StretchMediatedHypertrophy

Tbh I'd be no on Callihan, but I'd probably want to do everything I can to keep Jon Moxley happy so yeah I guess.

Despite emoticon, no laughing matter.

RDX 2.0. If you know, you know.

So I set a rep PR this week on the conventional deadlift -140kg x 6 (actually arep PR on any barbell deadlift). Actually this was very easy, or it would have been if I hadn't been incredibly sleep-deprived and hadn't tried to stiff-leg it....or if I hadn't eaten Jamaican food 30 minutes before. I did actually bend my knees for the last rep, and I walked it back onto the rack. So I feel like the levelling up is established. However I do feel I tweaked my tricep just a touch though, so I am not sure I am going to pursue this kind of rep work on the deadlift. I sort of do want a 200kg deadlift by the end of the year, but otherwise I am largely focussing on hypertrophy. I decided to do incline bench instead of flat bench on my first upper day of the cycle, and tbh 65kg was pretty tough for sets of 8 & then 10. But a few months ago incline was very uncomfortable, and where my bench has been janky is a few inches off the chest, with it moving towards the face - and incline is generally considered the cure. I actually think my titties are probably more muscular than ever, given by what I was able to push on a Cybex machine recently (120kg for a set of 8). Otherwise not *that* much else to say. I think I said this before, but not really planning to try to bench more than 100kg right now - if I am feeling frisky I am might try a heavy single towards the end of the year, but not a massive priority. If anything, I might try to side-quest an OHP PR - but we'll see.

Given it involves an elevated bench, I imagine it's an incline seal row.

Oh what's that *another* deadlift PR? Oh yeah, this one is brought to you by Western Fried Chicken - home of the double chicken fillet burger. Sucked down two of those bad boys on the way. 190kg 2" deficit deadlift (yeah straps, but also beltless). Was thinking of just trying to get the 190 off the floor, but the warm-ups with the deficit went well went well so I was like 'to hell with this'. I misgrooved 180 and it moved fwd but I was able to pull it in with my lats, & I knew if I fixed my barpath I'd get the 190kg. My upper hamstrings got lit the f**k up tho. Gym was quiet so I actually had a 2nd barbell setup for OHP and I actually did a parallel training max on it - haven't done *any* OHP in months. 65kg got stuck twice, but I got it up. I think I've hit 72.5, maybe 75 Idk..but not since the injury. Having done those lifts, and a quick 170kg non-deficit to walk it back on the rack....well I was more than a little gassed-up. So in some ways the PR was slightly counter-productive (180kg would have been a PR for that deficit), but screw it. No more of this for a while though, hypertrophy & conditioning for a couple of months now.

Pleased as hell for Big Bill. Sort of floated around a bit aimlessly on the card for a bit, but he did good things with Moriarty and (briefly) Cage, & now he's got a much better Enzo to work with. Whilst he's good as a big heel, I think there's a lot of untapped potential there and he could still get a world title run as a babyface. In either company.

I may have completely misunderstood the context, but from this I at least originally inferred that my response may come across as a little forceful. I don't really keep score of these things, but pretty sure I agree @NoFistsJustFlips more often than I disagree and definitely am not seeking any beef here!

In some ways this post did not age well. Yeah referencing some 18-month tag-team run from over 20 years ago in the competition, using Christian's shoot name etc is kinda TNA. Edge is not Orton; Orton was over to put it bluntly. To put it another way, Orton was a guy who had several years on top on the A show and had numerous A-programmes in the company. Edge mostly leeched heat off valets (Lita, Vickie) who were actually more over, and primarily on the B-show. Ok, that's kind of harsh but the comparison is ridiculous. Don't get me started on HHH or Foley. He's not a 1B guy. Jericho and Punk both had a certain amount of cachet that transcended wrestling, Orton less so but he at least was sort of internet over for the RKO Vines. Edge has precisely zero of that. Copeland's a 2A guy. Just because I don't like something doesn't make it a bad business move, but it doesn't make it a good one either. Now personally, I don't have an issue with Edge coming in per se, but I understand the difference between tactics and strategy and sacrificing the latter for the former is generally considered bad for business. Promising a 'new-era' and tying it to some 49-year-old WWE has-been who was never quite as over as people like to pretend is not good strategy. Yeah it's great that Wrestledream was sort of built on Danielson vs ZSJ, but the 'main-event segment' of the next Dynamite was the two old WWE guys. From a personal watching pov, I'll take the good stuff and be grateful for it - I maintain a lot of goodwill regards AEW, and it will take more than this to shake that. But on a meta-level I do think it's a bit shit. Btw I can also like something and still think it's bad presentation - I think Toni Storm's sloppy makeup and her outfit looked very low-rent for example; I like the gimmick for the most part, but I don't think it's what I would highlight if I had just tried to pop a rating on a social media clip in order to put new eyeballs on the product. I would say that about much of the show tbh. So I'm not even sure it's tactically that strong (I won't go too hard on the ratings because reasons, but it's not like you can really say Edge popped a rating). Strategically....well it's complex...again you might in practical terms want a guy like Copeland to cover the gap created by Punk for the moneymen but at some stage you diminish yourself as a challenger brand, and I do feel there have been a number of missteps that have potentially contributed towards that - this being the latest. I honestly think Tony is going to have to made some hard decisions over the next year, and I hope he's going to be able to do it. If not, well I'll enjoy a lot of good matches here and there I'm sure.

