Spytech’s Intense Workout Log

And that’s that. The last swing workout of the ‘prepratory phase’ of this 12 week program is done. I was supposed to sets of 50 again like Tuesday, but I felt like doing a ‘little extra’ since this was this phase’s last swing workout. Sets of 60 sounded like a good plan. After finishing my 4th set of 60 I took 20s of extra rest with the plan of going all-out the last couple minutes or so until the timer expired. That last set of 100 reps just about reached complete failure. I really don’t think I could have done another 10 reps if I had the time. With the last monster set, and the increased sets of 60, I hit 340 reps.  Again, it did not take that long to recover. I had a pretty sweet lower back pump going, but that went away after 15 minutes.

Next week is the start of the 8 week RKC Rite of Passage routine (I didn’t name it) which consists of clean and press ladders 3x/week, followed by snatches (once/week) and swings (the other two days). The first workout uses light snatches, the second ‘medium day’ workout uses uses moderate intensity swings, and the third ‘heavy day’ workout uses high intensity ‘max effort’ swings. The ‘catch’ with the swing and snatch segments is that you do them for a duration dictated by a dice roll. If I roll a 6 on the first workout of the week that means I do snatches for sets of 20 with 1 min rest for 6 minutes. If I roll a 12 on heavy day then I go to failure. Enter the Kettlebell basically dictates that if you roll anything over a 5 on heavy days just cap it at 5, since you won’t get that far anyways! Either way, the moderate and heavy days are pretty brutal, as moderate days typically only use 10-20s rest periods, and heavy days use 5-10s rest periods. Medium days use a heavier bell for slower reps, where as heavy days use a LIGHTER bell for faster (and more) reps. Kind of counterintuitive. Clean and Press ladders start at 3×3 (3 rungs x 3 repeats), and progress to 5×5’s at the end. This should be challenging!

Warmups - 8 minutes:
Wall Squats x40
Halos with 53lb bell x20
Pumps x40

Workout - 12 minutes continuous - 53lb bell used - 340 total reps:
One-arm swings x60
1 minute active rest
One-arm swings x60
1 minute active rest
One-arm swings x60
1 minute active rest
One-arm swings x60
80 second active rest
One-arm swings x50
Double-arm swings x50
Cooldown

Duration: 20 minutes

Dead in the gym today, but it was an oven. The Y has a tough time regulating the temps when the seasons change and it starts to get Fall’ish. There was a guy in the weight room doing some funky, I don’t know what you’d really call them, movements where he would hold a pair of dumbbells and then round his back completely, look down at the floor, and bend over and stand back up again super fast, while keeping his back rounded horribly the entire time. He wasn’t bending over far, but enough for me to cringe. I wanted to say something, or at least ask what he was trying to accomplish with that jerky back-wrenching movement…maybe next time.

Moving on to the workout - no more leg soreness, but they are still pretty fatigued. ATG squats were tough due to the fact my core felt like it wanted to give out at any moment. Those strict GM’s must be more demanding than I realize. I hit the target numbers for today and called it good. The “5’s” workouts are nice because they are less demanding than the 3’s and 5/3/1 sessions and kind of give you a chance to recover a little more. I only did step ups for assistance since I will be doing the final kettlebell swing workout tonight. Step ups are a tough movement and get me breathing harder than most anything else I do during the week. After step ups I did some ab rollouts. These are getting easier and easier and soon I will start doing them standing.

My bodyweight is increasing a bit (234 the other night), but I am looking leaner. Intake is a tad higher. I think I need to start eating more, though, to keep my recovery rate up with the additional KB work. I feel like it is starting to compound and catch up, but that might just be the first heavy deadlift session from the floor in 6 months + super strict GM’s talking. Time will tell.

ATG Squats:
135x12x1
225x5x1
305x5x1
350x5x1
405x5x1

BB Step Ups (12″ box):
225x10x1
245x10x1
265x10x1
290x10x1 (PR)
265x10x1

Ab Rollouts:
bw x6x4
bw x15x1 (PR)

+ stretching

Duration: 60 minutes