12/17/2018 Monday

8:50 – Squats x 90; Medium wide stance, (shoulder width); good form, slow and steady; parallel or slightly beyond; not failure, but got really difficult; Breathing too heavy, it’s too hot in here, I feel a little pass out-ish, not hydrated enough; planned to do 50

10:25 – BCAAs

10:35 – Handstand Pushups x 5; total failure on last rep, didn’t make it 100% to the top; hands were shoulder width, I was about 0 inches from the wall I’d guess.

30 second Rest

– Wall Handstand x 20 seconds; very intense, had to stop, blood rushing to head, arms shaking; don’t know if I could have made it to 30 seconds;

I wonder if I was too far from the wall, and that made it easier? I was more angled than straight up and down. I did the handstands in the stairwell, and walking down two floors my legs were a bit shaky from this morning’s squats. Bravo me!

11:20 – Iso-Side Delt Raises x 30 seconds; pressing against arms of chair; pushed hard;

11:40 – Lunch – homemade turkey soup with stock and meat from thanksgiving. This is significant because the turkey was a Mary’s pastured turkey.

12/18/2018 Tuesday

I am Fit after Fifty

My upper chest/front delts are really tight from that handstand work yesterday. I slept like a rock last night for 9 hours solid. Didn’t wake up until 6:30 AM. I just did a set of 10 pushups, just to see, and they were pretty tough. I’m not sure what my plan of attack will be. Should I attempt the pushup app, should a maybe stick with updog pushups? I think I’ll try the updog and see if that warms me up enough.

8:38 – BCAAs; a coworker noticed me taking the BCAAs, that was kind of motivating. Now I feel like I need to do something to be legit taking them. I am not a poser.

8:41 – Updog Pushups x 25; had to stop because I heard boss lady get here early! They felt pretty good though, once I got limbered up. I did them fairly slow, focusing more on the stretch than the contraction. Also visualized pushing the floor away from me rather than pushing myself off the floor.

9:20 – Pushups 1×40, 1×25; did these in the stairwell for privacy, set 1 was almost failure, I had to stop because I lost my concentration and almost fell over. Took a 1 minute rest between sets and walked up the stairs 2 stories then back down. 2nd set was total and absolute failure. I barely got rep #25 out, I was stuck at the bottom, just kept pushing, go part way up, then a little more, and then with a roar hit the top of the rep. I had to get on my knees immediately or fall flat on my face. Literally.

I was almost at failure at the bottom of every rep after #21. This is probably the deepest I’ve dug this year, maybe ever while at cubicle prison. I walked back up the two stories to my floor, and at the very top step I had to sit down because I felt like I was going to black out. It took me a couple of minutes to get back to my feet. Back at my desk I checked my heart rate and it was about 165 bpm. I’m sure I wasn’t properly hydrated for that level of intensity. I wasn’t planning to push that hard.

9:30 – More BCAAs and agua.

10:30 – Neck Mobility Drills; Shoulder Mobility Drills;

11:55 – Pushups x 60; medium hands and elbows; total failure again; there is no way I could do these at my desk, I am breathing and grunting and pushing like I would in the gym. I don’t care if someone hears me in the stairwell. I can’t believe I got to 60, at 30 I was telling myself just make it to 50, at 50 I was like “just 1 more, shoot for 55”, at 55 I just went for the impossible, push until I break. It took 4 minutes to walk downs the stairs, grind out the pushups, and walk back up. This time after doing the pushups I tried to catch my breath a little before climbing the stairs.

I can’t believe how deep I have been able to dig today, I mean really pushing past my limits. Work is just sucking the last two days too. I am supposed to leave today and not come back until the January 2nd , and the warden just keeps finding all this tedious bullshit to do to keep interrupting my deadline driven work. She’s just looking for things to stress about instead of coasting into the break we all so desperately need.

12:13 – Updog Tricep Extensions x 25; elbows close to body; failure on these too! I am crushing it today!

6 mi break

– Seated Tricep Dips x 25; Full ROM, feet elevated on mini-fridge, very near failure, I could count it as a fail, but I think I lost my focus and just crashed down but could have gotten 1 or maybe 2 more;

Lunch! – Homemade Turkey Soup, Organifi,

2:45 – Single Leg Standing Calf Raise 1x 30, 1 x 20; basically super-set them, moved from one leg to other and back nonstop. Reached failure on each set, had to pause near the end a couple of time on the left leg to finish the set.

I think this is how I am going to approach calf training: pick a total number of reps I want to hit, and just start grinding toward them until I hit it no matter how many sets it takes. I think I’ll do this every day too. I seem to remember back in the day reading that calf muscles recover very quickly. I’m also going to focus less on my outer calf, not try to be so balanced. The bulk of the muscle is toward the inner leg, so if I want my kids to stop telling me I have starving prisoner legs, I need to focus on the bulky part of the muscle. This means at the top of my movement picture a ballerina going up onto her big toe.

I’m sending this one off on a Tuesday because I am leaving today and not coming back to the prison until the new year. I’m going to be focused on some important things over my release, so I may not be too diligent with my updates.

Have a Great Day!

Lubimûr