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,

The Pancake, the Weeble the Gator and the Bear!

It's been a week or so since Simmo guest blogged about his experience of wrestling. If you didn't catch the video of that "big rig" contest its here. That was probably the first session where i've really gone at it and wanted to beat someone being focused on what I was trying to do. It would probably have been a different story if we were standing up, maybe a bit more agility from both of us or maybe not. I've had two very differing opinions of analysis from that video. The first was from S & C coach Alex who thought that my agility and speed were very good and I showed a decent amount of strength. Pretty positive overall.

Love you really Simmo

The second and not nearly so technical was from my mum who suggested that Simmo, who she did state was a lovely "young" man was a bit like a weeble toy. Which had me in stitches for a little while... Here is a still we took from the wrestle last week (left).
Simmo's feedback has been fairly positive... I think what i'm finding with the wrestling and trying to get my mates involved is that once they try it, they like it. It is quite similar to rugby in many ways as I keep telling folk. You don't really think about it and the preconception of wrestling is in a ring with a oiled up tanned muscle machine in speedos with a steel chair.

After Grappling with Simmo. I was pretty sore, for me it was tough because Simmo has got a few more Kg on me than most people i'm training with, i'm still hovering around the 114 - 115kg mark at the moment. I was in pieces on the Tuesday after a bit of DOMS set in so decided to call the repair man to fix me up. Pav from Optumus popped round and basically violated my shoulder, it was effectively rape. He got deep into the rotator cuff and tried to sort that out for me. His massages are great to be fair, the difference from before to after was insane and I had much better range of movement. 

My shoulder has been giving the most amount of jip over the last couple of weeks, I must have tweaked it a little and its not had a chance to recover, the problem is that I keep on hurting it doing ridiculous stuff... taking the child seat out of the car or lying on it funny whilst i'm sleeping. Anyway, i've got prehab stuff to do with it using therabands which is helping! With a combination of massage and KCR from Laura, I'm feeling pretty good and pretty chilled out even after hard sessions. The noise my back made on Friday when Laura did her therapy on it was pretty impressive!

So after, wrestling last Monday and doing quite well, I was hoping that I would have someone to take on the next week. I text bear, given that he has been along to throws training with Jig and has been in the gym a couple of times over the last two months. The response I got was typical Bear and along the lines of:

"are you just going through your phone book and finding you fat friends?" 

A little harsh I thought on him and Simmo. Although for me the closer to my weight the better for training. It's tough because both of them are quite strong. Bear did manage to get to Wrestling last week and we were going over head locks into gator rolls. It was fine and we were shown how to counter and escape before you were thrown. Unfortunately, for me at least, I got myself into a stupid position where I knew exactly what was going to happen as Bear had my head locked up and was pulling my arm underneath me. There was a slight pause, it was one of those moments where through your mind you knew what was about to happen and for some reason  I couldn't recall the counter quick enough. I remembered as I was about a foot off the floor that I should have rotated before being rotated and thrown. Annoyingly for me... it happened twice! So I will concede, given that i'm being truthful in this blog that I was well beaten by bear on this occasion. 

That said, I realised something about wrestling this week and that is that its a fluid sport and its all about building up your repertoire of moves available to you, I think i'm getting better at it, but more mat time is needed. I find myself in some situations not knowing where to go next and that is all down to inexperience. So, i'm trying to figure out where I am and what i'm doing but it really is all practice. Que - Favourite quote about Practice "Practice makes permanent not perfect".

That Monday session hailed the last in my 10 week block, i'm moving on to a rest week this week followed by two 6 week blocks of Hypertrophy. I can not wait. This is where the muscle mass should in theory come on and put me back up to 120kg. I still need to shed a bit of fat around the mid section but that will come and to be honest although it would be nice to get rid of it from an aesthetic point of view, its not essential. The end of the 10 week block had me lifting some relatively good weight, I blasted a set of 3 x 180kg deadlifts and would probably hope to have a 1RM of approximately 200kg. My back is strong at the moment. That on top of Overhead squats at 8 x 55kg. (horrible exercise). Had me in a happy place (minus Bear's Ego dent as mentioned). I've included a snapshot of week 10 training to give you an indication of the types of exercise I was doing and the weights at the end of week 10 from circuits 1 & 2.


circuit training week 10 - weights and exercises

I even managed to top the week off with some family time - a chat on Skype to my brother Adam is wife Karen and son Nathan who he has taught to call me "muppet mike". Had lunch with my other brother Paul with his wife Nat and my Niece and Nephew, Ava and Josh. I even caught up with my folks and the in laws. It was great to see them all but i'm pretty sure Paul thinks i'll be wearing a mask, have a stage name and a finishing move. I have explained, so hopefully he has that out of his head! If not i'll bring him in for a session (he is going for second dan Ju-jitsu after all).
So, after 10 weeks... where does #mission2014 go from here. Like I mentioned, it goes to hypertrophy. I still have a lot of work to do and i'm not stopping until I get there or I don't. I still think it will be surreal to get to Glasgow 2014 and its a massive goal that does seem at times seem unachievable, everything has gone pretty quick and to be honest the support from friends and family has been terrific in places. I don't know if it is realistic target, but i'll stick at it and hope that in just under two years I will be representing Scotland on the mat in the Commonweath Games. How funny would it be to read this blog back having been to the Commonwealth Games and dare I dream with a medal of some description. I digress, I daydream. 

I'll be getting Tyson Fitness on the nutritional case over the next week to get my diet on track to make sure I can pull off the hypertrophy sessions, from what i've seen its going to be fairly intense i'm sure they will be hooking me up with all the good stuff I need but i'll let them decide (new protein shaker wouldn't go amiss!)

