I must have the worst case of dyscalculia… once again I was prepping for a Power To The People (PTTP) type lifting session and hosed up the weight amount when loading the bar.
But let me back up a little. Longsword on Friday was excellent, a good training session going over in some detail the first Zornhau “play” straight from Liechtenauer. Started off with striking practice with the longsword waster against a pell–in this case a mobile heavy bag such as I have in my basement.
Saturday I got a new chain and sprocket set put on the moto. Then I went up to some friends’ get together to celebrate the completion of both their renovation and their first home brewing experience. But I was a bit tired for some reason; I was a bit sleepy on the way up, then really sleepy on the way back and went basically right to bed. Only one beer, thank you very much…
Today, I woke up with a headache, and later just felt not quite right and unmotivated, so didn’t go to the University fencing practice. As time passed, I felt better, and wanted to get a workout session in, so I did, a little bit ago. Went for another strength session.
To activate the neuro-muscular system, I hit a few jackknife push ups (good description here) a bit before the heavy part of the session. Then I started off with 3 on either side of the “two-hands anyhow” with the 32 and the 16 kg bells. For the deadlift portion, I wanted to go just a bit heavier than I did for most of my reps last time, but less than the first two, which I had mistakenly loaded up more then I was anticipating.
This time, I basically made the same error, but worse!! Somehow, I got confused looking at the plate weights labeled on the side. The Weider weights I have have both kilos and pounds. So I looked at the wrong label or something when putting them on. Last time I had the 22 lb weights in addition to the three wheels of 44 lbs, either side.
So this time, I put what I thought were 15 lb disks on there. Alas, no!! These were 15 KILO disks!!! So after I lifted it, I saw that they were the 33 lb weights, either side. So instead of the 339 lbs I was expecting, I ended up with 375!! Now–I did lift it, but I knew that I didn’t want to do multiples up there, yet. I need to build my strength back up, for safety and health’s sake.
Let me have an aside here. People use words like strength, power, and endurance a lot, and kind of sloppily, as far as I’m concerned. I tend to use them in the common terms, because that’s what people seem to understand. But really, what’s the difference between “strength” and “power.” I’ve seen some really vague answers out there, and it’s always kind of bothered me. People kind of indicate that power is sort of like, slow, grinding lifts and strength is somehow quick, explosive lifts.
But really, what I think of it, from an engineering stand point, is that “strength” is the resistance to breakage or damage, from shear or torquing forces. And power is the ability to affect something else–in lifting you could apply the term as one’s ability to get some mass to move. (In real engineering terms, “power” is often given as a measure of heat that comes off of a system when work happens, and “work” is the measure of movement).
Looking at the Wikipedia entries is interesting for the multiple uses of these terms. One of the definitions of “strength” in humans and animals indicates that “physical strength” is “the ability of a person to exert force on physical objects using muscles.” The rest of the article looks a little sloppy to me (and is, in fact, a stub). I suppose this bears more investigation. I’m sure there’s some agreed upon formal definitions in kinesiology or somewhere. But who, really, is the authority for this stuff?
So, in any case, when I’m talking about making sure I’m strong enough to lift something safely, I’m indicating that I want to be able to have the ability to apply force whilst making sure my frame (joints, connective tissues, etc.) will not fail (break, damage, misalign, etc.) when I’m applying that force. To me, that’s as important in strength training as simply the ability to move a mass.
Anyway…
The PT was the basic PTTP, where I start with an overhead lift, then do the deadlifts, then go back to the overhead, etc. I did this for three cycles. Oh, and after discovering my counting error on the first lift, I took the extra weight off, and replaced the 10 kg disks with 11 lb disks, for a total of 331 lbs. A bit safer and more manageable right now for my second dl session in a while. I haven’t decided on a final goal, yet, except I want to work back up to an easy, safe four wheels. I’ll see how I feel then. In between the other sets I managed one set of jackknife push ups, then finished off with them and some stretching.
Looked a little something like this:
5 jackknife push ups
3 each side, two-hands anyhow (32/16 kg)
1 dl (375 lbs)
2 dl (331 lbs)
3 each side, two-hands anyhow (32/16 kg)
3 dl (331 lbs)
5 jackknife push ups
4 each side, two-hands anyhow (32/16 kg)
4 dl (331 lbs)
5 jackknife push ups
Stretching
Oh, and for an example of the two-hands anyhow:
I did some searching on YouTube, and there are quite a few variations on it. This was close to what I did, except I kept using the same hand with the heavy weight for several reps, then switched hands. Less complex for me that way.
Vióla!

