My Neck, My Back! My Neck and My Back!

Friday was fairly heavy.  Once again I took advantage of an opportunity to use a local gym instead of the base gym, Midtown Sports and Wellness.  I like to go here because its clean, they have decent equipment, the rowers WORK, and they have a pool and Jacuzzi. (for recovery, of course)

After doing some rower warm-up, I hit the squat rack and worked up to heavy doubles.

Then I was interpreted.

I HATE being interrupted in a workout, however, its the nature of being a Husband, Father and Active Duty Serviceman...so be it.

Anyway, after a 45 minute rest, I hit up some bench press, working up to a heavy single (210#) and then proceeded back to the rack for heavy rack pulls (below the knee), working up to a single at 455#.

Finished up with "assistance work", which is a fancy powerlifters way of saying isolation without sounding like a body builder.  Basically 3x10 shrugs @ 315# and 3x10 elevated/weighted(25#) situps.

So you're thinking, that sounds like a lot of volume.  Well seeing as I'm not really a elite level lifter, yea, it was a shitload of volume.  Come Saturday morning I felt like a steamroller had plowed over my Traps, spinal erectors, and whatever's in between.  Even contrast baths after the workout Friday were of no help.  Needless to say, Saturday was rest.

Sunday, as I was prepping to head to the base gym for a workout, the Wife got called into work.  So what was prepping to be a little "Grace" and running, turned out to be a quick little garage burner:

70# KB Swing x 25
80# Sandbag Clean/Press x 30 (about 12 min w/time to re-tie the sand bag 3x)
70# KB Swing x 25

KB Swings were unBroken

Back feels a little tight, time to roll...

Sandbagging in a Good Way

60 Pounder

Finally got around to building my own sandbag this morning.  I was cruising around the interwebz last night and checking out ITS Tactical when I came across a sandbag building article written by Jake Saenz.  Jake is the owner of Atomic Athlete, and a partner gym of Military Athlete.  These guys specialize in make war-fighters harder to kill...basically.

The article was the easiest I've found involving the construction of a homemade sand bag using my green canvas bag from basic training.  20$ worth of rubber mulch from Home Depot and I was done.

ITS Sandbag Training/Building Article

So I got mine up to the recommended starting weight of ~60 Pounds.  Afterwards I decided to test it out with 10x100m sprints (50m out/50m back), with about a minute rest between.  Fairly brutal way to start it out.

Later this evening I'll get into some of the other movements and see where I stand with them.  A whole laundry list of shit to do with a bag can be found in the previously linked article, and a video to boot.

If you're also interested in other knowledge of tactical shit, self preservation and general usefullness I recommended browsing around ITS Tactical and maybe even picking up a Crew Leader membership.