St Patrick's Day Overload

I've been in heavy overload mode for a little over a week now.. I finished up last week with 110 miles on the bike in 3 days which included a 63 mile hilly ride with over 5000 feet of vertical gain. Last week also had a brutal tabata workout, the Spartan workout with 200 yds of PW crawl and 100 KB complexes with the 24kg, and a rings workout on Saturday that torched my midsection so much I was literally nauseous for the next two days... I took yesterday off and went back at it today.. Today's workout was a 5x5 workout. These are designed for max strength building. Low reps, heavy weights, huge efforts.. I would alternate between two exercises for 5 sets of 5 before moving on to the next two exercises.. Today's choices were:

a1:Weighted Pistols

a2: Weighted Towel Pullups

B1: Depth Handstand Press

B2: Weighted Ring Dips

C1: Double Snatch

C2: Double Thruster

I did the weighted pistols with 24kg. My best ever for weighted pistols with 24kg had been 3 sets of 3.. Today I did 3 sets of 5 and the last 2 sets I was able to get 3.. New PR! On the weighted towel pullups (doing pullups on a towel hanging over the bar with a weight tied around your waist) I used a 12kg kettlebell and got 5 sets of 5.  Another PR! On the handstand press I set up the parallettes and stacked yoga blocks underneath them as a target for my forehead. Doing them this way forces you to go much deeper in the press than if you do handstand press from the floor. My first set I stacked a couple yoga blocks so that the target was 7.5 inches below the parallettes. This was very difficult for me and I could only get 3.. For the next 3 sets I added one block so that it was a 4 inch drop and I got sets of 4, 3, 3.. My last set I did from my hands on the floor and got 8. For the ring dips I strapped a 16kg kettlebell around my waist and got 3 sets of 5, 1 set of 4. I did my last set unweighted and got 12. For the double snatch and thrusters I used double 20kgs for 4 sets and 24kgs for one set.. The double 24kgs, at about 70% of my bodyweight, were a little too much for me on the snatch right now. I got 3 reps out of it and started to worry about my back as the bells were swinging down from the top position so I stopped. I was pretty happy with that considering that I'm just getting back into the snatch with heavier weights. I'm happy to say my forearms are feeling awesome under the heavier loads and I think the worst of my issues are behind me :)

It's nice to push yourself to this point and see the progress. I set several new PRs today. It takes a lot of hard work to continue to make gains. It hurts like hell, but it's very rewarding to know that all the hard work pays off.

Train hard.

Kevin