Hybrid GSCARVE: Week 3

The Monday leg session went smoothly. The pistol squat performance was almost the same as Friday, except I used a little less assistance from the NOSSK suspension trainer. I sank a little too quickly into the bottom position, however, so next session I will make myself do a 4-count eccentric. I progressed on the suspension hip hinge to cross-ankle, then to fully single-leg hip hinge after finding the cross-ankle variation almost as easy as the two-leg version.

For some reason, I woke up earlier than expected on Wednesday morning, thus getting less sleep than desirable. I felt a little weaker in my Pike Pushup practice. There were a couple of times in which I stalled on the concentric, failed to shift enough weight away from my hands, and had to restart the con centric. I decided to try rest-pause, inserting at least 15-second rest between reps. I think part of the problem is that I had my feet on a chair that was sliding too much because of the sliders on its feet, despite the chair being up against the wall. I originally started using the chairs because I thought I would be practicing Pike Pushup with my knees on the chairs. But I don't really need the chairs anymore. So next week, I'll practice this move with my feet on the stairs, and the P-Barz against the wall - as they were sliding a bit too and thus distracting me from the weight-shift.

I did these reps for the pull up sets: 7 7 9. The Backfill strategy from GSC appears to be working better than my previous strategy of doing reps to failure, or close to it, on every set, which resulted in rep numbers like: 9 7 5. By doing only 7 reps per set for the first two sets, even though I could have done more, I had enough energy on reserve to do 9 reps for the last set. Thus the Backfill strategy promotes greater overall training volume.

For the finisher set, I did archer rows on the NOSSK, alternating working arms and using the assistance arm as little as possible. I tried to focus on keeping the shoulders down.

I wanted to make up for my disappointing Pike Push Up performance, so I did a finisher set by setting a timer to 90 seconds, then doing Bent-Arm Bear for as long as I could, then regular Bear. I didn't make it to the full 90 sec. so I stopped the timer, and did hands-on-floor push ups to finish burning out the pushing muscles.

For the Friday session, I did 4 antagonist pair (assisted Pistol Squat and one-leg suspension hip hinge). The results in reps:
Pistol Squat: 3 3 3 3
Hip Hinge: 4 4 4 4

These are the 3 mobility drills that Mindful Mover recommends the most for people who are training for general-purpose strength (not for specialized purposes): Split Squat (aka "ATG Split Squat"), Jefferson Curl, Brachial Hang. I finished the Friday session with some ATG split squatting with the front foot elevated on a thick book, then some Jefferson curls with a couple of soup cans in a bag for load.