August 21st, Monday - Clean, press, push press - feels good

 21.08.2023

Nice day. Woke up early, worked, went back to sleep, woke up later feeling good, had a breakfast, now I've finished my first coffee and I have to admit it's a little too late. And I have OHPs and PPs today.

Today is Week 2, Session 1 altered (split between OHP and PP with little extra volume). 77,5% for 5 sets of 5. Same as last time, basically. So I think we'll be going for 93-98 in OHPs, and 110-118 in PPs. Reasonable? Maybe.

The story ended up being over 430 pages so far, and it's not even halfway there. But it's the mega raw text. Robot helped quantity-wise. Still struggling with imposter syndrome, thinking it's not me who's writing it. It's an important discussion that we'll ponder on. A metaphor, you could say - trees bred to be straight and thick, and then the woodmill makes proper planks from it, and the carpenter makes something specific from the planks. In that metaphor, I have to be the tree breeder and the carpenter, while the robot is the sawmill. Should make sense if you're familiar with how they work. It took me a long time to figure out they work very differently from how I imagined.

***

Second coffee. I'm feeling the, uh, grumpiness possibly coming. But it's much more mild than average, thankfully. I think I'm not even gonna try to end my workout before midnight, but hopefully it won't be far after midnight either.

Workout

Warmup - somewhat abridged, but still thorough and intensive; shoulder moves, front rack and overhead hold, even some front squat presses.

Clean and press

20

60 - 5 cleans, 5 presses - had to take off my long shorts as they were catching onto my knees

93 - 1 clean, 5 presses - nice, easy, well done high pull, decent stability

95.5 - 1 clean, 5 presses - nice, same

98 - 1 clean, 5 presses - nice, added some conviction to presses.

During cleans I was pulling so well my feet were leaving the ground. I think I've gotten a little better! Maybe yesterday's self-exproration helped a bit too. Maybe I'm imagining it, but I feel my legs better connected to my nervous system.

Push press - from the rack

60 - 2 sets of holds

60 for 5

80 for 5 - I think I discovered a more lax grip that helps me avoid elbow pain. I wonder if I'll be able to replicate it on the next set...

113 for 5 nice enough, a little awkward, but all was easy. That lax wide grip lead to a very slight rotation of the par in my hands, so it's more on my index finger. Permissible? I doubt that, but we shall see.

115,5 for 5 - good effort, every rep was pronounced and locked out, but on the fifth set I must have run out of creatine and had to go ahead and lock it out slowly. Well, I made sure to fix it well and hold it overhead. The grip was, indeed, a tiny bit lax again, with my palms rotated ever so slightly inward. And also I got a little neck spasm - I'm used to it on PPs.

118 for 5 - very nice, better than previous set, but once again I had to struggle and lock out the last rep. Curious.

Ended around 1:30 AM. But I had long breaks. I'd like to believe my CNS will stay in a good untangled shape.