Thursday, December 31, 2015

GtG 4.4 - Goblet Squats - 20151231

Started the year doing 531, ended it with goblet squats. Not with a bang, but a whimper. Good thing I'm a humble man, here at the end of 2015.

Buy in, no timer
2x20 Hip Thruster, strong band
2x25 Adductor, medium band
-
3x20 Hip Thruster, strong band
3x10-11 RDL @ 133#
14 mins.

Main set, 1 min RI
5x 20 Goblet Squats @ 53#
14 mins.

Antagonists
HT timer
4 rounds, Kips x8ish
3 rounds, Ring dips x7ish
9 mins.

8.5 hours - 2130/0600. 38 minutes total. PE: 7.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

GtG 4.2 - Front Squat - 151229

Buy in
5 Rounds, no timer

2x25 Adductor, medium band
2x25 Hip Thruster, strong band
5 mins.
3x25 Hip Thruster, strong band
3x10-11 GtO @ 113#
9 mins.

Sitting on the 16" Hip thruster backrest feels like it creates better activation during adductors than sitting on the 20" plyo box.

Main set
3 rounds, 1.30 RI
Front Squat x9/11/12 @ 135#
8 mins.

8 hours - 2200/0600. 24 mins total. 24 hours, PE 6.

Monday, December 28, 2015

GtG 4.1 - Oly Squat - 151228

AM
6x7ish hammer curl w/ 41# water jugs
7 mins.

Buy in
5 Rounds, no timer
2x25 Hip Thruster, strong band
2x25 Adductor, medium band
6 mins.
3x25 Hip Thruster, strong band
3x10-11 RDL @ 133#
6 mins.

Main Set
Oly Squat, in .30 on 2.00
10x 135/6x 205/3x6 @235
11 mins.

Adding in RDLs today, really feeling the lack of balance with no hamstring work in this squat-focused program, and with all the sitting in the truck for work (6+ hours today). 
Squats were ATG, no messing around. 6's @ 235 isn't anything to write home about, but it's progress from where I've been. Infrequent sessions, crazy schedule, no-watch nutrition, and I'm still moving forward - I'll totally take it.

Did assessment today. Not much movement in a month; see lots of loss in upper body size  with no real upper body work on this program. This misses the GTG week 4.



6.5 hours - 2130/0400. 32 mins total. 5 days, PE 8. 226.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

GtG 3.6 - Goblet Squats n' PushPull - 151222

Knees are achy lately. Lots of sitting, but also not stretching the quads or doing hamstring work. Don't want to blame it on the GtG protocol - I'm not working wholistically here.

Buy in, no timer
4x20 Hip Thruster, strong band
3x15 Adductor, medium band
9 mins.

Main set, 1 min RI
4x 20 Goblet Squats @ 53#
7 mins.

Antagonists
4 rounds, double down with a single 1 min RI
Press @ 135# 6/7/8/2
Pull up x3-5's
11 mins.

6.5 hours - 2130/0415. 28 minutes total. PE: 6.

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Riven Christmas.

Remember Myst? The Cyan game with Riven and Exile sequels where worlds were created by writing them into existence into special books? Where, in Exile, the villain Gehn was incapable of writing creatively, of understanding how the elements of the worlds interrelated, but still wanted to create worlds - and so, stole fragments and phrases from Atrus the hero's books to create inoperable books and Frankensteinesque worlds of his own? I broke world 37 when I made the ocean warm. All the water is gone. Oops.

Today's wership songwriters cobble lines together like Gehn. 

These were the lyrics to a christmas-wership mashup song today:

Oh come all ye faithful
Bow before our Savior
Come let us adore 
the One Who came for us
Glory in the highest
Praise the name of Jesus
Our King has come

Oh come let us adore Him
For He alone is worthy
Our King has come
Our King has come


This really happened. Someone really lifted taglines from established carols and called the synthesis a song. Someone at the church where I was attending today thought that the synthesis was worth presenting as wership. 

And, someone in the 8th row back, just off center stage, found it laughable, then sad, and finally, an indictment on the substandard state of contemporary christian philosophy.
He can't answer for everyone, but he knows he can do better. And will. And is. Time to write a world of worship inhabitable by God.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

GtG 3.5 - Front Squat - 151219

Warm up
Jump rope, 1 min
10x squat jumps
30 sec static hang
12x Y-pulls
3 mins.

Buy in
2 Rounds, loose timer
4x20 Hip Thruster, strong band
3x15 Adductor, medium band
9 mins.

Main set
4 rounds, in .30 on 2.00
Front Squat x10-12 @ 135#
10 mins.

3 rounds, HT timer
Ring Row, max reps
Y-pulls, max reps
8 mins.

