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First Day With Tony

I mentioned a few days ago that I traded some distance training for some web work with the legendary Tony Gentilcore of Boston, MA. Today was the first day. I told Tony I had minimum equipment, about 75 min/day on 3 days/week, a body ready to be abused and a desire to grow big and strong. Here’s what he came up with:

Dynamic Mobility Warm Up
10x High-Knee Walk
10x Butt-Kick Walk
10x Overhead Lunge Walk
10x Spider-Man Walk
10x Quadruped Extensions-Rotations
10x Scapular Wall Slides
10x Scapular Push Ups
More Warm Up
2x Barbell Clean @ 95#
2x Barbell Clean @ 115#
2x Barbell Clean @ 135#
2x Barbell Clean @ 155#
2x Barbell Clean @ 165#
Front Squat Warm Up
4x Front Squat @ 185#
2x Front Squat @ 205#
1x Front Squat @ 225#
3x Circuit #1
4x Front Squat @ 235# (could probably go a little heavier next time)
5x (ea. leg) 1-leg Supine Bridge
10x No-Money Drill
More Front Squats
10x Front Squat @ 205# (this was way too light)
DB Bench Press Warm Up
8x DB Bench Press @ 2-35# DBs
4x DB Bench Press @ 2-45# DBs
2x DB Bench Press @ 2-55# DBs
3x Circuit #2
8x (ea. arm) 1-arm DB BP @ 65# DB
AMAP Barbell Body Rows - Feet Elevated

  1. 16x
  2. 11x
  3. 8x
3x Circuit #3
8x (ea. leg) 1-leg RDL @ 2-50# DBs
8x (ea. side) Side Plank Wall Slides
5x MYBH Finisher
10x Swings @ 24kg KB
10x (5x ea. side) Renegade Row @ 2-16kg KBs
10x Ball Slams @ 12# Medicine Ball
10x Burpees
90 sec. Rest

Marathoner and I had to bust our asses to move through this in 75 minutes and just barely made it. And it was good.

Thursday Night

Thursday night, my wife and I had dinner with my inlaws. When we got home around 8:30 or 8:45, there was sewage backing up into our basement. We immediately called Roto-Rooter. The guy came out and ‘cabled’ our line. He found nothing. Completely clear. We went out to the street and found the manhole cover, popped it open, and there was about 3.5 feet of standing water. He said, “This is an MSD [Metropolitan Sewer District] problem. Would you like me to call them?” I said, “sure” and he did. He was a very helpful and friendly guy. That’s how you run a business.

About 4:40am Friday, the MSD crew finally arrived and cleared the line in the street. I spent most of this weekend with a professional cleaning crew, tearing up carpet and cleaning my basement of my neighbors’ sewage. It was completely and absolutely gross.

Friday Morning

After just a few hours sleep Friday morning, I decided to test my Squat 1RM. What I lacked in good rest I made up for in rightous anger at somebody dumping sewage into my living space then not showing up for 5 hours to deal with it. (Not only that, MSD is trying to shed responsibility by saying “it rained too hard - not our fault” which is BS as the rain didn’t start in Kirkwood until after our basement flooded AND after they cleaned the street drain it rained much harder yet our basement flooded no more. To be clear, our solution/problem was correlated to them cleaning the drain/not cleaning the drain, not to the quantity of rain.)

Squat 1RM Test
8x OHS @ 45#
8x OHS @ 65#
8x OHS @ 85#
8x OHS @ 95#
6x OHS @ 115#
4x OHS @ 135#
2x OHS @ 155#
8x Squat @ 185#
4x Squat @ 205#
4x Squat @ 225#
2x Squat @ 275#
1x Squat @ 295#
1x Squat @ 315#
1x Squat @ 335#
1x Squat @ 345#
0x Squat @ 355#

345# is exactly my 1RM from June, the start of 5-3-1. It’s not as good as my bench press growth and not as bad as my deadlift. I still don’t know what to think of all this.

4 Comments

  1. J.B. wrote:

    Sorry to hear that your house filled with poo.
    I don’t know how you were feeling, but that is a TON of warm-up for a 1rm squat.
    I’d have gone with much less:
    5-10×45
    5×135
    3×185
    3×225
    2×275
    1×315.. then go from there.

    Interesting to see how he’s got things programmed out for you.
    Is he prescribing reps and weights, or percentages?
    If you’ve got pictures of the kid’s halloween costumes kate and I’d love to see them.

    Monday, November 2, 2009 at 1:38 pm | Permalink
  2. ces wrote:

    Yeah. That was probably pretty poor planning. I was super-tired and thought I’d work my way up slowly. Those 16 sets took every bit of an hour. You might have a point. Maybe could have eked another 5 or 10#. ~shrug~

    He prescribed only rep/set schemes, no weights - neither in #s nor in %s. I asked him about that and he said something like, “Lift as heavy as you can without missing a lift. I don’t want you to miss a lift.”
    It seems like I hit pretty bang on for the db bp and 1-l rdl, but undershot the front squats a bit. I’ll go a bit heavier next time.

    It’s a lot more mobility stuff than I’m used to. I mentioned that to him as well. He wrote back something like, “The strength coach in me would prefer you just shut up and do it.”
    =)
    …so I did.

    I think we do have pictures. I’ll send copies your way.

    Monday, November 2, 2009 at 2:23 pm | Permalink
  3. J.B. wrote:

    that still would have been a pr. Just sayin.

    Interesting. It’ll take some time to find your range.

    It is, and you have a.. for lack of better; ‘talent’ for mobility/flexibility.
    It’ll be interesting to see if you see any difference/improvement considering you’re already in good shape as far as that goes.

    please do.

    Monday, November 2, 2009 at 2:47 pm | Permalink
  4. Rick Fowler wrote:

    Chris,
    On very little sleep and with all of that stress, duplicating your best squat is quite a feat.

    Just think where you would have been on a day when you were fresh and the mind was free and focused.

    I would have scrapped the workout all together, so for you to press on is an accomplishment.

    Rick

    Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 3:21 pm | Permalink

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