So...I do one set of five at 125#. And then the next time I go back to 3x5 at 125#?



Nope! My mom thinks it's funny, so she used to sing it sometimes when I was growing up. Thanks for all the encouragement!



September 18, 2009:
Sleep: ~6-7 hours. Rest day.

I was thinking: I've been working on getting this pullup for a long time now. I've seen progress, but I'd **REALLY** like to be able to do a dead-hang pullup by the end of the year (maybe even sooner) and I think it's doable. But something in my training has to change to make it happen faster, b/c I'm not progressing very fast right now. Since I'm home a lot now and I have my pullup bar handy, I'm going to start doing GTG - a jumping pullup followed by a slow negative each time I walk past it - and we'll see how that works. Started today...despite the fact that it was otherwise a rest day.

I also have a rest week coming up the last week of September, after which I think it'll be time to reevaluate my training schedule. It'd probably be a good idea to put more of a pulling strength component in there somewhere...but then again, I was considering beginning a SS cycle (provided I still have access to a gym)...so I guess I have a lot of decisions coming up!



September 19, 2009:
Sleep: 8.5 hours. GTG, 1 jumping pullup + neg.

Gym (at 10:30 PM...):

• Warmup: Some kipping attempts, and some more jumping pullups (got a little step, maybe 4" tall).
• Alternating push/pull: 3x5 incline pushups, hands on my step, interspersed with 3x5 K2Es, the second set of which was done with overhand grip rather than hammer grip. Those are still a bit shy of my elbows, but they're getting better.
• Squats:
  1x5, 45#
  1x5, 85#
  3x5, 120# Really long rest periods today, close to 5 minutes each (rather than my normal 2.5ish minutes). Felt good. As always, I could stand to go deeper on the heavier reps.
• Felt antsy and not ready to go home yet, so I worked on handstands for a bit by the rockclimbing wall, even though this was totally the wrong time for skill work in this particular training session. On the bright side, handstands are feeling pretty good. They're fairly stable, although I still generally tap the wall with a heel when I first go up into each one.
• Cooldown: 10-15 minutes of stretching, evaluating the state of my hip that was injured. This is feeling better. I think I may be able to resume my progression towards getting the splits, as long as I go slowly and am very careful not to aggravate things. I'm still not sure exactly what I injured in there, but it hasn't been hurting as much or as often lately. I was icing every day for a while, and that (and time) seems to have helped.

Oh dear...lotta procrastination going on. So, here's the scoop: I know I should be having a rest week right about now. I also know that around day 4 or 5 of a rest week I habitually get antsy, then tend to enter into a pretty crappy mood that sticks around until I do something active again. I do not feel like dealing with this AND joblessness simultaneously right now, so I'm trying something different. Rather than taking one full week of rest, I'm taking two long breaks, with a small interval of activity in the middle, hopefully placed so that I get the maximum rest benefit with minimal ill effects...It's an experiment. We'll see how it works.


September 20-23, 2009:
Rest days. Little bit of pilates activity on the 23rd, but not enough to take it from a rest day to a work day. I'm thinking about continuing this class for a couple of reasons, the primary of which is that it seems to be helping my hip injury. I noticed last time that my hip moved a lot better for a day or two after this, and I was able to duplicate those results this week. This could be a good rehab activity; it's not very taxing, but it forces me to move and stretch the damaged area in several different planes of motion w/o aggravating it or causing further damage. I think that at this point there's very little left of the original injury, and this is going to be a matter of strengthening and stretching until I'm back to normal again (or as close as possible). Yoga might be good here too.


September 24, 2009:
Work day. GTG (1 jumping pullup + 1 slow negative each time I walked past my pullup bar).

Gym:

• A few more of the GTG pullup + neg combo? I think? Can't find my paper log...
• Near-maximum effort (using the less-helpful gravitron):
  
  • 1 pullup, 60# assist (so I'm pulling ~80-85# of my weight - this felt good, but it was HARD)
  • 1 dip, 60# assist
  • 1 pullup, 60# assist
  • 1 dip, 60# assist
  • 1 pullup, 60# assist - FAIL
  • 1 dip, 60# assist
  • 1 pullup, 70# assist (pulling ~70-75#)
  • 1 dip, 70# assist
• Deadlifts:
  1x5, 45#
  1x5, 85#
  3x5, 125# Form issues fixed; I think I figured out what the problem was, and it resolved itself.

