Did this yesterday, minus the cooldown and with slightly shorter warmup. 2km intervals are longer than I remembered.

Interval 1: 4:57 min/km
Interval 2: 4:54
Interval 3: 4:56
Interval 4: 4:41

I feel pretty happy with that considering my non-existent cardio training this summer. The total run happened to be on the dot 10.00km at a pace of 5:11 min/km. I'm now confident I could do a <50min 10k if paced evenly, perhaps even <49min. On the other hand I'm also confident I could've done a 10k in <42min this time last year, so I'm not in great shape.

Today I did an easy 8km run. The race is next Sunday, this is the plan:

Mon: gym
Tue: 6km easy run
Wed: gym
Thu: 4km easy run
Fri: gym
Sat: Drink beer
Sun: Run 10k

Did not go to the gym this week, hopfully my bicep will feel better tomorrow. I'll do a small deload to start off a bit easier, sucks.

Only been doing three main lifts each workout. I'm thinking I'll do everything except rows and chinups starting tomorrow, I don't want to irritate my bicep and I think they're most likely to do that.

Also about to make a permanent switch to sumos but I can't figure out connect my phone to the new laptop so it'll have to wait. I hope at least they look decent.

Power rankings of the new tastes:

1. Coffee - This is pretty good, but I'm a fan of anything with coffee flavor
2. Toffee - Decent, but not something I'll buy regularly, if at all
3. Banana/Walnut - Sounded promising, pretty meh
4. Energy drink - Yikes, gives the nut flavor competition for the nut low taste

oops

Mods can rename this to The Official Quark Review Thread

Pretty tough race, large parts of the race went through swamps and at some points you literally had to swim through the mud. Almost faceplanted on several different occasions but ultimately always managed to keep my head above the mud.



We started off really slowly, me and my buddy were literally in last spot for the first kilometer or two. We finished strong and I ended up beating him at the finish, 10k in 1:13:36 and 463rd place out of 1788 male runners. Not as bad as expected.

Good enough to switch to sumos? 100kg doesn't feel all that heavy anymore.



Post-run pic, but after I had cleaned up my face and arms, kind of. You can tell by the line on my t-shirt how deep the mudpits were in certain spots.

hehe, how did you like the race? was it fun? where there also obstacles?

Yeah it was a lot of fun. It's a bit more of a spectacle than a serious race but that's pretty cool when you're not in good shape and wouldn't be able to do a decent 10k result anyway. My buddy and I were really evenly matched too so we pushed eachother towards the end which always makes a race more fun.

There were some obstacles, some you had to jump or climb over and some you had to crawl under. I didn't start to feel tired until 4-5km into the race where there was a series of obstacles topped with a bunch of short but very steep hills to climb.

There also was the svamps and mud-filled ditches to get through, most of them after 5km. The svamps really slowed you down but weren't all that draining. It made sense to slow down a bit to figure out which path to take to most easily get across, so in fact they were good for recovery.

Here's a video from the race.

Sumo positioning looks pretty good but I suspect your hips are rising too fast (hard to tell from this angle). If you end up "in front" of the bar you'll really struggle to lock it out. Squeeze the bar off the floor by spreading your feet and keep your chest up.

I have a side-angle that I didn't upload but this is all true, good catch. Figured I'd work on it and upload another video next time because I think I can improve upon it quite a bit with some adjustments. Keeping my chest up would be one of them. When you say "spread your feet", do you mean kind of like screwing them into the floor?

No, use your feet to split the earth and open a crevasse between your legs. Really try and spread the floor.

Aha, that makes more sense. Thanks

I took one week off due to my bicep issues. After that I've been going to the gym 3 times a week but only doing two of BP/OHP/DL/squats. After doing two of those I start feeling a little bit of numbness in my left bicep and I call it quits. At least I'm trying to not completely lose it, but hopefully I'll be able to add accessories and stuff in the coming weeks.

New OHP video.



Here is my last video and the feedback.

I've been trying to, with some success imo:

1) Widen my stance and grip just a touch
2) Squeeze my glutes more
3) Not bend my wrists

Don't know about the back extension and forward motion of my pelvis, but I guess all I can do is try to keep my core tighter. I think my wrists are better now. The bar doesn't quite touch my pecs anymore, I find that if I try to get full ROM either I have to bend my wrists or mess up my elbow position, I'm very close to full ROM though.

And here's the 2nd and 3rd set of my sumos in two different angles. I'm doing 3 sets to get some extra repetitions in and hopefully improve my form. When I start failing later sets I'll consider doing just 1 or 2 sets.

