January 2nd and 3rd - Thinking, OHP and front rack work

02.02.2026

 https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxb4HTmgE9l7yRqQ52lT1X0vBb8RqypESr?si=2YyxBghsLmgeCOTZ

Clip from a video I'm watching - food for thought! Supports some of my ideas about how my lifting changed. I was somewhat better suited for strongman back then, before 2015 cause I was doing a lot of high end partials. Now I'm more like an old school powerlifter and I'm good when my muscle is stretched, but I haven't improved my partial lifts too much.

Just think of what would happen if I took my current "flexible" strength and somehow combined it with better top end strength. I'm very curious! And I will work on that too. And on my front rack, pretty obsessed with it rn. Bench will get better too though, even though it's a little counter productive to it (front rack work) - I think I should be able to do a nice and powerful 180 for a single soon.

Anothing thing that keeps bothering my - my right hamstring. It's been perpetually stretched since 2016, so my right leg flexes really poorly. It's strong in a straigh position though lol. But I need to fix my right hamstring. It's just a little too stretched and it looks weird too. For ten years now. In 2020 - and you can read it here - I focused on it, on my leg curs very much, when I was going crazy CHANGING things. Oh, the blessed Summer 2020! If only I hadn't tore my finger then it would have been just the perfect season 😁 (the correct form is "hadn't torn" but somehow I just feel like 'hadn't tore' sounds better in terms of balancing sounds, amount of consonants with one another, just a little peculiar phonetic digress)

Watching this video I linker above I'm thinking I could do more stuff for my upper body, more hypertrophy stuff. Just a little more. I do a lot already, but I'm not keeping myself very "adept", very mobile. That's slightly different than hypertrophy. Hmm.

Obsessed, in a good way again. Wearing my old crocs - the ones with thinned out soles. I think it should help my calf heal. Ankle too. It hurts, it's stiff, it doesn't heal well. I stand around a lot though. It's no longer swelling up too much. Left calf just looks way bigger now. But you gotta remember it's been doing more work lol.

My right tiptoe is better, The strange tightness pain is almost gone. It used to feel like I was trying to stand on my ligaments. Well, I still can feel it if depending on how I stand on it lol.

I keep reminding myself that it can be a good thing because my right side was dominant for the longest time and maybe that can help me even myself out a little better. Just a bit of coping! Keep in mind, this is all positive stuff, I'm not complaining, I'm getting better, step by step.

03.01.2025

Alright, it's technically the 4th. Just after midnight. That happens. I reverted to daytime living and back again thanks to that deadlift night. Not a big deal!

So, I'm trying to write. I really enjoyed some of the reading I've done today. Just reading Huckleberry Finn and I feel like I enjoy it a lot. Slept and ate well. Although I've been having pretty terrible blood cutoffs in my sleep whenever I tried to sleep on one side. Not a big deal.

So, I had two conventional coffees, and now I'm having one cup of instant. And I wanna start writing. Thinking, thinking.

Workout

Putting on clothes puts me in the right mood

Front rack hold

17 kg ez bar - 2 sets for a few seconds; then - downstairs

50 and 100

120 - a couple sets, it's pretty easy, just the fingertip grip, elbows up, rotators stretched, serratus engaged

150 - a couple sets, cause 120 was easy

170 - at least four sets, possibly five - just a liftoff, sometimes with wraps; I managed a couple lifts with a very wide grip but full fingers!

As in not on my fingertips like you do in front squat but full grip, as if ready to jerk - that's what weightlifters need to switch between after their clean, usually

100 - a few more sets, I think I done two or three; basically, I took wide full grip and tried to narrow it; ALSO I stretched my right lat - peculiarly, right one is tighter after all, despite all the crazy stretching I've been doing recently. It must be DL that's re-tightening it, ot the way I sleep lol.

100 - three more sets; I made sure to squeeze the bar better and that helped eliminate the tearing sensation at the base of my forearm. Figures!

Overhead press

50 for 8 - nice, kind of a wacky feeling

70 for 5 - that same feeling in ROTATORS

70 for 1 - that feeling was too much

80 for 5 - better, a conventional OHP with rotators flexed and elbows slightly up, just minimal movement, nice springy feeling

Also I gotta admit some of the numbers today might be minorly inaccurate, I think I'm mixing stuff up. Nothing major though.

80 for 3 sets of 5 - nice

Push press - singles

80 - 90 - 100

110 - 2 sets

Feels good! I have a nice solid front rack, and even though my push isn't super explosive and fast - on account of all the stretching before I reckon - it's pretty good and decently fast, feels very easy too!

Squat

50 for 1, then 2

50 for 10 - a real nice, real slow set, just taking time to feel my musces at the top as well as at the bottom, giving myself an opportinity to breathe and not just brace, keeping tight at the bottom without going insane, naturally developing a good grip on the bar; it was max grip width, high bar squat.

That's about it. I'm thinking about doing Squats tomorrow (i.e. today), even though I got DL on Monday. I just, you see, the thing is that I didn't have any coffee yesterday and today coffee felt barely did anything anyway. Coffee can be pretty unpredictable, you know. I've been pretty exhausted.

Playing FO4 felt like a chore yesterday, but I got into it and today I feel pretty excited. Also I wrote about a page of ch18. Developing some solid ideas! I just know what I'll write now, there's plenty of good stuff.

I almost added "writing" tag. I have a lot of places where it'd make sense. Yeah, writing is one of those topics that should have a tag but they don't. I have "Marco" tag but it's not used for anything. That's the name of the book. Michigander Marco. That's the current idea. And it's the only thing I've been writing. I like being vague though. I have "psychology" tag for a bunch of things. A map of my mind, mindset, emotions, habits. "Philosophy" is also really broad - but I only prefer to use it when I talk about sublime things.

All right, I think I'll start tagging the posts with "Marco". Or maybe I'll change it and go back in time and make it "Writing". Cause it's one of the things I do now. Mentioning progress and such. There's very little being mentioned. I have some rather unused tags. That's one of those rather unimportant things. "Physical culture" is also a broad tag - for example, any kind of technique talk is tagged with it. Anything about theory of lifting and such. So, today's definitely getting tagged, heh.

A little later

Neck extension in harness, a couple double folded light rubbers, sitting down - 3 sets of 50

Thumb pin squeezes, lighter variations - 3 sets