September 25, 2009:
Rest day.


September 26, 2009:
Jam downtown for the One Giant Leap Campaign!

• Climbups and wallruns on and off all day. Worked on fluidity using a wall around shoulder height. Popping off the wall with my foot is getting a lot more consistent than it used to be. Worked really hard on trying to get up a wall that's about a foot and a half taller than me. I can nearly always grab onto the top of the wall and pull myself up so that my head and shoulders are above the wall and my feet are braced against the wall beneath me. By the end of the day I was also generally able to move from this position by letting go (with one hand at a time) and grabbing the far side of the wall so that I could pull myself up another few inches. The tricky part is what comes next. I should, in theory, be able to hold myself there long enough to swing a leg up and lever myself on top of the wall (it isn't pretty, but it works), but I kept losing it somehow before I got to that point. I think it's just a matter of practice; my arms started getting pretty scraped up by the concrete after a while, but I kept going until I broke skin.
• Handstands, also off and on. Found a nice spot (fairly free of the vinca vines that covered most of the ground there) next to the wall and practiced kicking up with my back to the wall. I still generally tap the wall with a heel, but I think the tap is starting to become less necessary as time goes on. Case in point: on at least one handstand I got my feet up in the air and balanced w/o touching anything. I then got confused, wobbled, and proceeded to leave the balanced position so that I could tap the wall!
• A few other little things, but nothing particularly noteworthy. Couple cat leaps. A little balancing. Several attempts at a turn vault (needs work and courage).

Hip felt a little inflamed after all those wallruns, but not too bad; need to ice.

October 1, 2009:
Rest day.



October 2, 2009:
Gym day...

• Warmup: Some dips and pullups on a super-easy setting (~100-110# assist).
• Max effort (less-helpful gravitron); 5 attempts (minus failure).
  
  • 1 pullup, 60# assist
  • 1 dip, 60# assist
  • 1 pullup, 60# assist
  • 1 dip, 60# assist
  • 1 pullup, 60# assist
  • 1 dip, 60# assist
  • 1 pullup, 60# assist - FAIL
  • 1 dip, 60# assist - FAIL
  • 1 pullup, 70# assist
  • 1 dip, 70# assist
  • 1 pullup, 70# assist
  • 1 dip, 70# assist
  Try for 50# assist next week.
• Squats:
  1x5, 45#
  1x5, 85#
  3x5, 125# First set was good: went all the way down, and nearly stalled a couple times at the bottom, but managed to come out of it. Second and third sets weren't as great, but they were passable.

October 3, 2009:
Sleep: <6 hours, + 2 hour nap.

Naperjam: Cool and rainy.

• Worked on a wallrun/climbup in a parking garage. There was a concrete wall a bit higher than my head, surmounted by a metal railing. This was going pretty well - I'd even managed to pull myself up to sit on top of the wall - when a lady pulled her car in underneath me. Had to do a bizarre underbar to get out w/o landing on the car.
• Cat balance and walking balance on some very wet, very shaky round rails.
• Precisions: 4-5 feet. There are some lovely benches that I didn't know about behind a strip mall! Need to remember to absorb the landing better (bend my knees farther) so I don't overbalance.
• Climbing on random junk: pillars; a dead tree stump that's taller than me; a wall...
• Wallruns/climbups near a school. Wall was...not sure how high. Too high for me to touch the top, even if I jumped. Maybe 4ish feet above my head? My goal was just to touch the top of the wall and hang on. Didn't accomplish it (yet), but I got a lot closer! When I started I was only able to hit the wall about a foot below the top; when I finished I was about 3 inches away. Good suggestions I got today: start farther away so that I can get more momentum running up; keep my body close to the wall; hit high enough on the wall; and make sure my knee bends when my foot hits the wall so that it can propel me better.

October 6, 2009:
Sleep: 8 hours. Orchestra rehearsal for 2.5 hours.

