Thrus: dynamic lower 12 x 2 banded box squat, 55% straight, 25% accommodating. 8x1 banded deads, 40% straight, 30% accommodating.  Assistance: GHR,  pistols, one-leg sled push.

Fri: dynamic bench 9x3 banded 55% straight, 25% accommodating.  8x1 banded press, 40% straight, 30% accommodating.  Assistance: decline dumbbell press, dumbbell row, dips.  Conditioning: 50 burpee pull-ups.  I didn't measure the bar height but it was up there.  I'll say 10-13in above reach.  17 and change.

do you have any of these?  You should.

(courtesy, Lut)

(courtesy, Pop-pop.  Note Adders for scale)

Achtung, babies

UPDATE--Results back from last week's bone marrow biopsy:  Clean as a whistle, zero measurable disease.  Chimerism also at 100% frau.  News as good as it can be.  Mobbin' like a mo-fo.

But not lynchin'

(106)

progress

max bench 185.  First time I've put up bodyweight in over a year.  Doctor told me to assume I'd been off at least 3 years considering everything.  Like I said, deep hole to climb out of.  Deep.  As long as the wall don't cave in on me, I think I can get out.  Felt like it today anyway.
Assistance: dumbbell bench press, close-grip, pulls, dips.
Conditioning: 100 barbell (#45) thrusters for time.  Call it 13 minutes.  Bad time, good work.
High rep band face-pulls, 100
100 situps

blurry b/c I still had thruster shake

(105)

102

Dynamic bench: chains 9x3, dynamic press: bands 8x1
Assistance: JM's press, dumbbell press incline, clapping push ups.
Mobility work.

This one's been hanging around for a while, waiting for the right time.  See, around here we like full-auto and big magazines.  Dark and/or poor people voting?  Not so much.

While there is a lower class, I am in it; and while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.  --Debs, convicted of sedition.

keep your powder dry.

prowler 101

Get you a heavy, runner-ed, push thing. Some people call them sleds, some prowlers (tm).  Others prefer not to name them or even really speak about them, so evil they are.  Some people just use cars. (Take the brake off, find neutral).  FUT BIRST, have three babies that grow to roughly 20 kg each.  Put them, the plate babies, on the push thing. Try to balance your load unless you want the added fun of compensating for a right or left pull, reminiscent of a misaligned auto.  Next, push the push thing and the plate babies like a good christian would the devil to his home in hell.  Hard and fast as you can manage.  It's fun to tell yourself the babies souls are depending on you because, let's face it, they are.  You'll slow down but you'll feel like you're working harder, these phenomena, the slowing down, the seeming increase in gravity, are magically proportionate.  Speed down, work up.  Yet, oddly, speed up, work also up.  This is the magic.  This is the reward.  Savor it, kinda like you do orange juice after you've already brushed your teeth, the way you do skunky sunflower seeds,  like you savor the taste in your mouth after you vomit.  Do this--push, devil, hell, guilt trip, savor,  a bunch of times, 'til you start to taste metal, 'til one of the plate babies says you're slowing down. 'Til you stop caring so much about who's going to hell or souls or who are the twerps on my push thing? and they sure are well-fed.  Yeah, do it say 40yds x 10.  Feel your heart explode with joy or hatred, self-pity or lactic acid or something.  Boom goes the ticker.  Cough a lot.  Try to find some saliva.  Calculate total weight.  Get confused by addition.  Call it 250, 255.  Whatever.  Three babies.   But FIRST first, 12x2 dynamic box squats, dynamic dead lifts 8x1.  GHR, reverse hyper, lunge steps.

Upon four-legged forest clouds the cowboy angel rides.  That's me, hiding in the back, the cowboy angel.  Just cowboy for short.

C

Hundy days.  Here it is.  Feel great.  Exercising, reading, sleeping, eating.  In short, very much alive.  Like the country song says, feels so good feeling good again.  Thank you for your love and constancy, your support, your gifts and generosity.

