Giant 1.1: Week 4

This is the last week of The Giant 1.1. I pushed myself a little bit more this week, but not too hard. After a set, I've rested until the burning sensation in my lungs is gone, then waited until my heartrate and breathing dropped close to normal, before starting another set. All I changed this week was wait for the lungs-on-fire sensation to go away, then rest for less time after that compared to previous weeks. It helped that my conditioning improved so that I didn't feel like I needed as much rest compared to week 1 of The Giant.

Requiring rest less between sets allowed me to do more sets overall within a 25-min. session. For all 3 sessions this week, I was able to do 50+ total reps. This led to a slight increase in appetite compared to previous weeks.

On my The Giant days, one activity I've doing sometime after a session is chin ups in sets of 2-3 reps, to try to condition my elbow tissues for pulling with supinated hands. When I first heard of the argument that too much activity with hand in pronation, and not enough activity with hands in supination will lead to elbow tendonitis, I was admittedly dismissive. Then I learned more about Davis' Law, which states that tissues model along lines of stress. Thus, I've been doing chin ups to compensate for all the pronation involved in high volume kettlebell clean + press, as well as condition the tissues for supination. I feel some pain in my right elbow when I do chin ups, but oddly enough, no pain at all in my left elbow when I do chin ups. The left elbow can be irritated when I play guitar, as I use my left hand for fretting notes - this is one of the reasons I've been spending more time practicing on piano than on guitar. Anyway, the pain in my right elbow during chin ups has gradually decreased over time. has the info about Davis' Law, pronation vs. supination, recommended sets and reps, etc.

Also on my The Giant days, another activity I've been doing later in the day is shoulder dislocates with a stick. This is one of the exercises Neupert recommends for improving overhead reaching mobility. I'd been using a resistance band for shoulder dislocates, but it comes with a risk of shoulder injury without strict attention to keeping the chest forward as the arms rotate to the rear. I tried using a broomstick but just couldn't get a good range of motion. Then I picked up one of the orange 76" long Stick Mobility sticks and attempted the movement on it. It's quite a bit longer than the broomstick. The longer width allows me to hold the stick with a wide enough grip to do the movement with a full range of motion.