Author Archives: Paul Stagg

About Paul Stagg

Husband, lifter, MBA in Baltimore, MD. Will post about Powerlifting, politics, Classical Liberalism, Economics, building wealth, self improvement, productivity, heavy music, wine, food, beer, and almost anything else.
December 30, 2015

Sheiko #29, Week 1, Day 3

By Paul Stagg

Couldn’t get it done today.  I’m not sure exactly what my performance means, but I have a couple of ideas.  The last 4 sets of deadlifts were to be triples with 375 off 4 inch boxes.  I couldn’t pull it once.

That means:

  1. I’m not in condition to handle this volume of work.  That’s possible, but I made it through Monday, which was much harder.
  2. I’ve never been strong off boxes or doing rack pulls.  Not sure why, or even what that means, but my max off a 4 inch box is probably the same as my max pull.  I have trouble getting the bar moving.  Maybe that’s a weak low back compared to hamstrings?  Switching to sumo might be the answer, but I don’t know that I pull more sumo than conventional.
  3. I just had a bad day.  I didn’t get 8 hours of sleep last night, and I didn’t eat as well as usual yesterday.  I think it’s possible, but it’s not an excuse, and shouldn’t be – I’ve had incredible training days after terrible nights of sleep.

Anyway, here are the details

Deadlift to Knees

220×3

2×3 @ 265

2×3 @ 305

4×3 @ 330

I liked these, they made me focus on the pull off the floor, and focus on keeping the bar close to my shins.

Incline Bench Press

4×6 @ 135

Incline benching with a normal grip bothers my shoulders, so I use a close grip.  Kept these light and manageable.

Pullup

5×5

Deadlift from 4″ boxes

245×4

285×4

2×4 @ 330

375 x miss, miss, miss

330 felt OK.  I really feel these in my lower back, so maybe that’s a weakness.  Seemed really strange that 330 was OK but 375 barely moved.

Lunge

5×5

Overall, while I’m not happy I couldn’t complete the prescribed sets, I still feel OK.  I might make an adjustment to my training maximum, although I looked ahead at the deadlift training next week, and it’s not as heavy, so I might just stick with it and see if today was just a bad day.

 

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December 28, 2015

Sheiko #29, Week 1, Day 1

By Paul Stagg

Without going into much detail; Sheiko fits my current training planning pretty well.  Since I’ve never tried it, I figured I’d give it a go.

Keep in mind, Sheiko’s routines were never designed to be cookie cutter routines.  They are templates for his athletes, which would be adjusted by their coach throughout the training cycle.  I am my own coach, so I’ll make minor adjustments as I see fit.

Today is day 1.

Bench Press

165 x 5

195 x 4

2×3 @ 225

5×3 @ 245

Squat

205×5

2×5 @ 245

5×5 @ 285

Bench Press

165 x 5

195 x 5

4×4 @ 225

DB Fly

5×10

Good Morning

5×5

Including warmups, this took a little under 2 hours.  My warm up is pretty extensive, though.  Also, the warmup sets are not included above.

 

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November 16, 2015

Beringer Wine Dinner

By Paul Stagg

Last Wednesday, we had an opportunity to attend a Beringer wine dinner at Cunningham’s in Towson.

Beringer is a big, big name in wine, and they made their mark (and their money) selling inexpensive wine.  They may be best know for White Zinfandel.  So we had tempered expectations on the wine, but were looking forward to the food, and spending some time with our friend M.

We also look forward to meeting new people at these events.

Overall, the food was outstanding, and the wines were pretty good, too. Continue reading

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November 13, 2015

Grow Up

By Paul Stagg

Some very good advice from Jim Wendler.

Mason Darrow didn’t choose to be gay and I can’t imagine the stress of telling his teammates. But I can assure you that if his teammates didn’t get on his case about him being gay, he would have been alone in that locker room.  There is a difference between hate and busting balls.  This has been understood by high school kids, in locker rooms, for decades.  Somehow this has been lost by those too busy to police the world than to mind their own goddamn business.

I think a lot of people would be happier, and they would find more success, if they quit worrying about other people and started worrying about themselves.  Live your life, focus on getting yourself the best you can be.  Let other people worry about themselves.

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November 12, 2015

Rebooting Blogging?

By Paul Stagg

I think I might start blogging again.  It’s been a long time since I regularly wrote anything other than training log updates, and even those moved to facebook a while ago.