Especially, thank you for your friendship.  Next to the love of a good woman, it's the most important thing.

yesterday:  max close-grip bench 150
assistance:  reverse grip press, rolling tri extensions, shoulder raises, hammer curls

today, conditioning:  40 yard backward sled drag (300#)/ 5 tire flips  X 5
skill work: 2 strict pull ups every minute, 20 minutes

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
                                                                             --Papa, Farewell to Arms

97 (official count) bottles of barolo on the wall

Big check up today.  Good report.  Slight dip in whites which they say is to be expected and not worrisome at all, especially b/c there was a good bump in the platelet department.  Over all that is a better predictor of engraftment, marrow health and the whatnot.  Reds steady.  Free to consume fresh fruits and vegetables.  Not needed back for a month.  Also did a marrow biopsy, results pending.  Should know in a week, but all other indicators are good.  Won't lie, quite a chore waiting on the verdict.  The news is either terrific or disastrous.  I feel great, so Im optimistic.

At the Rick's Sunday night for preseason football.  He offered me a glass of wine but I cant have any so I said just one.  He had the first hit and tasted something funky so I held off.  Later he said maybe it was kinda growing on him.  I tried it at dinner.   Hey now, i thought, that's tasty.  Another quaff.  Really tasty.  I dont know man, this tastes fantastic to me.  What is it?  Dont know, my parents gave us a couple bottles.  By the end of dinner I had finished a second glass.  Good as the chicken and Portuguese sausage was, the wine captivated me.  Seriously, man this is good.  That funky taste at the end is a delightful tannic finish.  Starts out cherry evolves to a mouth full of blackberries and just wrings your tongue clean.  Really structured stuff.  Is it gone?  No, we have two bottles.  Here.  Hmm.   I read the label.  '99 Barolo.  A swallow almost came out my nose.  Tremendous grape juice.  I figured it for at least a $50 bottle.  Google confirms 66-75 bucks.  I only had one or several more.  I have to drink for the German woman too, teach her a little Italian.

Max effort parallel box front squat 125
Assistance: bent over rows, GHR, back extensions
Conditioning 4 x 500m row, 30 second rest.  I think I averaged 2:17/500m. Slow as me in trig, but getting better (whereas all the trig I know is still in the calculator)

Wash that camping right outta your hair

Market for victuals, gym, breakfast, home depot for new spigot handle, drum store for new sticks, bakery for birthday cupcakes, gun store for trigger locks and eye protection. Range.  Wyatt's last 5 at 25yds all on the paper.  I shot a 3-group with the .243 you could cover with a penny.  Also at 25yd (I confess), but i was trying to dial the scope in. A day of fun for about $25.01.  Missed my nap.  Hope you all are staying busy.  Idle hands will high five WITH CHIPS.

Dynamic bench, 9x3 banded.  Dynamic shoulder press, 6x1 banded
Assistance:  pull, dip, push

Took a minute of video of  these two shuckin' an jivin' unaware.  It is simply delightful.  But not the kinda thing I want on the interweb.  Sorry.  Ags dances all around singing "hey soul sister" to Adders, who gives herself a keen suds beard and calls herself Mean Mr. Mustard.  Ags got tired of her soul sister ignoring her and pow, shower puff right in the kisser.  Time to put in your bedroom hottub.

96

Dynamic squats:  wide leg, box, band.  12x2, deadlifts: deficit, banded, 6x1
Assistance: deficit dead, GHR, reverse hyper
Conditioning: bent over sled tow sprints, 90yd x 5, rest while partner works.

