Fourth OLAP & Accusatory Bands

Yesterday, Tuesday, was light squat day.  I got started at 6:40 am and did:

5 x 45 (high)
5 x 45
5 x 135
8 x 170
6 x 210
6 x 250
5 x 265
5 x 285
5 x 285

I decided to again follow my own rule of squatting the bar x 5 until I can get five good reps, and it took two tries.  I did all the squats in Chucks.  Lately I've used O-lifting shoes for squatting, and I wanted to feel the Converse again on a light day.  I'm not sure what I'll use at the meet.  While I like the lifting shoes, I feel they force a wider stance to recruit the hamstrings.  In the Chucks I had no problem feeling everything engage like I want; the problem is that today I still feel the hamstring insertion in a painful way.

I finished about 7:15, and in some sense I should have done metabolic conditioning afterwards, but I knew it was a day to exert the minimal effort and go home since I was feeling neither good nor energetic.   What I like about my event based training is that I always know what my competition goals are.  Essentially I'm trying to PR both the squat and the deadlift in May while holding the bench as close to my former maximum as possible.  I could tell that doing conditioning was going to fry me, and it's not what's driving my desired adaptation, so I had no qualms about calling it a day.


Late this afternoon I was at the gym alone, and as I came out of the rest room I saw this:

To a powerlifter, a cage with bands is a beautiful thing, erglike in fact to me, and on seeing the blue band I thought I really should do some heavy reverse banded squats on heavy day.

But I kept looking and I saw the red band and the purple band.

And the red band spoke.

"Aren't you supposed to be doing banded pull aparts?"

And the purple band spoke.

"Aren't you supposed to be working the rotator cuff?"

And I knew they spoke truly.  So I did minimal rehab work; half a pie is better than none.  I've had no dietary sins for five days now.


I left work early today for a long lunch so that I could train jiu-jitsu at Dark Horse BJJ.  It was cold when I left work, but after training and some very light rolling I had to drive back to work with the windows down.  I remember some winter days driving back from Easton BJJ Boulder with the windows down and snow on the ground, and that's only one simple thing I've dearly missed about Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Look for my new BJJ blog coming soon.