Yesterday was deadlift day. Deadlifts are fantastic total body exercises, but where the joy really kicks in is for people who spend too much time sitting down with their hands in front of them, say at a computer. Sitting down like that isn’t great for the back, and the T-Rex pose, hands close together in front, can allow the chest muscles to tighten, causing back pain between the shoulder-blades. Deadlifts help all of that, support mobility, etc.
Warmups:
Again, the objective is a raised heartbeat.
3 sets:
70 jumping jacks
10 lunges
10 pushups
20-30 second stretches of whatever feels tight
5×40%, 5×50%, 5×60% of deadlift training max
Shake it out real good. Seriously, try shaking your hands or legs after warming up. You’ll feel silly but feel a bit more mobile later.
Primary Lifts
The objective is improve the deadlift! Build muscle and use it to burn fat.
Assistance work was walking pushups. I put my feet on a low box for space reasons, and did a pushup, walked my hands left, did a pushup, walked hands right, etc. 10 total pushups per set.
5×65%
Pushups
5×75%
Pushups
5+x85%
Pushups
Rest
High weight
Objective is prepare body for heavier lifting
1×95%
10 medicine ball jumpsquats
1×95%
10 medicine ball jumpsquats
1×95%
10 medicine ball jumpsquats
Work sets
Objective is use major muscle groups to burn off all the ice cream, beer, egg nog, cookies, etc. of the holidays. I used a trap bar (diamond bar) and a safety squat bar. Both of those don’t really match up to weights on the barbells, so I just went fairly heavy with the weights at the gym stations and tried not to get in anyone’s way. Weight was heavy enough I could only get a few reps in.
Huge gym fight about politics. I wanted to tell someone to shut up and do their work, but decided that advice would be better served by doing it myself.
5xsquats
3xtrap bar DLs
5xsquats
3xtrap bar DLs
5xsquats
3xtrap bar DLs
5xsquats
3xtrap bar DLs
5xsquats
3xtrap bar DLs
A note about weight here if you’re doing this yourself: the specifics aren’t super important. If you load up a bar at 100# and can do 4 reps in the supersets, do that. If the station doesn’t have too many plates and someone else is using them, maybe you do sets of 8. Maybe load heavier and do sets of 3. Try your best, but don’t get wrapped around the axle on numbers. In general, assistance shouldn’t go below sets of 3, and where you do go below sets of 3, like in the heavy weight sets above, don’t expect too much of those sets.