Dell came down to help me measure for some replacement windows and he says he'll come back to teach me how to install them.  Heather and the twins went camping at Muddy Run.  Wyatt and I are at large.  We had soft-shell crabs for lunch and Asian pork burgers for dinner, no bun.  Went to the range for some .22 rounds but had no bullets.  Stopped by Brian's to cadge some.  He turned his back yard into a range in about 30 seconds.  Stretched Wyatt to twice his previous distance and he was twice as accurate.  Much improved.  Then we drove to Hershey to pick up Brian's Volvo tractor.  Wyatt rode back in the big rig.  Maybe we get to the range tomorrow.  If we're not too hungover or in need of bail.

Sir Walter Raleigh was such a stupid get.

on the paper at 10yd (94)

max press: 115
pull push dip
mobility training

Wyatt is shooting his new Cricket .22.  Peep sight, no less.

"signifying sureness of the soul"

Dynamic bench:  9x3 +chains
Assistance:  incline dumbs, pulls, reverse curl bench
Mobility

My mom made these  sundresses for the girls.  Made them, with her hands.  Wyatt's first hunting license arrived yesterday.  I had the best tomato of the year today.  Yellow, beginning to bleed red. Fat as a baby.  Dense as a pear and almost as sweet.  What's the mozz and basil for?   Anybody know the Frost poem of title?  One I never tire of.

89

Dynamic squats: Chained, wide-leg, box
Assistance: Deficit kb deads-single, double straight leg, reverse hyper

Conditioning: 12 amrap 1pood kb Russian swing

Cope: 286 (1.5 pood)
HG: 262
CJP: 216  If i didn't get 200 i was gonna quit.  Cope buried us.


It's not the Loyalsock football field, but it's good:

Ropes of Love

Cope asked a relevant question about content.  The answer is: up to you all.  If you train, I want to hear about it, whatever you do.  If you don't train, that's your business.  Feel free to mock those of us who do.  Exercisers are a weird buch.  I fight it off much as I can, but still weird, no question.  This is the Potter Transplant Daily.  I'm at a good point in my recovery and I intend to document it.  That's what I said I would do.  It gives me great pleasure to talk to my folk.  And hear back from them.  That dynamic has been instrumental in said recovery.  I happen to be an exerciser.  I have a big big hole to dig out of.  But the very digging makes me feel alive.  I just can't give that up or ignore it, so it's gonna be part of the blog.  Im also a pretty vigorous reader and a father and goddamn lucky husband and brother and friend and chess player and bow hunter and tomato connoisseur and flathead catfish-er person.  What are my hobbies?  What aint?  I want to know, do, be good at everything.  Like that sci-fi writer said, "specialization is for insects." Our lives are our poems. I don't want to leave any lines unwritten and since this might be a timed exercise, I gotta keep moving.   No one, nothing is censored.  All is fair game.  The rules for our blog are be funny or interesting, or be ridiculed.

I got hoisted by a wave of happiness today.  On an errand, in the car, nothing special, at a red light even: "Man, my hamstrings are sore.  That means you're doing it right.  I love training with Heather.  What a woman.  And those kids.  Wow I have good kids.  How'd we do that w/o practice?  Don't fuck it up.  Don't get angry. Be cool.  Straight and honest like with your friends.  My friends.  Jesus, my friends.  Like the lottery.  Green.  Go.  Where'm I goin' again?"  First wave of happiness in a fair amount of time.  Frost says, "Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length."


Max floor press 145 (use this for percentages in dynamic bench Sat.)
Assistance:  push, pull, reverse grip bench
Conditioning:  battling ropes 1 min on 1 min off  5x

Be kind, no blame, love everything.