I have moved on (mostly) from political/current events.  The older I get, the less I care, and the more I realize how little it matters to me.  I’ve posted about this before, but I’ll say it again:  When part of such a small minority political philosophy, you can lose yourself in frustration.  The vast majority of people fundamentally believe they get their rights from the government in the form of permission; that there is no such thing as a right based simply on a persons’ humanity.  That isn’t changing in my lifetime, so instead of getting worked up about which R or D is going to get elected, I refocused on myself, my family, my friends, and my clients.  Whatever the government does, I can work around it; typically it’s just a financial cost, so I just work a little harder.  (I feel bad for people who can’t do that – where a 20%+ increase in their ‘affordable’ health care insurance means something in their monthly budget.)

Anyway, I’m done with frustrations.  Other than the Ravens.

So if I actually stick with this, I’ll be posting about food, wine, lifting, with a little Economics, and probably some other random stuff tossed in for good measure.

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July 14, 2015

Benchin’ 7/14/15

By Paul Stagg

Incline Close Grip

3×5 @ 180

DB Row

3×8 @ 105

Incline Tate Press

3×6 @ 40

Hammer Curl

2×10 @ 35

40×8

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July 13, 2015

Catching up on training

By Paul Stagg

Since I got out of the blogging habit, I have been forgetting to post my recent training sessions.  Here are highlights:

6/29 Deadlift

Deadlifts

2×5 @ 315

2×5 @ 250

Box Squat

3×5 @ 235

Reverse Hypers and side bends

7/6 Bench 2 (took some extra days off because of work and stress)

Incline close grip

3×5 @ 175

DB Row

3×8 @ 100

Incline Tate Press, Hammer curls

7/8 Squat

Squat

3×5 @ 305

2×5 @ 245

RDL

3×5 @ 265

45 degree hyper and incline situps

7/10 Bench

Bench Press

3×5 @ 240 (6 reps last set)

2×5 @ 195

Press

3×5 @ 140

Pullups and rear delts

7/13 Deadlift

2×5 @ 325

1×8 @ 325

2×5 @ 260

Box Squat

3×5 @ 245

Reverse hypers and side bends

 

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June 27, 2015

On Current Events…

By Paul Stagg

There’s been a lot happening lately, huh?  Here are my very quick thoughts.

On marriage:

All I have to say is the government has no business requiring a permission slip for anyone to enter into a marriage contract.  If your church doesn’t want to marry the gays, that’s fine with me.  If you don’t want to make a gay wedding cake, that’s fine with me, too.  Also, the 14th Amendment.

On flags:

I think it’s a waste of time and energy.  You can do all you want with symbols to which you attach meaning, but you can’t change what’s in another person’s heart.  There is evil in the world, and if you think changing which flags fly where will change that, you have a view of the world I can’t comprehend.  Although I kind of wish I could.

On guns:

Loaded my Glock and wrapped it in a Rebel flag.  It didn’t do anything.  I’m looking forward to the day the Supreme Court applies the same logic to firearms as it does to marriage, making a carry permit from any state legitimate in every state.  I look forward to the President standing behind me on this issue.

On the President:

Just a reminder, he spent most of his political career working against the right of all people to marry, and he could have worked to make the court ruling unnecessary many years ago.  But he didn’t.  Quit giving him credit for it.  Instead, give him credit for the continued aggressive drug war (more aggressive at the federal level than any of his predecessors, by the way) and give him credit for assassinating innocent people with drones.  Every single person running for President as a Democrat has worked to limit marriage equality.  EVERY ONE OF THEM.

On the Presidential race:

Really?  This is as good as we can do?

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June 27, 2015

Squats 6/25 and Benching 6/27

By Paul Stagg

Squatted on Thursday, here’s what I did:

Squat

295×5

295×6

235×5

235×5

RDL

2×5 @ 260

45 degree hyper

3×12

Incline Situp

2×8

Benched this morning, and did this:

Bench Press

235×5

235×10

185×5

185×5

Press

2×5 @ 135

Pullup

5×5

Rear delt raises

3×12 @ 20

Band Pressdown

2×12 w/ light band

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June 19, 2015

Deadlift 6/19/15

By Paul Stagg

Walked in, set a PR, walked out.

Deadlift

370×1

370×1

370×6

300×1

300×1

3 Comments   |  tags: , | posted in Training

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