Josh's journey to 200kg squat and 11.0 200m

[veganjosh]

As I seem to do every Fall, I'm going to try to start keeping up a log again. We'll see how it goes

This year was incredibly disappointing for racing, in part due to breaking my hand at the worst possible time of the season, and in part due to, well, I don't really know what...for the first time ever, I just didn't really make any substantial progress in the gym or on the bike.

So, my goals for next year look almost like my goals and predictions for this year: 200kg squat (I'm 90% sure this will happen), bw strict overhead press (this will be done in the next couple months), 50" box jump (I think I'll make it...this year I hit ~46"), <11.3 200m (this had _better_ happen, but we'll see), <18.8 standing 250m (I'm pretty confident here). I'd also like to keep my bodyweight low, say below 72kg, and my bodyfat way down --- right now I'm measuring at 68kg and 8% bf, and I'd like to keep there or below.

The goal for the next couple of months, according to my coach, are to get stronger in the gym and more "comfortable" on the bike. He wants me to do a bunch of high-rep stuff in the gym, which I don't particularly agree with, but I'll give it a try. On the bike, it'll be split between a few mountain bike sessions a week (once I replace my recently-stolen mountain bike) and a couple of high-intensity road rides.

[veganjosh]

Last week, first week of offseason training:

11.2: rest
11.3:
AM gym:
dynamic warmup
squat: 20x5, 70x5, 100x5
4x(squat x10, 16" depth jump x4), 1:00 between exercises, 3:00 between sets
squats were 130kg, 132kg, 132kg, 130kg

---ugh, 10s are unpleasant. first set was very easy, second ok but hard as legs tightened up, third legs were pretty tight, fourth was fine. depth jumps definitely wore me out...wasn't measuring the height, but it felt dramatically lower by the end.

side bridge x:30/side

deadlift(!) 60x5, 100x3
4x(deadlift x10x110kg, seated box jump 32" x4, one arm one leg row 32kg x6), 1:00 between exercises, 3:00 between sets

---i haven't deadlifted in YEARS! i'm keeping the weights really moderate as i get used to them again.

front bridges 1:20x3
ab complex x2


PM: Port of Oakland ride
--- really disappointed with my riding. I've got to get much better at mental toughness for endurance events. With lifting, I can push the fuck out of myself, but on long group rides and races I just get tired of the low-level pain and give up. This ride, the hardest thing was getting back in after taking pulls. The pace was so high that riding in back was hard, so pulling was basically full-gas and settling back in after coming off the front was hard to do. After maybe 5 laps (15 miles), I fell off. Next week I've promised myself I'll stay in no matter the pain

11.4:
Strength endurance on the trainer:
20 minute progressive warmup, then 3x8:00 on the 20:00, with the 8:00 efforts at 50-60rpm and as hard of resistance as possible without blowing up. managed to average a massive 212-215 watts on these it's amazing how crappy my threshold-type power is!

11.5:
1.5 hour hammer ride at the ocean
--- of course, I didn't have power or other riders to judge by, but it felt fast!

11.6:
Gym:
dynamic warmup
squat: 20x5, 60x5, 100x5
4x(squat 140x8, 16" depth jump x4), 1:00 between exercises, 3:00 between sets
---squats were hard for the last few sets. i really want to be doing these at more like 155, but it's going to take some time to get there.

DL 60x5, 100x3
4x(DL 120x8, 32" seated box jump x6, 1 arm 1 leg row 32x10), 1:00 between exercises, 3:00 between sets
---easy

4 x ab complex


11.7:
1.5 hour ride. Should have made it longer, but I was a little short on time. Solid pace.

11.8:
AM:
3 hour road ride. Lots of unpleasant climbing, but some nice views as a reward. Beautiful day.

PM:
lame upper-body gym session:
dynamic warmup
press: 20x5x2, 42x5, 47x5x3
bent row: 60x5, 70x5x3
pullups: 6x3
4x(1 arm 1 leg row 32x8, glute ham x6, side bridge x:30), 1:00 between exercises, 3:00 between sets

11.9: rest

[veganjosh]

11.10:
Gym:
dynamic warmup
squat: 20x5, 60x5, 90x3, 110x3
4x(squat 135kg x10, 18" depth jump x4)
---squats were pretty easy. 140 next week should be doable. keeping my fingers crossed for 150 by the end of the month if i can tack on 5 kilos each week.

side bridge :30/side

DL: 60x3, 90x3
4x(DL 120kg x10, 36" seated box jump x4, 1 arm 1 leg row 37kg x6)
---need to work on sitting way back and using posterior chain. when i start to get tired i cheat and come forward with my knees to basically squat the weight up. push the weight or stay here and just work on form? i'll give it a few days of thought...

box jumps were easy...slowly working my way back up in height. it's so hard to really push the height when you're also doing crushingly high reps on the lifts...i find that box jumps are almost only a function of confidence, and knowing that you just did a hard set of lifts does a good job at taking my confidence away.

3x 1:30 front bridge
2x ab complex

[veganjosh]

11.11:
Strength endurance on the trainer
20:00 progressive pace
3x8:00 on the 20:00, with RPMs around 60 and resistance as high as possible without blowing up
221w for the first, 223 for the second, 226 for the third, with the last 2:00 at 230+. Still incredibly low, but 10 watts higher than last week!

[fredrikw]

great seeing you starting logging again josh! those power numbers for your strength endurance sessions are surprisingly low considering your amazing power numbers otehrwise, is this some king of pre-season low or is your power output that specific to sprinting?

