…or Tour DAY Raleigh, as Bob Roll would say…
Ran a few errands around town on the ol’ fixie Sunday, and — wouldn’t you know it? — I wound-up at the gym. Big surprise, huh? Anyway, my thought was to do a some Istvan Javorek-inspired GPP. Nothing can make 135 lbs feel like a ton than by doing a 5-minutes long, don’t-let-the-weights-touch-the-ground, barbell complex.
With a countdown stop watch set for 5 minutes, I performed the following three movements, one movement flowing into the next, with as little break time as possible (I never re-racked the weight). In other words, I tried to keep in perpetual motion. Yeah, right — except for those moments when I stopped to cough-up my pancreas. Anyway, instead of adding weight next time out, or lengthening the time, I’ll shoot for cutting my mini-breaks-to-catch-a-breath time. Hell, at the end of 4 minutes, just standing upright with 135 lbs had my legs quivering. My upper back was quite fatigued, as well. At any rate, here were the three basic movements I chose:
low (18″) box squat
good mornings
btn push-press
Following that, I did three set of negatives on an Atlantis shoulder press machine. Those shook-out like this (all sets at 195 lbs, seat @ 6):
set 1: 3 reps @ 12/0/X tempo
set 2: 2 reps @ 15/0/X tempo
set 3: 2 reps @ 15/0/X tempo
I was able to eek out the first concentric rep without a spot on each set, all other concentrics required a kick-up spot from the foot push-plate.
The fixie version of the Tour De Raleigh is on tap a little later today. We’ll see how my legs hold out. Tomorrow, maybe some max effort upper body vertical pressing and pulling in an AM iron session. We’ll see what I feel like when I get back from fixie-frolicking tonight — and, more importantly, what I feel like Tuesday morning.
Have a great Memorial Day, folks!
Theory to Practice 