Elite Strength & Conditioning

Bench press plateaus! Don’t you hate them? Especially when adding 10lbs to a 1RM seems to take forever. One obstacle I’m encountering is trying to get stronger in the bench and military press at the same time and getting the amount of required volume (2 workouts per week) during the week for each exercise. My front deltoids are so sore after a shoulder press workout that sometimes I have to wait 3 days before I can train the bench and then I cannot get the required volume during the week. I’m trying a new approach which will mitigate soreness in the front delts allowing me to hit each exercise twice per week. I’ve modified my bench press technique with a wider grip, incorporating rest pause, short isometric holds and limiting the range of motion below the sticking point. This way my pecs have to do most of the work and it works like a charm! I’ve never gotten a chest pump this big after a bench workout. I’m doing 5 work sets in this workout ramping the weight up to a 5RM on the third set then finishing with a burn out set at 12 RM. Excited to see what comes of this in 4 weeks!

Had to take a couple of weeks off from heavy lifting due to the recent injury I sustained but I’m bouncing back quicker than ever. Thankfully I’ve maintained a lot of my strength. My hands do still hurt but the pain is nothing compared to what it was during the first week. I’ve had numerous setbacks in my training due to a lifetime of struggle with trauma, addiction and mental health and the philosophy I’m basically forced to live by is from one of my favourite movies “Rocky” and it goes “it ain’t about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward”. And the faster you get back up after a setback the more losses you will mitigate. I’ve had to learn that the hard way because there have been times where I flushed months of hard training down the toilet because I couldn’t find the strength to get back up quick enough and I stopped believing in myself but not this time! So never stop believing in yourself and whatever it is you are trying to accomplish because life will lose it’s meaning and you will drift aimlessly from day to day. Thank you to all the people who reached out and supported me during this crisis. ❤️

I start most of my mornings with 15 mins of high intensity cardio then 45mins of Qi Gong meditation. The health benefits of Qi Gong are numerous and overlap those of exercise, but the greatest benefit of Qi Gong is the elevating effect it has on mood, tolerance to any kind of pain, and energy levels. It also has a restorative, rejuvenating and anti-aging effect. One 45 min session elevates my mood and energy for up to 6 hours allowing me to push harder in the gym.

Today’s full body MRT calisthenic workout. 8th and final set. Aiming for around 8 reps per set. Workout consists of the following exercises: dip/L-sit combo, partial tuck planche pushups, archer pushup, diamond pushup, a squat front raise combo and a reverse bent over rear delt fly (gets cut off at the end). My shoulders and triceps will definitely be feeling this tomorrow and I got my 25mins of HIIT in for today just using some creativity and a set of pushup/parallel bars. There are tons of options with calisthenics for building a strong and lean physique and the workouts are fun!

My best attempt at the clap pushup challenge. Some reps didn’t count cause my hands didn’t meet but close to 40 anyway 🤷🏻‍♂️I nominate .gallant