Are you hungry when you wake up? What time are you going to bed when you're waking up that early?

No booze sounds like a good idea.

I generally go to bed around 11. My pre bed routine is down pat and falling asleep is generally very easy. I do take a natural med to help me tbh. I wake up for a pee because my old man prostate decides it's time to go. And from there, it's anxiety related - if I've got stuff on my mind....generally either work conflicts, or wife related fears about the future...my mind switches on, I get an adrenalin shot and I'm no chance of getting back to sleep. And nights when I drink, it's worse

So I have to go downstairs, watch tv and switch my mind into something else and then try to get back to sleep.

got a good, morale building session in today.

I re-did the 4x1000 5r workout that I last did 12 days ago and managed to take 1.6/500m off my time from then. Still more than 3 splits off my PR, so a long way to go, but great that a few weeks of consistent training are paying off. It remains a physically and mentally taxing workout, so I'm also happy that I managed to grind through a few parts where my mind went wobbly as the erg fear kicked in.

Might try it again in a few weeks with the aim of taking another second off the split

Time Meters Pace Watts Cal/Hr S/M
14:00.6 4,000m 1:45.0 302 1338 28

3:30.7 1,000m 1:45.3 299 1330 28
3:30.5 1,000m 1:45.2 300 1333 29
3:30.4 1,000m 1:45.2 301 1334 29
3:29.0 1,000m 1:44.5 307 1355 30

3x8 DB Bench 32kg
3x6/3 DB FLye/Bench SS 26kg
4x6 Press 45kg
3x7/7 Preacher Curl 50kg/Hammer Curl 16kg
3x8/8 Tricep Push down 35/Tricep Extension 27

all fine. I rarely do Press immediately after bench and my shoulders were already fried, so 10 reps became 6

Nice 4x1k session the other day.

Re: secondary pressing, I've been trying not to do upper body supersets back to back and it's helped with fatigue after my main upper body lift; I realize it's not always feasible given gym traffic, but something to consider.

You’re 100% correct, but with my lifting 3x a week but doing every lift twice schedule, it’s inevitable that the schedule is like this. It was working ok when I had a ‘bigger’ benching day and a ‘bigger’ pressing day on separate sessions and then the smaller, supplementary ‘days’ on the third session, when they were separated by some pulling work

I’m just clicking buttons tbh and I might switch things up for the next month anyway and go to 4-5 rowing sessions a week to see if I can get in shape and find the motivation for Oceania champs at end of Oct. if I do that, it will very definitely be my last competitive rowing hoorah.

I thought I'd trial 3/4 of the week 1 session 1 of the RowAlong 1k plan - which is 8x1min 1r at current estimated 1k pace and rate, to start feeling that pain again. To be honest, I enjoyed it...albeit I'm not sure I could have held the pace for all 8 intervals. We'll see next week.


Time Meters Pace Watts Cal/Hr S/M
6:00.0 1,874m 1:36.0 395 1659 33

1:00.0 316m 1:34.9 409 1707 34
1:00.0 313m 1:35.8 398 1668 33
1:00.0 311m 1:36.4 390 1641 32
1:00.0 312m 1:36.1 394 1654 33
1:00.0 310m 1:36.7 386 1629 33
1:00.0 311m 1:36.4 390 1641 34

Press 6,6,7,6-50
Bent over Row 4x6-80
Wide Grip Pull Down 3x11-57
Close Grip Hammer high pull 3x7-80
Seated chest press 3x11-80

Slightly annoying session where I couldn't get onto the machines/benches when I wanted. Still...we got it done and we move on

did the CTC today.

Was going pretty well and basically on the schedule I'd set for myself and was feeling really good about my fitness improvement over the past 4 weeks. The penultimate leg went better than expected and I was thinking about blasting the last 1k in about 3.22. But then my legs lost all their snap about 150m into the last interval, my mind went and my system just wanted to shut down. Total loss of power and mojo. It's amazing how fast it can happen. I actually 'mini-stopped' twice...when I got half way through a stroke, decided to quit but then forced myself to continue and I'm really happy I did. Just important for re-training my mental strength, even if that final 3 mins was really miserable and felt like rowing through treacle. And even with the last leg troubles, I beat my time from 2 weeks ago by 10 seconds and my time from the beginning of the month by 40 seconds.

