No Weights, Big Wheels (Dec 2018)

[Fraser_9to5]

14 Jan

Power Cleans – 3 x 3 x 75kg
Back Squat – 6,6,5,5 x 107.5kg
Hip Thrusts – 4 x 8 x 90kg
Lateral Lunges – 2 x 10 x 10kg
SL Calf Raises – 3 x 14 x 5kg

Quite annoying to make such slow progress in this session, squats feel no easier each week though hip thrusts are improving which is nice. I think once I finish and let my legs fully recover I will probably jump about 5-10kg in my squats.

17 Jan P.M.

Walking Lunges – 5 x 60, 1 x 100 (400 total)
Swiss Ball HS Curls – 14,16,15,12,9,14 (80 total)
Sissy Squats – 11,12,12,14 (49 total)

18 Jan A.M.

Walking Lunges – 2 x 25 (50 total)
Glute Raise – 12,12,13,14 (51 total)

I split this session up because it was late evening and I needed to factor in food and sleep. The morning session was a nice opportunity to film my reps, though my knees felt like they were going to explode so it was quite tough to do them. Next week is the finale, 500 reps of walking lunges.

Here’s the morning footage, which I plan to use when doing the YouTube results video.

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A post shared by 9to5 Strength (@9to5strength) on Jan 18, 2019 at 1:28am PST

[Fraser_9to5]

22 Jan

Power Clean – 3 x 3 x 75kg
Back Squat – 6,6,6,4 x 107.5kg
Hip Thrusts – 4 x 6 x 100kg
Seated SL Calf Raise – 2 x 15 x 25kg
Standing SL Calf Raise – 2 x 12 x 10kg
Hollow Rock – 3 x 30 secs

Good session, nice to improve hip thrusts. I pushed it in the 3rd set of squats and had nothing for the final set. Switching up calf raises to hit the soleus using a seated raise.

23 Jan

Bench Press – 3 x 6 x 85kg
Pull ups – 3 x 4 x 15kg
BB Rows – 3 x 6 x 70kg
Leg Raises – 3 x 12

Short and sweet, surprised that having done 3 weeks of 50 pull ups a day I struggled so much with them. I did have a week off but perhaps my body needs longer to fully recover. Making a point of including abs more often now.

25 Jan

Walking Lunges – 5 x 100 (3 mins)
Sissy Squats – 13,14,12,13 (52 total)
Swiss Ball HS Curls – 14,14,14,14,14,12 (82 total)
Glute Raises – 14,14,13,14 (55 total)

Wow. I took a caffeine pill to reduce perceived exertion and also made a metal playlist to get me through the lunges, and it worked well at first. The last few sets were very stop-start, doing 10 at a time and the sets were 5.5 to 7 minutes each. I’ve not been paying attention to whether I beat my totals each week in the other exercises, in fact I know I haven’t, but I give my all and stop when my technique breaks down. I do them with 2 minutes rest as longer seems excessive.

I’m incredibly relieved to finish this, my legs feel like they’ve built up a lot of training effect and 10-14 days of rest should see the results come out. I have my before photos and measurements, so once I’m fully recovered I’ll do the after ones and post the results on my YT channel.

Right now it felt like there should have been a middle ground between 50 reps and 300 reps, because going up to 500 reps gave me the impression I was getting diminishing returns and maybe doing 300-400 reps with a small weight would have been a better compromise. If you add up the time I was actively lunging it was around 30 solid minutes, which is crazy. I’m only 72.5kg so perhaps people with BW of 80-90kg would benefit from the greater resistance of the movement and feel like it was doing more for them. I really like the other three exercises though, and will bear them in mind when I’m writing a program for myself, as well as the fact that high rep training is an option and it doesn’t always have to be heavy sets of 3-5 for progress.

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