[veganjosh]

great seeing you starting logging again josh! those power numbers for your strength endurance sessions are surprisingly low considering your amazing power numbers otehrwise, is this some king of pre-season low or is your power output that specific to sprinting?

I might hit marginally higher numbers if I was allowed to use a reasonable cadence on these, but the short answer is that my threshold power is just incredibly low...my legs rapidly lock up from heavy exertion. Even my 1:00 power is heavily skewed by my ability to hit 1400w at the beginning --- if I tried to go for max steady-state 1:00 power it'd be much lower than my max 1:00 power with a big spike at the beginning and a slow death.

I'm not sure why my non-sprinting power output sucks so much --- I mean, I don't do any hardcore endurance training, but I do plenty of road rides and other long efforts. One theory in my head is that years of lifting has gotten my body to convert every possible muscle fiber to fast-twitch. Another is that I still don't know how to train hard for endurance stuff --- you don't make progress in anything athletic unless you train to the point of annihilation, but I find that the difference in exertion between "this is hard" and "I can't do this" is tiny for me. So, for instance, yesterday's SE session: the efforts were hard to the point that I would have trouble going for another :30 at that pace, but 5:00 after the workout I felt completely good and could have done many more efforts. Maybe that means I needed to push those efforts harder; I can't imagine doing that successfully, but perhaps that's the mental block I need to get through.

[fredrikw]

Interesting. I was somewhat surprised since I did 3x20min sessions at 60rpm at about that power during last pre-season training, and I'm not even close to your numbers on anything else that I've seen.

But yeah, it makes sense about the specific training you do, I mean you get better at what you train, and if most of the stuff you do is short bursts, explosive training, those longer intervals will probably be harder, and it makes sense that you recover faster as well since this should be a byproduct of any high intensity interval training. Doing longer lower-intensity rides might be good for many thing, but nowadays they are not really seen as a very effective way of building endurance and VO2max. I rarely do these during the winter, instead focusing on threshold intervals (2-3x20min), shorter intervals (4-6x4min) and high intensity endurance rides (2-4 hours, continuous high intensity).

The mental part is a huge thing also, for me that's one of the main goals of doing the long threshold intervals on the trainer during the winter, to mentally prepare for the long exertion.

[veganjosh]

11.12:
1.5 hour road ride

11.13:
Gym:
Dynamic warmup
Squat: 20x5, 60x5, 90x3, 120x3
4x(Squat 145x8, 18" depth jump x4)
---first set was easy-ish, second hard, third one i had to take a couple breaths between reps starting at rep 5, so i decided to drop the weight 5kg for the last set and did 140. the depth jumps also really wear me out.

DL: 60x6, 100x3
4x(DL 130x8, 36" seated box jump x6, 1 arm 1 leg rows 35x10)
super easy. only thing that took any concentration was the last rep or two of the box jumps, since i'm used to doing sets of 4 on my jumps.

ab complex x4

[hannibal]

really impressive squatting, is this part of a powerlifting comeback?

[veganjosh]

really impressive squatting, is this part of a powerlifting comeback?

Nope, just training for cycling. I don't think you'll ever get me to bench press again, let alone into a squat suit, knee wraps, or a bench shirt Seriously, though...bench aside, I'm much stronger now than I was in the powerlifting days, and I'd crush people in the squat, at least...looked at the USAPL raw records, and the squat record is only 215 in the 67.5s; I'd guess I can squat 190ish right now with no belt or wraps, so I'd be damn close to that with that stuff on.

[Thomas Campbell]

Did you have some sort of bench press accident, or do just hate it? You've got a seriously impressive squat, any tips you can share? I

[veganjosh]

Did you have some sort of bench press accident, or do just hate it? You've got a seriously impressive squat, any tips you can share? I

I just dislike the lift, and I'm terrible at it (probably the two are connected, though I can't say which came first ). Powerlifting only made that hatred more severe, as bench shirts are a freaking pain in the ass.

For squatting --- I'm happy to give form advice, but I'd have to see you lift. The things related to form I usually talk about to friends I help or coach with lifting are: good takeout (getting in and out of the rack and set up as smoothly and quickly as possible), proper breathing (into the stomach at the start, and then I like holding the breath and letting it out as a hiss at the sticking point to help tighten the core up), good head position, "spreading the floor" with your feet, pulling yourself into the bottom (versus the usual drop into the bottom), keeping weight on the heels especially on the drive up.

For routines: I'm a firm believer in extremely high volume for squats. I'm not practicing that so much right now, because I do what my cycling coach tells me to do, but even now I'm doing pretty significant volume on lifting days. Routines like Smolov are better than anything else for getting strong, and I think people hype them up too much in terms of difficulty...in the end it's a matter of mental toughness; if you're eating well and sleeping well you'll be fine physically.

[veganjosh]

11.14: 2+ hour road ride

11.15: got a new mountain bike, so I took it out for a spin. It was supposed to be a 3 hour ride, but I spent all day dealing with the bike, so I only had 1.5 hours left before dark. In the evening, did a little upper body lifting session, but it was late enough that I kept it light, and it's not really worth noting.

[fredrikw]

I read about the bike trouble on FB, good that you got a new(?) one sorted out quite quickly. What did you get this time?

[veganjosh]

I read about the bike trouble on FB, good that you got a new(?) one sorted out quite quickly. What did you get this time?

I got a used On-One steel 26" hardtail --- XTR rear derailleur, rest of the drivetrain is XT, Avid BB7 mechanical disc brakes, Manitou Black Elite fork, really good price. Aside from the fork, I think it's an awesome setup, and since I have no experience whatsoever with suspension bikes, I don't even know what I'm missing relative to a "better" fork.