Isochain 6x6 Week 2

The week began with the low back still feeling sore from the injury last week. My performance in the shoulder press was a little compromised because I could feel my low back working to keep my body upright and maintain the floor-to-hands pressure while I did the shoulder press. I did not want to risk aggravating the back by pushing too hard. By Wednesday morning, the back felt better, so I felt more confident about pushing harder on the shoulder press. The max force reading on my 6th, and final rep was 52.2 lbs, which was a new high at the 40 lb. target load. I decided to raise the target load by 2 lbs. for the Friday session. I also saw a performance jump in the drag curl, with a max reading of 41 lbs, up from a 33 lb. reading on Monday.

I changed my mind a couple of times about exercise selection for the 3rd and 4th exercises of this 6x6 routine. I finally decided to replace the Zercher Lunge with the Jefferson Deadlift, which is also called Straddle Lift in the Ultimate Isometric Manual, and have only 3 exercises instead of 4 because the Jefferson DL as an asymmetrical exercise takes more time than symmetrical ones like the shoulder press and regular deadlift. The Zercher Lunge looks like it would have more direct carryover to the Shrimp Squat and Pistol Squat because of the angle of the working ankle, knee, and hip. However working on it under 6x6 protocol seems to fatigue my legs enough that they feel prematurely sore when I try practicing the ATG Split Squat for mobility. I figure the Jefferson DL won't have the same effect. Also I have been curious about the reported benefits. As an anti-rotational exercise it's supposed to activate the obliques and multifidus to a high degree. It also introduces less shear force on the spine than the regular deadlift and has been known to help people with back pain work towards a regular deadlift.

Wednesday morning was my first trial of the Jefferson DL, with the target load set to a very conservative 100lbs. I was of course tentative for the first 3 reps because I didn't want to mess up my back. As my confidence grew, I was able to exert more and more force without feeling any increase in back pain. I was able to connect my fingers to my upper back while maintaining mixed grip, so that I did not feel any elbow pain. I played with hand positioning on the bar, and decided to grip near the bar ends, so that I would be less likely to rest my front hand on my thigh. I chose parallel feet alignment because of Mark Wildman's influence, who favors parallel feet for just about all kettlebell and heavy club training, because he feels trainees are too susceptible to allowing the knees to collapse inward otherwise. Before applying force, I make sure my shoulders were mostly in line with my hips. They're not perfectly in line because one hand is in front and the other hand is behind for holding the bar, but close enough that I did not feel any twist in the spine. The exercise felt good enough to keep it in my 6x6 routine. On one side I got a max force reading of 193.8 lbs on the final rep, and 248 lbs. on the other side.

The Friday session went smoothly. Shoulder press and drag curl max force readings on the final rep were down from Wednesday, as expected by the 2 lb. raise in target loads. This time I set a target load of 160 lbs. for the Jefferson Lift. This was sort of an arbitrary choice, as there was such a disparity between the max readings of each side on the Wednesday session. 70% of 194lbs seemed low for a target load. 70% of 200lbs would be 140lbs. which still looked low. Another change from Wednesday was turning the feet out, so that they were closer to 90 degrees from each other. This was because all the instructional articles and videos on the Jefferson Lift I could find advised the 90 degree angle. I did feel a stronger activation of muscle groups, particularly the glutes and hip adductors, compared to the parallel feet alignment. Last rep max force readings were 207.6 left-side and 215.8 right-side. In my training log, I will try to stick to a convention of left-side meaning the left foot is in front of the bar.

Later I tried a couple of pullups to see how my elbow and shoulder felt. I felt the Golfer's Elbow flare up a little on the first rep. By the last couple of test reps, I was able to eliminate the elbow pain by really focusing on pulling through my little fingers from the back. The shoulder however was not quite ready for brachial hang. I will wait until my very last training session under the current 6x6 program to test how my shoulder elbow and feel during pullups and hanging.

Some Instagram posts from Mindful Mover and Eduardo Orihuela that I'm saving here for future reference.

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