WRP: Week 5

I started the week with 12 sets of 5 reps of Shield Cast, Outside Circle and Inside Circle with the 15 lb. heavy club. Rest was about 2.5 min. between each of the 3 exercises. My form got really bad for the last couple of sets. So, I'm going to take an idea from the Mark Wildman Introduction to Heavy Clubs program that I bought - drop the exercise volume and go up to the next level fo complexity. The paid program organizes the exercises into 3 levels. Level 1 is all simple movements. Level 2 are a mix of simple and combination movements, and Level 3 is all combination movements. The program rotates between the 3 levels. The idea is that you will progress to more complicated movements, so that when you drop back to Level 1, the simpler movements are easier to do. When the movements feel easier to do, you can do more of those movements. When you have worked up to 10 or 20 sets (depending on whether you're training with a fixed-weight club or the Adex adjustable club) of 5 reps of the movement, you will have gotten much better at that movement, and are probably very close to maxing your possible gains in strength, hypertrophy, and endurance from that movement, at that club weight.

Shield Cast, Outside Circle and Inside Circle are Level 1 of what I call the Wildman Reconditioning Program (WRP) for single-arm heavy club. The exercises at Level 2 of WRP are Single-Arm Pullover, Inside Pendulum, Outside Pendulum. It's not hard to see why Wildman wants trainees to practice at Level 1 before progressing to Level 2.

Single-Arm Pullover - The Shield Cast is more forgiving in that the club pulls your torso upright and teaches you to keep the elbow in line with your shoulder. In the Single-Arm Pullover, you have to pay more attention to squeezing the glutes and tightening the abs. I really like what he says about saying things aloud, by the way.

Outside Pendulum - Outside Circle practice should get you used to rotating your torso and shifing your weight from foot to foot, while keeping your spine straight and upright, not turning your hips that much, and not moving your feet at all - this is all to prevent injury to your knees or back. Outside Pendulum has the same requirements, but adds an additional challenge. The bottom part of the movement will require you to hinge at the hip, but you still have to keep the spine straight

Inside Pendulum - I don't think he has a "for overweight or deconditioned people" version yet but this video is still applicable. The requirements and challenge are similar to Outside Pendulum.

For this week, I did 5 reps per set for each exercise, as before. On Wed. I did 5 sets. On Fri. I did 6 sets. I'll sleep on what I decide to what direction to take my training for next week. I switched from Isochain to heavy club training in the first place to improve the strength and conditioning of my forearms. I feel like I got the gains I could have possibly gotten for my forearms for this training cycle. Another reason was, I wanted to see if the heavy club work would result in my still-recovering shoulder feeling better - since this club work was supposed to traction my joints as well as condition the external rotators.. I felt there was someimprovement but it didn't come as fast as when I was training on Isochain.