anterior deltoids (before it was reversed). I believe that thinking about retracting the scapula like crazy made this possible but this is pure speculation.

Front Lever Pulls - 1x2 , 2x1*Normally my front lever work is barely effected after Iron Cross work but today was a struggle, might have to scale things back on the Front lever.

Single Leg Archer Hold - 3x30

Warm-up

Internal Rotation - 2x12 - Orange Band

External Rotations - 2x15 - Orange band

Abducted External rotations - 2x10 - 20 lbs.

Scap Pushups - 2x15 - Black+Red Band

Wrist Roller (Flexion and Extension) - 2x3 Trips - One set pronated, one supinated.

Single Leg Toe Raises - 2x30 - 65 lbs.

Adding a separate prehab day is one of the best things that I've done for my training. It increased my recovery, reduced injuries and my shoulder girdle physique has significantly improved. I haven't gained any significant amount of muscle mass (3-4 lbs. according to the scale) but the changes have been drastic enough that people notice. My back looks bigger and thicker (mainly because of the increased middle and lower trap size) and my shoulders look bigger and rounded (this is probably also due to the increased amount of anterior shoulder work that I've been doing as opposed to none earlier).

Warm-up

Wide Arm Handstand - 6x10 - Will try it on bars next time.

OAC - 3x2 - Assisted - getting very strong and easy I can't wait to increase the reps and see what I can pull off.

Side/Back Kicks - 3x12 - Black band

Warm-up

Internal Rotations - 2x12 - Orange band

External Rotations - 2x15 - Orange band

Abducted External Rotations - 2x10 - 20 lbs.

Scap Pushups - 2x20

Wrist Roller (Flexion and Extension) - 2x3 trips - One set supinated, one pronated.

Wrist Pushups - 2x15

Single Leg Toe raises - 2x30 seconds - 65 lbs.

Swim Practice* - First day and I learned two things. 1. I am not in as bad aerobic shape as I originally though, although this really only means that I can complete a sprinting workout without dying (still very out of breath though). 2. Most swimmers are huge :shock:, no joke 2 guys were the size of Slizz with much wider lats. Only one guy that competes fit what my idea of a swimmer was which is tall, thin with a little bit of muscle but mostly smooth.

After practice I felt a massive pump in my lats, upper back and shoulders (suddenly the reason for the guys being massive was making sense). The practice felt very good on my shoulders and I really think that it's going to help a lot with joint recover from ring training but only time will tell.

HAHAHA crazy!!!!

Hey I've been slacking on getting in touch, you want to work out this weekend?

slizzardman said:

HAHAHA crazy!!!!

Hey I've been slacking on getting in touch, you want to work out this weekend?

I am always up for that, how about Sunday?

Perfect!

AM

Swim*

PM

Soft-Tissue Work

Warm-Up

Iron Cross - 6x10 - Feet Supported

Front Lever Pulls - 3x4 - Tuck - Had to switch to these as anything else was just way too hard and wasn't happening after Iron Cross Work

SLS - X - Had a dive roll competition (height and distance) and my knees are just a bit achy, decided to skip these to not aggravate it further.

*Today was board and fins day (kicks basically), when I found this out I though hm this will be cake. About 10 minutes into it I was cursing the guy that invented fins, seriously my calves just kept cramping like crazy and are extremely sore now. Board wasn't much better as my quads and hamstring starting cramping next. Fun times Apparently the guy who I thought resembled a bodybuilder way more than a swimmer, competed in the Olympics twice.

Week 6

Warmup

Widearm Handstand - 6x10 - Bars

OAC - 3x2 Assisted

Single Leg Archer Holds - 3x30

Computer crashed and took me a while to get a new one hence the lack of updates. I finished my previous cycle and this is week one of a new one. I decided to try out something new for the next 6 weeks and give a shot to an old training idea from olympic weightlifting. The basic premise is to do one lift/movement per day and spread the movements out throughout the week. It worked for a whole bunch of olympic weightlifters in the 50's and 60's so why not here.

Monday

Warmup

Front Lever Pulls - 6x1-5

Tuesday

Warmup

Wide Arm Handstand - 6x10-30

Wednesday

Warm-up

Single Leg Deadlifts - 6x5-8

Tuesday

Prehab

Friday

Warm-up

OAC - 6x1-3

Saturday

Warm-up

Planche Leans - 6x10-30

Single Leg Vertical Jump - 6x3-5

Sunday

Prehab

Warm-Up - 1x12-15 - Wall Slides, Thoracic Extensions, Inlocate, Wall Squats, Side/Front/Back Kicks.

Prehab:

Internal Rotations - 2x15 - Orange Band

External Rotations - 2x30 seconds Red Band

Abducted External Rotations - 2x12 - 20 lbs.

Ys & Ts - 2x15 - 5 lbs.

Wrist Roller - 2x3 - 35 lbs.

Wrist Pushups - 2x8

Toe Hold - 2x30 - Black+Red

Calf Jumps - 2x30

Inversion - 2x12 - Black Band

Warm-up

Handstand - 1 min (Bars)

L-Sit - 1 min (Bars)

Front Lever Pulls - 1x1, 1x2, 4x3 - Full Lay - These have been really helping my front lever, a huge jump in the actual front lever hold.