So...a win but also a loss but then also a win

It's a very good workout IMO and definitely tougher/superior to the Sprint Pyramid we've all done from Wolverine/Pete's Plan


Time Meters Pace Watts Cal/Hr S/M
16:25.9 4,750m 1:43.7 313 1377 29

3:29.3 1,000m 1:44.6 305 1351 29
r: 4:00 33m
2:35.5 750m 1:43.6 314 1381 29
r: 3:00 33m
1:42.9 500m 1:42.9 321 1405 30
r: 2:00 35m
0:50.4 250m 1:40.8 342 1476 31
r: 2:00 36m
1:42.0 500m 1:42.0 330 1435 30
r: 2:00 36m
2:34.4 750m 1:42.9 321 1404 30
r: 3:00 32m
3:31.5 1,000m 1:45.7 296 1318 31
r: 3:00 17m

Nice work muddling through and improving on the last time; looks brutal. That fight to just keep going, even mid-stroke, seems like excellent mental training.

thanks and yep. Really only the thought of doing a competition in the future that kept me going because it really wasn't any fun at all

Lower body really fatigued today. 6th day, some hard rows etc

Back a little tweaky too so I ended up staying light and then abandoning half way through, doing some bro bench and then quitting early

Leg extension 3x12 single leg 37kg
Front squat 3x6 -65kg
Deadlift 3x3 - 140kg
DB Bench 3x12 -28kg

On the piss now and rest day tomorrow

went out for some beers last night for the first time in a few weeks and felt absolutely terrible this morning. bad sleep, dusty and ravenous for terrible food

Was supposed to be a rest day but decided to do a 30min UT3 type row just to sweat out some rubbish and will hopefully get a good, clean sleep tonight and enjoy a proper rest day on Mon

Time Meters Pace Watts Cal/Hr S/M
30:02.6 6,760m 2:13.3 148 808 16

It is almost like we are living the same life. The only differences I can find are that I drank vodka alone in my apartment while working on some stock trading spreadsheets and that I ate sausage egg and cheese biscuit sandwiches this morning instead of exercising

sausage and egg biscuit sandwiches sound terrific

Forgot to update yesterday

Back is still dodgy after tweaking something on the weekend. Took two days off and tried to row yesterday but no good. So I’ve pulled the pin on my plan to compete at Oz/NZ champs in 4 weeks time

So….time to do some bro sessions

Yesterday

5x6 Press 50kg
3x5 Push Press 65
3x6 Hang power cleans 65

4x8 Hammer seated wide grip row 150kg
3x11 Pull Down 77kg
3x8 Close Grip seated row 77kg

Today

7,7,5,6 DB Bench 32kg
3x7/3 DB Flye/Bench 24kg
3x8 Incline DB Bench 28kg

5x8 Barbell Curl 40kg
2x8 Hammer Curl 14kg

3x8/15 Skillcrushers/close grip EZ bar 40kg
3x8/8 Push Downs/Tricep Extensions 35/25

relatively easy lower body session today to ensure my back doesn't get any worse

3x8/8 single leg extensions 33kg
3x5 front squat 65kg
3x5 deadlift 130kg
3x8 RDL 90kg

was going to do some single leg KB RDLs but the first one sent a pain shot down my lower back so I pulled the pin

Back didn’t respond brilliantly to yesterday’s lower body session….unsurprisingly really as it was a dumb thing to do. So I limped and winced my way around a morning bro session - am away on a lads weekend now so wanted to get something done as I won’t train again til Monday

3x10 DB Bench - 30
3x10 Wide grip pull downs -77
3x6 Press - 45
3x10 Preacher - 40
3x10 Push Downs - 32.5

Sorry about the back, how did you hurt it?

Listening to someone on the C2 forum saying he gets a better watts per stroke with a lower foot placement.

I trialled it and tweaked my back with the tiny extra range of motion

totally irresponsible few days on the booze and chems.

Bro session in the gym today to make myself feel better

Wide Grip Pull Downs 3x10-70
Close Grip Pull Downs 3x8-77
Seated hammer wide grip row 4x8-160
DB Bench 4x5-34kg
Flye/Bench super set 3x8/4-24kg
Incline DB Bench 3x8-26kg

lower back still ****ed so I'm gonna be doing a 2 day upper body bro split followed by a day of stationary bike/stretching rotation for a little while

Press 5x5-50
3x8/8 Lat Raise/Front Raise ss 14kg db
3x13/10 Preacher Curl 45/Hammer Curl 14
3x10/10 Tricep Push Down/Extension 35/25 kg
3x7/15 Skullcrushers/Tricep Press 45kg

20 mins lower back mobility work

4k in 7 mins on a bike erg

10 mins on an Echo Assault bike - 10 cals in 25 seconds then rest 35 seconds

4x8/8 left then right leg extensions 46.5kg

lunchtime bro session as I have a function tonight

4x8 DB Bench 32kg
4x8 Incline DB Bench 28kg
3x8/8 Barbell Curl 40kg ss with Hammer Curl 14kg
3x6/12 Skullcrusher 45kg ss with close grip bench 45kg both with EZ curl bar

not sure what I think about skullcrushers. it's been 25 years since I've done them so I'll give them a little longer but find the movement a little meh.

already getting bored with the upper body only stuff. might need to bite the bullet and go and see someone about my lower back, which isn't getting better. So much of my life I've dealt with niggles and pinches and nerve issues by ignoring them, training around them and waiting til they go away but either this is serious or I'm just getting to old for my body to fix itself

What's a function? Sounds either fancy or debaucherous