the Rationale Curve, Arm Bars & DQ Slam

So there I was squatting.

That in itself is not unusual since I squat everyday.


But then a guy said to me, "this guy asked The Trainer why he was supposed to do this, and The Trainer said, 'that sounds like something James would say.'"

And yes, I would say that, so I decided the guy was probably okay.

And I think The Trainer's reply, apart from evading the question, was an implicit critique of me and what I do.  Now some people would agree with The Trainer.  They might well say that they work out for fun, and they don't need a reason to perform a certain movement or work out.

Fun is a great goal.

I'd suggest sex.

Hopefully it costs less than a gym membership, to the best of my memory it is fun, and I'd guess it is as effective as Zumba.

So maybe they're not actually training for fun.  Rather I'd suggest that they have no well defined goals, and they have limited time to train what with families, careers, and all.

I get it.

I do.

And this is precisely where you need a rationale for everything you do in the gym.  You have limited units of training time, and using them efficiently should be prioritized.

Actually I am the one who while insisting on a rationale for everything doesn't always need one.  I put in enough hours a day, for enough weeks, filling enough months to be divisible by 12 thereby yielding years, that I can afford some degree of inefficiency.

Look, my rationale for squatting everyday is basically that my arms don't work right now.  I get to retain most of my strength, increase my mobility, have energy left over to do more intense conditioning and still do BJJ.

Now let's suppose that my rationale is faulty or worse yet I don't have one.  In that case, because of my experience and training time available, I'd get to retain most of my strength, increase my mobility, have energy left over to do more intense conditioning and still do BJJ.

Someone training two or three times a week would be fucked without a sound rationale for using those hours.

Okay, maybe that's fun.




I'll be uploading video from the Colorado Super Cup as I have time available.  I'm back to training again despite no arms, and I hope to compete again in May.

Ashley's Second of Three Arm Bars

Michael J Machine Gun wins by DQ after a Slam

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.