Training

Seated Shoulder Press 5x7@47.5kg
Seated DB Press 5x6 @22.5kg

Barbell Curl 4x12-40kg

Can’t wait for the gym to open again - doing seated press on a bench with no back is a punish

Activity

75 min walk with my wife
Lots of work around the house and garden

21k steps

Training

4x1k row, 5 min intervals

3.39.6
3.39.3
3.39.3
3.38.6

Probably was a little too conservative with the times but wasn’t sure and had to really rush it for wife reasons so I didn’t warm up.

Will probably go for sub 3.38 or 3.37 next time

Activity

Not much today. Grafting round the house
6 hours poker
10k steps

Training

6x6 bench @87.5kg
4x8/6 superset DB flyes, DB bench 22.5kg
3x10/12 superset close grip bench 65kg/bench dips

Gonna move up to 5x5@90kg next bench session. Have never done this heavy on bench before for 5x5

Activity

45 min walk
40 mins frisbee in garden with son

13.5k steps

Didn’t train today

Last day before camping trip vacation and very busy with my business to allow myself to have a few days off. Also had to load two cars and the trailer with all the gear for my family and two extra kids we’re bringing along. Finished at 8.30pm, hadn’t eaten and took the easy way out, ordered Thai and drank scotch

Annoying because I won’t train til at least Monday now, albeit I’ll be very active with my son and his friend plus will walk every day, surf every day and try to do an ocean swim each day too

Activity

40 min walk this morning
75 mins loading the gear
18500 steps

Impressive 4x1k! I'll be doing that one today, and I'm going to try to get all four legs below a 1:45 pace (last time I got the first 3, but died on the last one).

Have fun on your trip!

lol camping

Yep, I saw you basically did it last time. Good luck - if you’re doing that you must have a good 2k or in you. When do you next do a 2k time trial?

Lol you

23500 steps yesterday which I think is a record. Also approx 80 mins in the water which was great, although the surf isn’t good

Somewhat hungover today but planning on doing a soft sand run later

Back from camping.

No training while away but very active days - step count between 15k and 24k per day. Also was in the ocean 4/5 times each day. The surf was ok but not great for most of the time but very big and heavy yesterday. 6 foot + (which for the non surfers means a wave face of up to 10 foot).

I actually had a very hairy moment early in the day just as the surf was picking up and I could have got myself killed

My 10 year old son wanted to go out in it (he’s ****ing fearless). I should have said no, but I misread how heavy it was and decided to go for it.

There’s a really strong rip at one end of the beach which takes you out the back really fast so it’s easier to get out in big surf than other beaches. I wouldn’t let him go out alone, so I put my fins on and swam into the rip with him. We were really surprised by how heavy the water was and of course a giant ****ing set came through just as we’re in the breaking zone. He wasn’t strong enough to duck dive through it, so I had to hold onto his board to keep him getting pushed back into shore which was exhausting. Just when I thought we were through it, two massive waves came in. I got him through the first one but ended up pushing him onto the second to get him back to shore and I got smashed by it. Came up and was totally exhausted and then got tumbled by the next one.

I had my fins on and was less than 100 yards out and probably only 30 yards to the rocks on the point of the beach so it wasn’t like some impossible situation but it’s hard to exaggerate how tired you can get when you’re in trouble in big water and I was almost totally spent. I was too out of breath to body surf a wave in so just had to swim in and keep diving under the waves as they came in.

Was totally exhausted after and literally sat at the beach breathing heavily for at least half an hour. Lol Fitbit obviously but my max heart rate was 187!

Cliffs: foolish old man got proper humbled and the ocean remains undefeated.

Training

Got home today at 5pm. Tired after loading and unloading all the stuff but wanted to get the muscles working so did a light workout

6x8 bench at 80kg

Was boozing every night while away and the food wasn’t great so very excited to get some sleep, clean myself up and plan my training for the next few months

Training

5k row - 19.56

Wanted to do something semi difficult to ease myself back into without going close to balls out. the plan was to do an easy 20.00. I made it harder for myself by twice having to stop to log into my phone and change my music track, so it was probably equivalent to a 19.40 ish.

Steps 11500

Programming - plan and questions

I want to start going hard towards my goals and to put myself into position to break some PRs. Basically my goals are in pressing and rowing (my assumption is that improving rowing will also improve my ability to break my assault bike PRs too) so it makes sense to focus my training plan around improving in these areas...but I still want to be well rounded and balanced.

What I'm trying to juggle with/fit in

- 1 rest day and 6 training days
- at least 6 10k steps days per week

Rowing
- ideally I'd like to row 4 days a week .... 1 long slow (30-40 mins), 1 interval, 1 'race/time trial' and then a shorter slow (15-20)

Lifting
- i'd ideally like to press at least 3 times...maybe alternate days bench then press, bench then press (is that enough to show gains?)
- supplemental exercises for chest and shoulders 1x each per week...eg incline DB bench/flye superset and maybe DB press
- isolate my arms once each week (I definitely think doing this has helped my gains recently)

Questions I'm weighing up

would doing Smolov Jr for Bench (or what I might do is to do the work over 4 weeks not 3 weeks) and not doing any strict press damage my strict press or could it maintain/add to my press too?

but what about the other body parts? Do i try to fit in a squat/deadlift session? Can I get pull ups, dips, bent over rows in there too?

or do I just tell myself that my pulling and leg strength will be trained adequately with all my rowing or risk being a little unbalanced to achieve my goals?

could I maybe give up the shorter slow row session and do a cross training type session?