8.5 hours - 2230/0700. 31 mins total, PE 6. 4 days.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

GtG 3.4 - Oly Squat - 151215

Jumping ahead a week, this is too easy for even an Easy day. Doing the minimum with the minimum time available to give up to the cause. Squats felt strong and good today; down from 245# to 235# though. No knee pain - super cold outside; the bar hurt to hold.

Buy in
2 Rounds, loose timer
3x20 Hip Thruster, strong band
2x15 Adductor, medium band
9 mins.

Main set
Oly Squat - 1 min RI
10x 135#, 10x 185, 235 x5/5/5/5
10 mins.

6.5 hours - 2130/0400. 20 mins total, PE 6. 24 hours.

Monday, December 14, 2015

GtG 2.3 - Goblet Squats - 151214

Do work. Do the minimum, but stay on schedule.

Buy in, no timer
3x20 Hip Thruster, strong band
2x15 Adductor, medium band
6 mins.

Main set, 1 min RI
3x 20 Goblet Squats @ 53#
5 mins.

8 hours - 2130/0530. 11 minutes total. PE: 5.

Friday, December 11, 2015

GtG 2.2 - Front Squat n' PullPush - 151211

Buy in
2 Rounds, loose timer
2x15 Adductor, medium band
2x20+ Hip Thruster, strong band
7 mins.

Main set
4 rounds in .30 on 2.00
Front Squat @ no count/8/10/9 @ 135#
8 mins.

Antagonists
3 rounds, HT timer
Chins x5-3's
OH press x10-8 @115#
… one more Chin.
9 mins.


6 hours - 2130/0330. 25 mins total, PE 7. 24 hours.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

GtG 2.1 - Oly Squat, Racing the Rain - 151210

In a rush to pull out the Hip thruster and get it back under the eaves before the rain really started up - and then, it just quit. HPCs felt really nice tonight.

Buy in
2 Rounds, no timer
2x15 Adductor, medium band
2x20 Hip Thruster, strong band
7 mins.

Main Set
Oly Squat, in .30 on 2.00
10x 135/5x 205/4x 225/245 x4/4/4
12 mins.

… last sets felt better than the first sets.

3 rounds, HT timer
Hang Power Cleans @ 115 x8ish
4 mins.

24 mins total, PE 6. 24 hours.

Place of Rest?

Graham Cooke was talking about his place of rest, where the enemy can't touch him. His is a little shower-curtain-of-elvenkind in the plains of LoTR, where the orcs on wargs can't see him and unwittingly ride past. Hearing his story, I wondered what mine could be like - a Tardis? Just a police box that I could duck into and find myself in an impregnable space much larger on the inside than outside? That would be cool, but that was just my mind thinking up a place. I wanted to go to a place of rest like that, to have a place to duck into and remain untouchable for a moment of instant refreshment. 
I don't have my place yet, but I just experienced one that is unworldly.

Last night, I had one of those demonically-induced dreams that are so horrific that I must wake up out of self preservation. Always grotesque, this one culminated with me wandering down a street littered with bloated blood-jellied bodies of friends who'd fallen to the pavement as the hot air balloon they were in crashed, and me trying to vomit but choking on my own tongue, suffocating.

I woke, but didn't wake. Better to say, I broke from the dream - but was unable to open my eyes. I could move my eyes around under my eyelids, but my eyelids themselves were stuck shut. I saw a white room, filled with white objects - everything solid but uncolored, like a 3d model phong shaded white. I tried to look left and right, but moving my eyes didn't shift my view. What I was seeing stayed stuck in front of me. Look left, but the perspective doesn't move left - just static right there in front of me. A strange change in perception, for certain. 
I hadn't been in a place like this before. Not a dream. Not awake. Not a physical place. Not a mental image of a place, or a mentally-imaged place - my mind was in this place, this place was not in my mind - and my mind was trying to comprehend what and where. 
I had to focus on what I was seeing - took me a moment to realize that this was a crib with a mobile hanging over it… CC's old crib, tucked into the back corner of a matte white version of her old bedroom in the back of the house.

I don't really understand how success is measured. I know the world looks at a lot of externals to gauge success. I know that God looks more at internals, and is less concerned with what we do or what we've done, than with the who we are and the who we are becoming. I do think, in this moment, God was taking me to a moment of success for me in the Spirit. 

When CC was tiny, she suffered from ear infections. She didn't sleep much, and screamed and cried much more. This moment hearked-back to those nights when I'd hold her hand and lay on the crib bars, tired and uncomfortable, "wasting" my free evening in the dark and silence with nothing to do but pray for her, and sing as prettily and as gently as I could, and speak blessing into her future until she'd nod off into a sleep deep enough that I could sneak out of the room without reawakening her. 
I thought it was tiring time away from the bigger life I was trying to lead. A father's duty. But here I am in this white room, reminded that this is/was a holy moment - one in which I was like the Father, abiding with the needful child. A moment where I was doing kingdom work simply by praying and singing and blessing and wasting myself in unselfish care.