My diet has been pretty sketchy this week...about half as much protein as I need, and waaayyy too many carbs. Ugh. Also, I think I must've messed up when I was lifting yesterday; the wrong muscles are sore (lower back, rather than legs/glutes). It doesn't hurt a lot, but it's a cue I need to pay attention to next time I head into the gym.

Heh. At least it lets us know what we need to fix!

October 7, 2009:
Sleep: 6.5 hours. Started to do GTG, but volume was very low.

Morning: Pilates...think I may have been a bit too enthusiastic today; my right hip (the one this is supposed to be helping!) was letting me know that it didn't want to be doing some of that stuff. My muscles in general still seemed to be a bit tired all day today, so fatigue may have been a contributing factor.

Went for a walk outside with a friend. The weather is getting cooler, so I wanted to enjoy the semi-pretty day.


Evening: Went to the new gymnastics gym again.

• Some jumping pullup work and kipping fails.
• Kong work. Someone pointed out to me that making a big circle with both your arms right before diving into the kong can help keep your body centered throughout the vault. I tried this, and it DOES keep me from tipping to one side/posting with one arm when I go over the block. I lose a lot of power, though (probably due to the fact that it's still not a familiar movement, and too much of my mind is still on that rather than on an effective takeoff), so I end up coming out of the vault awkwardly or sitting down on top of the block. Gonna keep working on this.
• Handstands, back to the wall. I was doing these near a wedge that was propped up against the wall, so the base was closer to me than the top part. Learned that this means I need to place my hands closer to the wall than when I'm just using a vertical surface to spot me - my feet have to travel farther to tap the wall with the wedge, so it's a lot harder to return to equilibrium after a tap.
• Mixed pullup work. Sat flat on the floor with my legs extended straight out in front of me, reached up to grab a bar directly overhead, and did pullups that way (overhand, underhand) with my feet (using both heels, one heel with crossed ankles, one heel with my other ankle resting above that knee) assisting. Repeated the same ideas, but parallel to the bar, using mixed grip (left hand in front, right hand in front).

October 13, 2009:
Sleep: ~8 hours.

• Warmup: Couple random assisted pullups.
• Paired stuff: 3x3 pullups (80# assist), alternating with 3x3 dips (same). These were pretty good, except for the last rep of the last set of pullups; I didn't get *all* the way to the top on that one, so I'm not sure it counts.
• Squats:
  1x5, 45#
  1x5, 85#
  3x5, 130#

Orchestra rehearsal in the evening, 2.5 hours. I managed to beat up my hands this weekend (cut on my right index finger on a stuck lock [right next to where I hold my bow] and shut my left middle finger in a door, then smashed it with a weight at the gym in exactly the same spot [so I'm holding the string down with a bruise when I do double-stops]), so that was pretty interesting. Hopefully things are in better working order in time for my concert on Sunday!

Thanks! I heard that ages ago, and never forgot it.

And...I guess double stops on the cello are tricky, but violin strings honestly look more painful to me! They're so thin I always feel like they're going to slice my finger open if I slide down a string! I guess it's just what you're used to.


October 14, 2009:
Sleep: ~6 hours. Got phone calls about interviews today! At three different places! Suuuupeeeeer excited!!

Morning: Pilates class. Our regular instructor was gone and the one who was there had a slightly different style, so I ended up putting pressure on my hip at some fairly odd angles. It's aching a bit now. We did do some interesting balance work, though!

Evening: Open gym.

• Handstands: Got into one of my stubborn modes again and kept working on this past the point where I should've stopped. I'm beginning to get some holds that feel decently long when I do this near the wall (although the longest ones are still probably only a few seconds). Elbows started aching a bit so I did some random pullup work, and that fixed the problem.
• Precisions: Balance beam to balance beam, floor level, approximately 4-5 feet apart. Didn't realize until *after* landing on one of these and nearly tipping it over that they weren't attached to the floor. Made progress, but I'm still far from sticking every one of these.
• Vaults: Mostly kong work. I actually got one! One! My heels clipped the block, but I made it over, stayed centered, kept both my hands down, and landed on my feet on the other side. WIN!! Now I just need to replicate it. Wasn't able to tonight, but it helps to know that I'm capable of it (well, I knew before theoretically, but it's still nice to have proof). A few other random vaults were mixed in, but I didn't focus much on them.