I'll be putting it together in the next day or two

any thoughts or suggestions welcome

or do I just continue the way I've been going alternating rowing with weights days with a focus on pressing but still including a pulling/lower body day in there per week?

Rowing might build a little muscle in a completely untrained person, but you will definitely lose pulling and leg strength if you're relying solely on rowing. I would definitely add at least something for legs and pulling. You will be more balanced and it will even help your rowing. From personal experience, I rowed for 5 months during the first lockdown and added in weighted pistols, weighted pull-ups and handstand pushups. I still lost a decent amount of strength, but managed to get back to about 95% after 1 month of linear progression. I suspect it would have been a lot longer if I hadn't done any legs or pulling whatsoever.

Re:rowing, you seem to want 2 slower rows and 2 faster rows in a week so I recommend looking at Pete's Plan and go through 1 week (6 rows) at your own pace. So 1 week of Pete's plan (3 slow rows, 2 intervals, 1 race) would take you 1.5 weeks. It gives you structure and repeat workouts to try and beat every cycle.

I just got the email that the C2 is available is available for me now. Deciding if I want to purchase. I have the Peloton and sometimes struggle to jump on that for the cardio. Deciding if I want to spend the $900 for another cardio machine.

Please don't do Smolov Jr for bench. It's probably one of the worst programs if you aren't an Olympic athlete on steroids particularly due to the poor fatigue management.

And not doing any strict press will be more damaging than not doing any bench obv if press is what you're after. Press will have much more carryover to your bench than the other way around.

Looks like you're trying to go for a lot of things. I'd say you're definitely going to have to prioritize it some. Based on what you're trying to do though I'd recommend a Sheiko style program but tailor it for pressing.

If it were me, I'd do something like press 3 times a week, 2 bench, 2 squat, 1 dl. Pull ups, dips, rows you can fit in no problem.

Since you want to pack a lot in you're really going to have to work out the training volumes because it will be super easy to overshoot and then wreck yourself like 3 wks into your training block.

1. it’s probably overall ‘better’ for you than a peloton given what it challenges the body to do

2. Guessing it’s more accountable than peloton in terms of tracking times and progress and this is the best part of it imo - you’re totally accountable

3. Come and join the fun and share times and training

4. **** it, you can afford it - $900 for sth you might use for 10-15 years + and help your family get fitter seems like value.

5. They hold their value really well and if it sits there for a year and you sell, you’ll only lose $200 at most

Thanks for the thoughts. A few comments

The lifting goals are for bench and for strict press PRs - I used ‘pressing’ as a generic term for both the lifts. My bad on sending you down the wrong route

I have done Smolov Jr and got gains off it but I did it 3x per week over 4 weeks rather than 4x per over 3. Didn’t help that much tbh - I think I got 2.5kg PRs out of it both times. But I do think pressing volume is important

just don’t think I can get close to squatting 2x per week and DL and get the erg rowing volumes in and the rowing and metcon PRs are as important to me as the strength ones

thanks for this.

I will have another look at Pete’s plan - tbh I’ve been looking at Monte’s interval training which I think evolved from Pete’s

Yeah I also think I want to incorporate some pulling and lower body dominant weights into my plan - would feel weird not to do it.

Yeah I think it's too easy to just run yourself into the ground with Smolov and add in your other stuff and I feel like your body would burn out pretty quickly.

With all the rowing you're doing you can probably drop the DL or maybe just throw in RDLs or something as an accessory once in awhile.

Squats you can probably just keep it low volume and light once a week and still be able to do some and not affect your rowing too much.

Doing a weekly time trial seems like a lot. Been a minute since I did any meaningful cardio, but increasing duration/distance every week has always given me a lot more bang for my buck than doing speed work.

I haven't done back squat in a few years for injury prevention reasons, so FS is my go to and tbh, I haven't been going particularly heavy. After my last ACL reconstruction, my left leg is smaller and weaker than the right, so after a few sessions with an exercise physiologist, I actually did a few months late last year of medium FS (like 5x5-70kg), then the rest was one leg - Bulgarian, KB RDLs and Lunges. You're not moving the weight but it did seem to help.

I've just found that when I attack either DL or any of the squats with intensity, I start tweaking my back. The most important thing for me is to keep training and moving.

right, I think I have got my thoughts to the point where I can work through a plan. I also liked Arjun's suggestion of not having to organise it in weekly chunks...although I am still gravitating towards that

Training

5x8 seated strict press 47.5kg
4x6 22.5kg Seated DB press
4x12 60kg close grip bench

14.5k steps

Gonna keep alternating weights and rowing this week and then start the plan next week

Have you tried trap bar DL's? I can still squat decent weight with no issues. But this past year every time I start ramping up deads and go over 365 for so for reps my low back can not take it, but trap bar I can still go reasonably heavy w/o issue

in 30 + years in the gym, I’ve honestly never tried them. Always figured they were FPS

Our gyms are now open post the order Covid outbreak so I’m gonna have the option to do different stuff again. So I may give them a go. I do think I’ve closed off the desire to go really heavy (even for me which is not ‘really heavy’ anyway) with lower body just after the evidence of the last 3 ish years of being able to train consistently without getting injured since I stopped getting anywhere close to my comfort zone

Will try tho

ymmv. I had more back pain doing trap bar when I was recovering from being hurt. I think there's something possibly to be said about intentionally training the back and hips in a more compromised position like the conventional deadlift or back squat, rather than just loading the spine with as much weight as possible with a more upright posture like with front squats and sumo or trap bar.