Brag: haven't quit
Beat: no progress

Date	Activity	Comment
01-nov
02-nov	Gym	30 min
03-nov
04-nov	Gym	40 min
05-nov
06-nov	Gym	40 min
07-nov
08-nov
09-nov	Gym	40 min
10-nov
11-nov	Gym	50 min
12-nov
13-nov	Gym	50 min
14-nov
15-nov
16-nov	Gym	50 min
17-nov
18-nov	Gym	50 min
19-nov
20-nov	Gym	50 min
21-nov
22-nov
23-nov	Gym	60 min
24-nov
25-nov	Gym	50 min
26-nov
27-nov	Gym	60 min
28-nov
29-nov
30-nov	Gym	50 min

Date	Activity	Comment
01-dec
02-dec	Gym	50 min
03-dec
04-dec	Gym	60 min
05-dec
06-dec
07-dec	Gym	50 min
08-dec
09-dec	Gym	50 min
10-dec
11-dec
12-dec	Gym	60 min
13-dec
14-dec	Gym	45 min
15-dec
16-dec	Gym	60 min
17-dec
18-dec	Gym	50 min
19-dec
20-dec
21-dec
22-dec	Gym	40 min
23-dec	Gym	50 min
24-dec
25-dec	Gym	60 min
26-dec
27-dec
28-dec	Gym	60 min
29-dec
30-dec	Gym	50 min
31-dec

Date	Activity	Comment
01-jan		sick
02-jan		sick
03-jan		sick
04-jan		sick
05-jan
06-jan	Gym	50 min
07-jan
08-jan	Gym	40 min
09-jan
10-jan
11-jan	Gym	50 min
12-jan
13-jan	Gym	40 min
14-jan
15-jan	Gym	50 min
16-jan
17-jan
18-jan	Gym	60 min
19-jan
20-jan	Gym	60 min
21-jan
22-jan	Gym	60 min
23-jan	Running	5 km
24-jan
25-jan	Gym	50 min
26-jan	Running	6 km
27-jan	Gym	60 min
28-jan
29-jan	Gym	40 min
30-jan
31-jan	Swimming	45 min

Date	Activity	Comment
01-feb	Gym	50 min
02-feb
03-feb	Gym	50 min
04-feb	Running	7 km
05-feb	Gym	50 min
06-feb
07-feb	Running	3 km
08-feb	Gym	50 min
09-feb	Swimming	70 min
10-feb	Gym	40 min
11-feb	Running	7 km
12-feb	Gym	45 min
13-feb
14-feb
15-feb	Gym	50 min
16-feb	Swimming	60 min
17-feb	Gym	50 min
18-feb
19-feb	Gym	30 min
20-feb
21-feb
22-feb	Gym	45 min
23-feb
24-feb	Gym	45 min
25-feb
26-feb	Gym	45 min
27-feb	Running	5 km
28-feb

The bicep "injury" from last update didn't get better until recently, mostly it impacted my BP and chins (haven't been able to do the latter at all, but might be able to start again soon). Quick update:

BP: 3x5 85kg
Haven't been able to properly BP in months, but last workout felt much better. No improvement.

Squat: 3x5 105kg
Tiny bit of improvement.

OHP: 3x5 47.5kg
No improvements in almost a year.

Sumo DL: 5 reps 132.5kg
Quite some improvement, but they might look like ass.

Pendlay Rows: 3x5 85kg
Some improvement, I think.

Running:
I have a 10k race in a month but I haven't really trained for it. If I could manage <50 min that would be a big win. I have a 4 week vacation in Canada/US in August that would mess up any chanes to do well in the September races that I like.

Swimming:
My gf has been going on a crawl swimming course and she's showed me some exercises to improve technique. It's a really fun way to mix up the training and learning something new.

Triathlon:
This would be fun to train for now that I'm learning how to crawl properly, I'm just not sure if I want to spend money getting an expensive bike that probably won't end up using much.

Body weight:
I weighed about 82kg back in late October and probably weigh 85-86kg now. I haven't paid much attention to my diet other than getting enough protein, which I think I have except for a weekend every once in a while. Will start a cut shortly, just a shame I didn't get anywhere with my bulk. I'll partly blame the injury, but I might look to change my program soon.

I'll try to update the log more regularly from now on, perhaps weekly. At least there's a sumo DL video to come.

I've decided to change things up and focus more on hypertrophy. At first I wanted to do some kind of bro-split, just to get away from the GSLP grind, but since I can only go to the gym 3x a week, I think I'll just modify GSLP some more.

Basically I've switched out one day worth of GSLP grind for core work and I will put more mental focus on hypertrophy. Right now I go to the gym and the GSLP part of the my program will suck most of my mental energy before I even get to the accessories. It's also time consuming because I have long rest times (4-5 minutes). I will lower rest time and still try to add reps where I can, but I'll drop any thoughts of linear progress (I'll be happy to maintain my 3x5 max on this program).

Red is same every week, blue alternates with purple, green alternates with black. Comments appreciated.

Monday:
Squat
BP
BB Rows
Chest hypertrophy (1 superset)
Arms hypertrophy (1 ss)

Wednesday:
DL
OHP
Chin-ups
Shoulder hypertrophy (1 ss)
Back hypertrophy (1 ss)

Friday:
Core
Chest hypertrophy (1 ss)
Arms hypertrophy (1 ss)