86 kinda randy

I took a picture of the boss Hog BEE-ELL-TEE I had for dinner right before I had it for dinner.  The picture made it look gross.  Flash and bacon fat have their own agendas.  But it was a thing of beauty.  My goal was to get a whole tomato on board, which i did for the shot, but after a bite I picked slices off for sandwich sake.  You shoulda had one with us.  Mayo and tomato (Cherokee purple)  running to my elbow, smeared on my jowls.  Accompanied by the summer's best cob corn yet.  When the butter from the corn starts mixin' with the bread and you get mouthfuls of tomato corn and pig.  Anecdotal evidence of  G—D.  We gotta be in 1% of all humans to eat thusly and I think it's because we deserve it.  [here i pause for you to think about really good bacon] Know how long it's been, a meal like that?  Since like yesterday.  I told a dinner story about how when I was a kid my friend Naughton had an aunt named Peachy who owned a sandwich shop.  We'd do about 15 minutes work stacking boxes and moving displays and get paid in BLT cosmos (that's a hot submarine sandwich for you aliens).  It is on those occasions when I learned to love the tomato on a sandwich and when I learned that no one ever ever says, oh, too much bacon.  Wyatt listened thoughtfully and said, "And Scott Naughton's mom, Barb, yeah, she makes the BEST apple cake."  Tru' dat, boo

today we were scheduled for some skill work and conditioning.  Haven't done any olympic lifting yet.  Sounds like a "Randy" day, no?.  75lbs, 75 snatches for time.  We scaled back to 55lb.  Heather crushed me  7 minutes to 10 minutes.  I only sulked for a moment or two.  Here she is tributing me with the universal sign of uxorial devotion and desire.

True love and home-grown tomatoes.  (Guy Clark is who you really want here but the recordings were sketchy at best.  Apologies)

WEST SIDE in this MO-FO

Took a day off yesterday for periodization and being lazy.  Last week was a good warm up week.  Some lifting, some rowing, some X-Fit.  Made me very hungry to train the way I had been almost exactly a year ago (shudder) when I was simultaneously in the best and worst shape of my life.  With the Chupacabra's guidance Heather and I are going pretty much whole-hog (or should I say whole dog?) West Side Barbell conjugate training methods.  If you want the template, email me.  I'm just going to sketch in what I do.  If you want help ask.  Please chime in, whatever you're doing.  Please.

Max effort lower today.  Deadlift 225. (same as, ah-hem, my [very strong] wife)  Had hopes for higher but they weren't realistic for first time in 4mos.
Assistance work: reverse hyper, banded-straight-leg-KB dead, one-legged KB dead
Conditioning: prowler 8x35yd 170lbs.

Louie, 62, deadlifts way more than you.

83, 5, 4, 3, 2

Our twins turned five yesterday.  We prefer to celebrate on the 4th, however, because those first two years were so blindingly gemini that both their mother and I believed them to be born on the day after their actual birth.  Right down to filling out the social security forms. . .when we became aware.  If you have the chance come and get a load of them.  The sun and the moon right here on earth.  Really, the only two people alive that can give Wyatt a run for his money.

Fourth day of exercise.  Still powerfully sore but coming out of it.  Needed something short and challenging.  11min AMRAP:  10 KB thrusters (20lb ea)/ 1 rope climb (20 ft).  How's your mid-line stabilization?

We th' last ones left.

+2 thrusters

The Thunderbird Spirit

Allegorical source of thunder (wings) and lightning (beak).  This is on Little Indian Rock, on the Susquehanna,  in the shadow of the Safe Harbor dam(n).  The rock is covered in petroglyphs (and bird scat).  It's sorta funny when the jokers who swam out and carved "1883" are new to the neighborhood.  I wish I could explain the deep, plangent chord these strike in me, but I can't.  I just stare and marvel and stare some more.  Anyone know how to twist photos?

or what's a heaven for?

2K row  9:18

really wanted 9.

SORE

But, you know what? It's mostly in the hams, so early and mid form yesterday was not so bad.  These are some sore hams, ye-ouch.  Today got under the bench bar.  145, after lots of rep work. Which puts me in the unenviable category of  meathead who benches more (such as it is) than he squats.  5 sets of max pull ups. 4-3-3-2-2. One ring dip. Ugh. ONE. And then:  Hammer curls.  Yep.  I don't care.  Did them in front of everyone, proudly.  Aint gonna die with small arms.  No how.  So stuff it.