European soccer has a lot of tournaments, but the big one is the Champions League. Liverpool played in the final last year and it was very exciting. The new Champions League season started this week and this stoppage-time goal from Bobby Firminho was a tremendous capper to a great match.
I’ve talked before about my classic rock thing and I’ve been revisiting that playlist often. What still blows my mind is that these were all young people making the music because I had only ever really seen them as old people. This video of The Marshall Tucker Band is great and I still love this song.
Here’s a 90%-of-contest-weight axle clean and press. That 2-step move to get the axle to my shoulders is called a continental clean. It’s uncomfortable. The contest event is a 225 lb. axle that I have to press for the maximum number of reps in a minute. I’m not the strongest presser so I’m shooting for 3 reps on contest day. I’m a lot better than I was thanks to all of the Olympic lifting I’ve done in the last year. I’ll get another session of heavy work before the contest.
So much of strongman looks like brute strength (and it def. helps to be strong) but damn if there isn’t a ton of technique involved.
Based on this video, I need to work on a couple of things:
I’ve got a strongman contest coming up on Spetember 8th and I’ve reached the part of the story where we get into training the specific events. The first bit of the video is with theDeadsled, a new-ish implement that plays the role of the trap bar in this contest. We have to rep as many lifts at 440 lbs. as we can in one minute. I’ll be very happy with 5 reps. That quick double was at 430 lbs. I’ll get heavier as we get closer to contest day. You can see that my left hand grip broke down right at the start of the video. I had to take an extra couple of seconds to reset and get my hand a little further under the handle.
The second half of the video is a 50-foot carry of a keg followed by a 50-foot, hand-under-hand pull of a loaded sled. The keg and the sled were both just 160 lbs. On contest day, the keg to carry will be 200 lbs. I’m training light to get re-acclimated with the movement. The rope pull is to teach the hand-under-hand movement which will get used in the truck pull event at the contest. Here’s a video to show what we’re looking for. While most of the power is coming from your legs, you can get a little extra help from the pulling the rope. The underhand pulling keeps the movement efficient and in the correct direction. I’m especially excited about truck pull practice on 9/1. Gonna be awesome.
I’ve been doing a lot of driving this summer so I’ve been looking for lots of new podcasts. Cocaine and Rhinestones has turned out to be one of my favorites. The host, Tyler Coe, tells the story of country music made in the 20th century and I find it fascinating. I was a long-time sucker for those Behind the Music docs from the 90’s and this scratches the same itch. Country Music has been a huge gap in my musical knowledge and this podcast has opened me up to all kinds of good stuff. I’ll be bringing some up on the podcast in a couple of weeks.
The episodes run just over an hour long and the subjects range from music acts (The Louvin Brothers), to people (Buck Owens), to individual songs (a 3-parter on “Harper Valley P.T.A.“). As Coe says on the About page, “You don’t need to “be” country to perform country, so you certainly don’t have to be country to enjoy it.” The same goes for this podcast. If you like music history you will probably be into this podcast. I am 100% in.
Chain squats help you work on speed. At the top of the movement you have all of the weight and then as you squat, the chain collects on the floor making the total weight lighter. We pause at the bottom of the movement on the box to help train correct depth and to learn to get comfortable “in the hole”. After the pause, you come up fast but under control. It’s about building the neural paths to get to and come out of the bottom of the squat with confidence.
I also got this sick tattoo.
The Weight Room is a special place to me. I’ve gone through some fun sports phases in my adult life: basketball, softball, cycling, running, triathlons, and now lifting. More than any of the others, the place where I lift has been as special as the lifting. I feel fortunate that I found The Weight Room.
Southern Nightmare is a podcast that tells the story of the Southside Strangler, a serial killer in Virginia in the in 1980’s. I grew up in Richmond and I can remember hearing this guy’s name on the news a lot but I don’t remember the panic in the town. The case is also historically important because it’s the first capital murder conviction based solely on DNA evidence. Who would have ever guessed that VA would be at the technological cutting edge in evidence use? Does that make it ironic that they exercised the death penalty on him via electric chair?
The podcast is locally produced and recorded here in Richmond and it’s a good listen if you’re into true crime (which I am not, generally). It’s definitely creepy hearing about the killer stalking victims at the mall where we used to hang out in high school.
An absolute wizard. Kim Jung Gi is a Korean illustrator who has gotten pretty popular in the US over the last couple of years. This brief feature gives a nice overview of why he’s regarded as a next-level talent.