Back in my bed, I reached over with my real hand and held an imaginary CC's hand through the crib bars. She's been in an unhealthy place these last few weeks. In this spiritual place, I prayed for her and blessed her and watched over her for a little, like the old days.

This may not be my place of rest, for personal use in abiding. But I will use it when I intercede for CC, as my place for her when I watch over her as a father should. A place that is a landmark reminder that I have nothing better to do than to be in a spiritual place of rest for my child.

Wednesday, December 09, 2015

GtG 1.6 - Goblet Squat - 151209

Buy in
2 Rounds, loose timer
2x20 Hip Thruster, medium band
2x15 Adductor, medium band
5 mins.

Main set, no timer
3x 20 Goblet Squats @ 53#
Super-ed in FtB during the RI (tried rollouts but my lower abs felt like they were tearing they are so sore)
10 mins.

Antagonists
3 rounds, HT timer
Pendlay row, x10 @ 135#
Dynamic Push ups x10
10 mins.

26 mins total, PE 7. 24 hours.

Tuesday, December 08, 2015

GtG 1.5 - Front Squat - 151208

Strict pull up, chin up, neutral grip
3 rounds each, HT timer (2's-3's, mostly)
11 mins.

Buy in
2 Rounds, loose timer
2x20 Hip Thruster, medium band
2x15 Adductor, medium band
6 mins.

Main set
Front Squat 6/7/8/9 @ 135#
8 mins.

11 + 14 mins total, PE 5. 24 hours.

Monday, December 07, 2015

GtG 1.4 - Squat and Leave - 151207

2 rounds, no timer
Band abductions, medium band x15
Hip Thruster, medium band x20
6 mins.


6 rounds, in .30 on 2.00
Oly Squat 135 x10/205 x5/225 x5/245 x3/3/4
12 mins.

8.5 hours - 2130/0600. 18 mins total. 18 hours, PE 6.

Sunday, December 06, 2015

GtG 1.3 - Goblet Squats 234 - 151206

2 rounds, no timer
Band abductions, medium band x10
Hip Thruster, medium band x20
5 mins.

3 rounds, no timer

Ab Wheel Rollouts
Goblet squats w/ 53# KB x20
11 mins.

4 rounds, loose timer 40 secs RI
Press x10 @ 105
Strict Pull ups x4-5
13 mins.

7 +1 hours - 2230/0530. 30 mins total. PE 5.

Thursday, December 03, 2015

Bless This Home


Just a prayer of blessing for the home. Well, I say just, but, this was an exercise with a few facets; playing with a chord structure, as a crafted prayer to ask for God to make the home a special, sacred place. And, our enemy is a power of the air, so this is a song to change the atmosphere in the house. And, an exercise in the ability to create blessing through our words. Let this be a place where the peace of Jesus lives.

Tuesday, December 01, 2015

Radical Together, Chapter One

Lord, we don't want to settle for good things as your people. We want only Your best.

So this theme of Community keeps popping up for me (to be fair, there are lots of themes that keep popping up - trying to whack-a-mole them with study and the codification process into the knowledge-experience category). Read only the first chapter of David Platt's book yesterday.

We must be willing to sacrifice good things in the church (in life, yah) in order to experience the great things of God. Everything needs to belong on the table, available to the axe. We need to ask, What needs to go? What needs to change? What needs to stay the same? What needs more focus and resources?
And then wait for God to answer.

Asking the "What's wrong with..." question is counterproductive in this process. Because the good things aren't wrong. There's nothing wrong with so many of our pursuits - they are, definitively, good ones - but they're not the great, they're not the best, and they may not be God's will at all.

Platt had a list of church-program-related questions to skinny down his new church's activity set, but only a couple bridge into the personal as well:

What good things do we have, or what good things are we doing, that we need to abolish for greater ends?

Amid all the good things we are doing and planning, are there better ways to align with God's word, mobilize God's people, and marshal God's resources for God's glory in a world where millions of people are starving and a billion have never even heard of Jesus?

And the statement:

We will do whatever You want, we will drop whatever You command, we will eliminate whatever is not best, and we will add whatever is necessary in order to make Your glory known, no matter what it costs us.

Processing. Platt's concerned with the church community; their budget, activities, mission, giving. That's a start, but my start starts here in the home. We've been skinnied down to essentials over the last three years - from anywhere but a Lordly perspective, it's been a disaster. But it's been a blessing, really, and a natural training program to eliminate a lot of extraneous wants that weren't needs, some things that truly needed to go but had become lifestyle, and a lot of goods that weren't bests.
Now to be intentional about taking stock of what's left for us in our 
budget, activities, mission, giving.