Brent Getting His Yoke On

On Friday I drove out to Arlington and loaded the fuck up on calories. Only did couch stretch + table top stretch the night before, got lazy with upper body mob. But I made some ribs in the slow cooker (didn’t turn out that great, texture was excellent but didn’t really make a good sauce), had those with a sweet potato, then a four egg omelette with a tomato and four strips of bacon, then a 50g pro/50g waxy maize shake, then some fried chicken strips and fries and gravy (drive took 2.5hrs due to traffic, stopped to eat), so was pretty set as far as calories and carbs.

Benched 245lbs x 4, 3 paused, could have done better here, but in terms of overall progress this week I haven’t done terribly (PRed on 225lbs AMRAP on Tues and still had kind of a volume PR on this day).

Low-bar back squat 415lbs x 4, pressed 170lbs x 3, 160lbs x 3, 145lbs x 6. Front squat 315lbs for two triples.

Snatched up to 210lbs after this. <– this was pretty intuitive training, my training partner was deadlifting and I didn't want to be sitting around doing nothing so I figured I'd just do some snatches and see how I felt. Turns out I felt reasonably good despite the previous work I'd done.

Overall it wasn't a terrible training day, if I had gotten 5 @ 245lbs bench it would have been excellent.

Was going to dead on Saturday but woke up too late for the gym and had to get to work, so I trained today. Did a lot of mob between then and today, including double lacrosse ball to t-spine, lots of tack and stretch to the anterior deltoid, couch stretch + tabletop stretch, scap soft tissue work.

Power snatched 190lbs x 2, which was all right, then snatched 215lbs. Confidence is coming back, was having some trouble a while back due to the shoulder strain, internal rotation was lacking, was afraid to attempt heavier weights (without bumpers at least) because I didn't know if I'd be able to save/stand with them, but I feel pretty solid now.

Power clean + squat clean + jerk up to 250lbs. Fairly solid power clean here, should be good for 255lbs next week and I'd like to attempt 265lbs for a power clean pretty soon. Would be a good pull for me.

Halted deadlifts (+ completing after the halt), 395lbs x 5 double overhand hook grip for a grip PR and halted dead PR. Did a back off set at 365lbs x 5, felt all right here, but 395lbs x 5 was fucking hard at 5. Wasn't sure 5 would even go, but I broke it off the floor, ground it to the knees, held it for a short breath and finished. I fucking hate sucking at deadlift.

Something that I’ve mentioned before is the tabletop stretch (biasing external rotation + hip flexion) helped a fucking lot with my squatting and pulling. Early on I noticed that it felt like I was using more hamstring/hip musculature when I had first started doing that particular stretch, and tonight I noticed that by cueing “knees out,” “pushing through outsides of feet,” etc. that I could reinforce the use of that extra musculature even more.

I was alternating hitting close-grip bench and deadlifts tonight due to time, and I got in two sets at 205lbs for 7 and 5.

Finished up with rounded-back weighted back extensions, 90lbs for 20 reps, good pump here.

Had some good training this weekend, I need to get some upper back work and curls in and if I don't do those tonight I'll get them done tomorrow after work.
[spoiler effect=”simple” show=”A pretty fucking sweet dream I had.” hide=”That’s all I got. “]i was stuck in some kind of mall/plaza with a friend, and a predator was stalking us

everytime we'd come out of cover in the mall, he'd start shooting us with his shoulder cannon or give chase with his wrist blades, was pretty scary shit, so we had to hide in different stores and run from cover to cover and it was like this fucking predator was hot on our tails no matter what we did

there were other people in the mall, i can't explain why they weren't freaking the fuck out whenever the predator made an appearance

so anyways we manage to almost make it out of the mall/plaza and we come to this U junction at the exit that led to two different parking garages

there were these two cops on the left junction, so we were like "oh man this is our chance, we can use the cops as a distraction" so we break from cover, the predator opens fire, and the cops open fire on the predator, and in the ensuing chaos of the gun battle we peace the fuck out into the garage

HOWEVER for some reason we couldn't escape from the first garage, there weren't any cars??? or if there were cars they were locked and we didn't know how to hotwire a car anyway

so we end up having to get out of the first garage, and we come back to the U junction, and the two cops are lying out in the street fucking wasted, i was freaking out pretty bad in the dream, but we head into the second garage and it's pretty busy, lots of cars coming and going

for some reason we don't ask someone for a ride or hijack a car, we're still being stealthy for some reason, and we decide that our plan is to hop into the back of a car when it's leaving so the predator won't see us. i get into the trunk of a car and it drives out of the garage and we leave the mall, and i'm like, "fucking sweet, i'm gonna live"

but all of a sudden the car stops, i'm like "uhhh wtf" and then the trunk pops opeN AND THE FUCKING PREDATOR PULLS ME OUT BY MY THROAT AND STABS ME IN THE BELLY WITH HIS WRIST BLADES, THEN PULLS HIS FAST BACK AND SWINGS AT MY FACE TO DECAPITATE ME and that's when i wake up thrashing in bed screaming [/spoiler]