Prep wk8: Weekend at Kongs & a Kingsize Sponsor

IT HAS been an eventful week. This particular piece of news was going to wait for a post of its own. Now seems as good a time as any, though. I have been in touch with Cameron, managing director of Kingsize Menswear; an Australian business with a sterling reputation and a vested interest (pardon the pun) in clothing the extra large Australian male.

We met mid-week at his office in Inglewood, where he told me what he was looking for. He needed a crew of big and tall gentlemen to model their upcoming summer collection, arriving late October / early November. He asked me if I could assemble such a crew. I said of course! By the next morning I had seven appropriately big and tall gentlemen signed up to be local celebrities.

Kingsize Menswear has also agreed to sponsor Static Monsters Perth! Their logo is a late addition to the banner for 2018, which also finished production last week. I have not seen it yet but have no doubt that Peter and the good people at Perth Stripes and Signs have done an excellent job with the new sponsor logos I commissioned a month ago.

Saturday I did what Kong has done, as many Saturdays as he could, for the last two and more years: I drove to York, an hour and fifteen minutes east of Perth. I finally got to train in 'the Padded Room' and meet his adorable new son, EJ (Ed junior), barely bigger than a zygote and still with that new baby smell. Now I want one too.

Last week I also made the rash decision to drop meadows rows. The setup and pack-up was becoming too time-consuming when performed in conjunction with heavy axle deadlifts, which also take a long time to assemble and pack away when the kilograms are approaching 300 and it's just yourself training them. So I switched to bent-over dumbbell rows at the same loading (40 kilograms). Everything felt fine but I guess I over-extended on the right side at some point and now I have a tricep strain that has bothered me this week, playing up on Saturday during farmers walk.

Hopefully without jinxing myself (something I can and have done in the past), I can say that my left hand seems to be healing, albeit very slowly, further confirming it's not soft tissue or nerve but a tendon injury I am dealing with. I was able to handle a 110 log on Saturday. I experienced no perceptible loss of grip strength and no numbness during the press... but it hurt. I said to Kong at the time that I wouldn't know till the following morning if I'd done yet more damage with this one lift, as that's usually how it goes. But, again, nothing was aggravated the next day. I can clench my fist without it feeling underpowered. It's just painful. This is still progress... so I haven't completely written off WASM state finals this year. But it's still a dicey prospect.

SATURDAY September 22nd
stretch
Log clean-press:
40 kg x 5
60 kg x 5
80 kg x 5
100 kg x 2
110 kg x 1
Yoke walk:
110 kg x 2 x 30 meters
150 kg x 2 x 30 meters
190 kg x 2 x 30 meters
Farmers walk (p/h):
75 kg x 2 x 30 meters

THURSDAY September 20th
stretch
Bench press (paused):
bar x 10
60 kg x 5
105 kg x 10
Incline barbell bench press:
80 kg x 3 x 10
HS chest press (p/h):
30 kg x 15
30 kg x 2 x 20
super-set w/HS bi curls (l&r):
15 kg x 3 x 10
DB bent-over rows (l&r):
40 kg x 15

TUESDAY September 18th
stretch
Log clean press:
45 kg x 10
60 kg x 5
Squats w/cambered bar:
50 kg x 10
90 kg x 5
130 kg x 5