[EN]GAGE Wrestling Club

I've started the Wrestling club on a Friday night at [EN]GAGE Sports Centre (18:00-19:30) which was great on Friday, one of the guys Steve leads the session and his knowledge and method of coaching is a valuable asset and we certainly found it really useful especially in simulated situations, like the one I struggled with. I was training with one of the guys, managed to get a nice "pancake", a "gator role" and a pin. I did have a weight advantage though. For those who don't know what a "pancake" is, it's basically the defending of a double leg attack where you basically rotate them onto their back. The beauty of this move is that you can use the bone on the knuckle of your thumb on the jaw line, which apart from being very uncomfortable releases the grip and allows you to throw. It's pretty rough, but pretty effective!  

This week is pretty full on for me, I have Wrestling 4 times this week, I'm finally getting to the Palace of Arts to meet the national coach and let him know what my ambitions are and to take some guidance off him. I'm heading there Tuesday and Wednesday and will be familyless for those days as they are all away, allows me to catch up on sleep!
The hope for me would be that I would like to eventually like to fill one of Scottish Wrestling's institute places and get the support that I need to keep this up, travelling to Glasgow will take its toll, mentally and financially and of course the work and training at ENGAGE is also keeping me busy! but where there is a will, there is a way! I've got loads of hard work and some matches to win before I get to where I need to be with that, but fingers crossed.

My final thought for the day shifts back towards work, I've been nominated for the Edinburgh Napier University Achievement awards, nothing to do with wrestling but about all the stuff I did at uni for sport and for what I have been doing since I graduated. The awards aren't until the 15th November but its really humbling to have been nominated for doing something that you love doing, so fingers crossed for me on that one! Even if I don't win, its a great thing to have been put forward for and one that I would love to win for a number of reasons. 

Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed the update - feel free to share it around and if you want to get involved in wrestling in Edinburgh let me know. Engage Wrestling Club is on facebook just click the link and as always you can follow me on twitter.

@shocksjr

I decided to go back to this one, got confusing with the others. The reason I had two in the first place was because I was trying to keep it separate but thought, what the heck... who cares!

Cheers and thanks for taking time to read the blog!
P.S - Happy Birthday Bear!

Circuits - VO2 Max - Circuits

Me promoting Community Sports Development

I'm delighted to say that I made it through week one of my training and week two is now pretty much done. I feel good. I feel like i'm making progress, I've lost a reasonable amount of weight in the last 3 weeks, just through two weeks intense exercise and 4 weeks diet. I've dropped 8kg (about the weight of a West Highland Terrier) That puts me down at 115.9kg

I feel alot fitter and stronger than this time last week but that might be because i've reintroduced carbs at a low level back into my diet to get me through training.

Last week was pretty brutal, my legs took a pounding and by the time I got round to circuit training on Thursday I still wasn't sure how I was going to do it. The warm up on the crosstrainer was difficult as my legs were screaming with DOMS but I managed to get to the platform for the circuit. 

The circuit was a muscular endurance circuit that did really test me. 8 sets of 12 repetitions featuring the good old 50% weight (60kg) parallel squat, push ups, TRX rows, Leg raises and sprints. followed by a 21 minute boxing circuit. New levels of tiredness that i've never experienced before.

Michael Cavanagh, kindly gave me a ring at the end of last week and we are moving to set up the Wrestling club at [EN]GAGE. Michael is hopefully donating a bit of time to help out with the coaching, so if you are reading this and interested in Wrestling, get in touch with me and i'll give you all the info when it starts. I can't wait for that! very cool that its happening!

By the end of training last week. It left me wondering how the hell I was going to get through the next 18 months if I could only get up and down the stairs without bending my legs but 3 Stretching sessions later and Monday was back around and i'm still here!

The weekend was Awesome, Giles, one of my best mates got hitched to Becky - it was a cracking day, they lucked out on the wedding and everything went smoothly. I had a few drinks as ordered by Alex but nothing too extreme.

I've also got another in kind Sponsor. Ross Grady is now officially doing my massages as and when required which is fantastic, he knows how to cause me pain (good pain obviously) but another person i'm grateful to have on board.

I rocked in on Monday, actually dreading what was going to happen, but Alex sat me down and told me that week one was all about shocking the body and getting the mindset right to push you to levels that you need to get to and continue on. What a B*****D!

I say that but I got through it and that's the main thing. Week two was a lot more gentle. I'm not into 10 weeks anatomical adaptation and prehab, basically getting my body ready for Hypertrophy and Max Strength. Monday's session was tough but really good and Tuesday's session was later on in the day after Throws with Darren "Bear" Steadwood. It was pretty hard going but I was feeling pretty good. I threw Bear but "accidentally" dropped him on is head, occasionally stuck the knee in his side a few times and landed on him a couple more times. Bear, sweating out 4 days of booze joined me for my circuit as well, it wasn't as phyisically taxing as I would have liked to see bear go through, but it was great for technique, we were squating, overhead (OH) squatting, push pressing, OH lunging, Deadlifting and a few others, all in all the volume was high (160 reps) but the intensity and load were quite low. Still, pretty hard work!

Wednesday hailed a rest day, well I say rest day... I actually find flexibility a bit tough, but I am getting more agile and more flexible as the days go on.

Thursday - Not so fun! I had to do my 1st VO2 Max test in 9 years. Alex will give you a bit more information in the video below:



VO2 Max test

And here is me starting...

This wasn't the most fun I have had over a Thursday much time, but I guess it needed to be done!

Below you will find two video clips... the first is me really beginning to struggle and the other is me at exhaustion. Wonderful stuff!

I keep telling myself that it will all be worth it 2 years down the line if/when I make the Scotland Squad for Glasgow 2014.