Hypertrophy - good and evil!

Sorry for my lack of blogging last week, I'm trying to keep it interesting and last week, wasn't that interesting. Not much to feedback on. However, after my full on Wrestling week two weeks ago, I hit the wall over last weekend and ended up with a nice bout of man flu. I was off work for a couple of days and annoyingly I was supposed to be starting the hypertrophy stage of my training, but as I was away at the end of the week as well we decided to put that on hold until this week. So I did actually manage to get a rest week in...kind of...

My saving grace at the moment - Optumus Massage

The increase in wrestling sessions has taken its toll. I am absolutely loving it, I wish I had been introduced to the sport about 10 years ago but after that week I felt the beginnings of niggles creeping back in. After the Friday wrestling session at
[EN]GAGE with Ash, I thought I may have damaged my knee again. If you have ever had a knee injury you'll know all about the dread you feel when your knee starts twinging. 

Que - Pav (Optumus) to check it out and fix me up. As it turns out, the clicking that I was having around my knee was actually the origin of my calf (gastrocnemius) and that was causing me massive problems around the knee joint. Pav was barely touching my calf for a massage and through gritted teeth I was trying not to scream. Normally... i'm pretty reserved regarding my expression of massage. Meaning I don't let on if i'm in serious amounts of pain. I've seen my mate Giler get a massage from Pav before at rugby and he screams and I've always wondered whether it was low pain threshold or just incredibly tight. I now know! I wasn't far off his reaction last week. Pav sorted out my back and calves last week which have been much better and almost had immediate improvements in my back rotation afterwards.

The tension that had built up in my calves was simply because I had been doing a lot of work on the wrestling stance and been training in positional instances. The good news is its beginning to click and i've finally got a rough idea of what i'm doing. I can tell that i'm getting better each time  I go to training and start to do something, its all about practice, as i've said before practice makes permanent. 



Little Nicky having a snooze



The massage heralded the last of my proper training last week and it was deemed my proper rest week to let the body recover and just chill out. I headed out for my first night out since September and it got pretty messy as expected. It was the Bear's birthday and we hit the Grassmarket, Hanover Street before heading to Shanghai to see Stevie Winton (manager) the bear bought Vodka which was nice and we all got pretty steaming. Bear even posted a video on facebook of my passed out on his sofa. I was snoring like "Little Nicky". 

Luckily I had booked in for some time off on the rest of the week and headed southwards to pay a visit with Emma and Cameron to her grandparents. It did mean a hung over / tired trip to Blackpool way. We had a great time down there but on Saturday, we had a slight issue that resulted in Syd (Emma's Grandad) being taken to Hospital, he is fine and on the mend but it was the event that kicked off a crap week. I should state that it was a crap week but on the wrestling front its been great. The reason its been so crap is that the freezer has packed in at home, probably the thermostat. I can live with that... it would be useful but its not the end of the world. Yesterday our Boiler broke, meaning no hot water, no heating and no washing machine. Rage!!! #risk25 sometimes you just can't catch a break bad things come in threes - and I didn't win the Edinburgh Napier Alumus of the year award last night either, although it was great to be nominate so i'm chuffed with that.

Anyway we headed back up to Scotland, late on Sunday night, I had the best sleep i'm maybe ever had that night and it was all back to normal on Monday. Wrestling on Monday was good fun, I managed to drag in Donald Grant, from the mighty Edinburgh Eagles Rugby League, he was training at [EN]GAGE anyway and he had his introduction to Wrestling. He was another one of the guys who loved the physicality of it and found it to be quite useful and transferable to rugby, think it was probably more physically demanding than he thought. 

I started phase 2 of my gym programme on Monday- Hypertrophy and it was straight in there with Squats, straight leg deadlifts, walking lunges and bench press to name a few all for four sets at varying weights and slowly to get a solid concentric contraction and activate the slow twitch fibres. It was physically exhausting and heavy loads with a decrease in weight but increase in reps. I had instant muscle soreness after day one, there was no delay making it OMS and day two Tuesday had me in pieces, I could barely walk up the stairs at home but the worst thing was the I went to the toilet at about 2:00am and ended up getting pins and needles in my legs which combined with DOMS is perhaps one of the most horrible experiences i've ever had. I was stuck for about 10 minutes before I made it back to bed. The best thing about it though was i've finally been allowed to do some bicep EZ curls and tricep push downs! brilliant! Love Beach Weights!

Sean Keogh (red) in action at 84kg

Wednesday had me back through travelling with Martin to the Palace of Art in Glasgow for some intense wrestling with the institute guys. No traffic this time but it did mean we got there about 45 minutes early. Only one thing for it, massive stretching session! I was happy to stretch and felt a lot better for it. I was in real pain. Vio (Scotland Assistant Coach) arrived and informed us it was a conditioning session for the evening which was fine, I was working with Sean Keogh (Finished 5th - 84kg 2010 Commonwealth Games). Was fantastic to train with him, he is a good guy and taught me a lot. He has come back from a series of injuries which is good, but he is back fit now and will be a medal hope for 2014. We worked on loads of stuff, mainly positional training, defence and attack which was great. This is where I realised that I actually knew more than I thought I did. We finished off the session with a 9 exercise conditioning set which we did twice with 3 sets on each exercise (all wrestling specific). I could have almost been sick and my legs were physically shot. I pinged my calf on the final exercise and I need to get that looked at ASAP but i can't tell if its just a strain or a relapse from last weeks tightness. The KCR from Laura, sorted me out and again there were some abnormal sounds coming from the hip flexors and back. I do rate KCR as a protocol, think it helps to relieve alot of the pressure.

 

In other news though, my friends Paddy and Louise had a beautiful little boy this week, which is fantastic for them, Congratulations to them and I wish them all the best as a new family and hope they enjoy parenthood. They are in for some great fun! Hopefully we'll get to see little Jack soon.

Next week we have Simmo and his brother heading up for a wrestle. I'm exciting about that one. Simmo was a guest blogger for me last month and Dave, his younger brother used to play rugby league with me and went down to Crusaders in Wales. My money is on Dave at the moment but you never know. For those that were asking, my first competitive match will probably be in April, i'm going for the British Novices and hoping to be in ridiculously good shape with some good Wrestling knowledge to do some damage and get a medal.

www.tysonfitnessnutrition.com

 Finally, Thanks to Paul Tyson fitness. I've just ordered my latest batch of supplements and they should be here soon. Thanks for your support. Its much appreciated!

Thanks for taking time to read, feel free to share and if you want to keep up to date you can follow on twitter @shocksjr

Cheers,