December 24th - some Clean, OHP, barbell Squat, morning workout

 24.12.2025

Western Christmas Eve. Glory to our Lord! Please keep praying for me - and I am praying for you.

Alright, what is it... I woke up yesterday, didn't manage to sleep as long as I wished to so the "sleeping schedule reset" is happening a little differently. Now it's 7 AM and I'm in the middle of the workout - a rare morning workout! BUT not as rare as daytime workout, mind you.

I had one last batch of coffee, 36/432, I think there's about 10-20 grams left. Then I had a lot of instant coffee. Read a little. Bought "Wise Blood" by Flannery O'Connor, giving it a test. A weird book! Hard to read, I got so used to Mark Twain and Mario Puzo - they lay it out more or less evenly. In the 19th century the semicolon was used much more often. I'm remembering the book.

Workout

Warmup - long

High pull / Clean / Press

20

53 - 5/5/5

73 - 5/5/5

93 - 5/5/5 - feels nice! I took a small break after high pulls. The press was wonky but easy.

Overhead press - from the rack

103 for 5 nice

108 for 5 a little cheesy

108 for 5 less cheesy but pretty ugly. Clothing a little too tight. Not doing the "full vertical" lockout, not managing to control my breath very well. But I'll try now. The plan was 4 sets of 5; I settled on it being 4 sets including the "last warmup set" (103). These first sets I've done really, really quickly, short breaks - might be a mistake.

108 for 3 and a half - tweaked my breathing, ended up with better looking reps; strained my elbows and back a little cause I wobbled back on the third rep. It felt very good, so I thought I could do more, but the strain was a little high. I have my elbows completely parallel on the sticking point - I think I will narrow my grip. Tricep is supposed to be way stronger now. Just take a good enough amount of time.

108 for 4 and an attempt - wore a belt this time, very slightly narrower grip. I think my old grip isn't actually that narrow. But here's what I'm seeing today - these failures aren't about arms and shoulders, but the whole body. I'm struggling too much to stay standing! An important realization, if I dare say. I felt it, the need to stand, to keep by body rigid cause I'm pressing against it as hard as I am pressing the bar!

Squat

108 for 10 - crocs, 5 kg plates under heels, looking to the left a little

And yeah, I'm wearing crocs all day today, that might be a part of it. And I am testing another undershirt, possibly a little too tight but - a great finding - I am not cold and wet from my sweat now; it is cold, colder even than naked if you wear this synthetic layer but I do believe it helps evaporate sweat super fast.

So, I really need to work on my torso, on my overall forward-leaning stability - as well as laying-back, too. Arms, the rack - that matters as well.

I wanna dedicate a microcycle of OHP - and PP, hopefully - to using weights strictly below 100 kgs and focusing on the rightest technique I can feel - which'd be the most powerful technique, see, perfectly against the gravity, no seeping power in the wrong angles. And weights below 100 can be substantial too, you know.

***

Checklist to focus on next time I do OHP:

1) Loose clothing

2) Wool belt

3) Weightlifting belt

4) Weightlifting shoes, perfectly loose as well

5) Different socks

6) Narrow grip

7) Do not strain your joints on cleans - let's settle I'll go up to 80 but do a good enough volume

8) Take breaks, must take longer breaks

9) More recovery - cause I benched yesterday. This time, ideally, I'll do bench after DL and I'll keep it easy. Heck, I might try to bench, do my sets of 10 - possibly 110-120 kgs - right after DL. I'll be doing sixes in the DL, and that'll be Friday. I think I'll go for a medium-heavy pyramid.

***

108 for 10 - enjoyed it, no pain, wide grip, also partial range - not full lockout (squat)

108 for 10 - so glad I can do barbell squat without pain now 😀 And I can stand on my tip-toe, although it still hurts.

You know, interesting fact - I used to side with the Institute in Fallout 4. It made all the sense to me, back then! A very Barnard Shaw approach, I guess, heh. Now I'm different. I actually don't care about it! But I'll probably just end up keeping the status quo for a long time in my current playthrough.

I didn't mention it, but I think it's been almost a week now that I'm sort of playing FO4 again. Doesn't feel overplayed anymore! Fiddling with mods, they annoy me cause of how broken they are and the current game version is broken too and the potential this game has is so unrealized. If modern day developers had the optimizing capabilities of the developers of the old they'd be able to create something insanely great, unbelievable scale and scope and *meaningful, interactive* level of detail. Unreal engine? I hate it. I hate it, I hate the games that use it and I hate the way it looks. Agh, let's not allow too much hate. They'll call it white separatism, me not wanting to play unreal engine games, cause I'm white and I'm separating myself from something ugly and mainstream! Smh my head.

***

Neck extensions

1 set of 30 - no weight

2 sets of around 15 reps with a 16 kg kettlebell in a harness, leaning against the wall - that provides a good degree of stability, you can lift with your upper back, neck mostly fixed so it doesn't curl that much. Fully curling your neck is very nice, but not wholly natural in regards to how you normally use it. Your "upper neck" is very strong, you know, cause of how you're staring at things, like your monitor for example, heh.

In FO4 - and I'm playing Survival again - I managed to do the Corvega quest; clearing the outside only took a couple attempts but inside took over 10. A bunch of running around. Now I'm doing the Oberland Station quest in Boston and took me, like, way too many attempts to progress there, I kept dying and respawning at that irradiated junkyard by Corvega and right now I finally made it to Diamond City and there was only one gunfight. I'm playing with a bunch of weapon mods cause I'm tired of silly vanilla guns, although I gotta admit there's something charming in their style, in the overall blocky cartoonishness and unrealistic design choices. There's something so weird and rare and as much as they're all pieces of art that the game is I like to have real guns represented in the game. Don't have Sim Settlements 2 installed, that one mod is such a great chore, although well made and I like the overall "cohesiveness" if you will but if I'll end up playing it I'd rather play it in a 'cheat mode' with everything unlocked cause there's a really excessive amount of meaningless chores and timewasting, it's a trend. I think he probably tried to replicate Sim City building-unlocking progression but went overboard with it. I remember being excited about part III back in 2023 when I last played it... I think I mostly played in 2022. 2023 was such a wack year for me, until a certain point (and then it became the worst after another certain point lol!) There were good things, of course. And when you're down in the mud the only way is up, heh.

RPotD - Filet de séparation - the thingy you can use in the book instead of a triple asterisk, that's what I likely reckon it is