It is funny, and also sad, how the depth of the roster is so great that I forget that Nick Comoroto exists. But it mostly sucks - he has wrestled 10 times this year according to Cagematch. I kind of hope he ends up back in NXT at this point. There's a lot to like in AEW, it can feel churlish to complain about things when they threw us Claudio vs Barnett for free. But if the new era was infact the debut of Copeland, a guy who was mostly a b-show main-eventer with a pretty terrible spear he probably shouldn't be doing, who nastily tore his triceps in his 2nd match back.....going on about a tag-team that had an 18 month run in the competition over 20 years ago.....then lol that's pretty dumb I'm sorry but it is.

Board ate my post. 100kg bench first time this year, for 5 reps. Getting covid was tedious, but If the Gods are fucking you, you find a way to fuck them back. I ate a lot this week. Shartnado's lifts are borderline Bugenhagen at this point. I think in terms of display strength, days off definitely help. A lot of powerlifters do taper their training down 2 weeks before they compete, especially on squat & deadlift. Whether it helps long-term goals I am less sure, though sometimes I think giving some of your muscles a few days off can help to get that extra 10lbs on your working weight. Whilst I'm not really a bro split guy at heart, I think relentlessly hammering a body-part 2-3 times a week can potentially have diminishing returns, though I think it is probably good to do that sometimes too.

I got 187.5kg for a struggle session single on the conventional deadlift today. Fuck you Covid! I was pretty happy as I was really tired and full of way too much free Dominos pizza eaten Tony Mareno-style. Oh yeah and I had sore quads/abs from volume bodysquats and leg raises on Sunday. Lockout was weak though, need to work on that. I've started doing the GHR with a thick resistance band around my neck. Tbh this tells me that I probably should have a better deadlift than I do, so maybe I really just need to pull a bit more than I infact do.

Tbh I doubt ZSJ has much positive to say about Labour right now either, though I suspect he'll keep his powder dry on that one. For now.

That's a backronym though. It more likely comes from the Romani for child, 'chavi'...a term which was pretty firmly in the vernacular anyway (you hear it used in 'Only Fools & Horses'). As a teenager, I used to hear the terms 'Gary' and 'Pikey' used to describe....'appearing somewhat feral townies'...though I think the latter got more firmly tied to the traveler identity when Snatch got released in 2000 and so 'chav' emerged as the new label of choice.

Tbh the term chav is a bit antiquated in the UK, but it was largely a classist pejorative - and in reality it's entirely possible to be a chav without being a douchebag. To a certain extent, chav culture can somewhat be traced back to the 'football casual' scene of the 1980s which largely comes from guys from the North-West (Liverpool especially) somewhat copying the style of the Panniaro (Panniaro oh oh oh) culture in 80s Northern Italy (especially Milan).

Isle of Sheppey is a pretty deprived area apparently (obviously I haven't been, noone has, and I'm from West London), but ZSJ is a vegan politico who listens to Nils Frahm. That's about as unchav as it gets.

They retconned that best part of 20 years ago, can't see them trying that. Pretty sure it will be Adam Copeland. Whilst I am sure he will start as baby, I'm pretty sure he's going to turn within a few months.

So Acclaimed are doing the KRS-ONE (Kings Reign Supreme Over Nearly Everyone) as their new finish.......will be interesting to see if they actually name it as such, and is it a sign that we won't see the KoW or that we eventually will?

Tbh it depends why, from my perception, they're filming. Some ppl may have coaches and need to film at least some of their work. In other news, I have covid so yeah having to have a break. I may play with my kettlebells at the weekend. I get enough semi-forced deloads that I don't really need another, but not much to be done about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrOGyVu7gVU&t=272s&ab_channel=EricBugenhagen Bugenhagen (Bugez) is a bit miffed, and thinks he was released due to 'a backstage political play'. In the comments..... I can definitely see what he's saying, though I can't exactly say that I'm in desperate need of seeing Bugenhagen wrestle ever again and in WWE that actually matters. But it is interesting to see someone who should have been right up 279% up Vince's ally (decent amateur background, ridiculous muscular development, perfectly suited to 'written on weed, delivered on coke' promos) basically completely fail. I think the truth is though, you look at his Cagematch record, think about how short many of those matches were....and this is a guy with very little actual ringtime, with the vast majority of his matches against other green guys. Whilst the current house show schedule is better for many, I'm not sure it was good for a guy like Bugenhagen - he really needed time with the veteran heavyweights and it didn't happen.

I didn't watch, but I think he was on BTE lat week.

Boogs really had barely wrestled since the stuff with L.A. Knight - handful of matches with Omos and Cameron Grimes. He's been on the road as there was photos with The Rock, and he's been touring various local gyms on his YouTube. He seems to have had his wife around for the filming....but wasn't being used. Will almost certainly never wrestle again, though tbh I never really got the sense he was that into it. He's gone from around 100K YouTube subscribers before hitting the main roster to over 300K today, along with some money from his time on the main roster.....he's not going to want for clients to coach.

I didn't like the undefeated streak and the general positioning, it meant you couldn't get anything meaningful out of the Baddies feuding with her but more generally nobody gained anything from losing to her either. I felt Statlander should have beaten her in the tournament and Ruby should have won it. As is, you have somebody who basically merked everyone (doing a job bc you're on the way out just isn't the same) who will now go to WWE. Whereas if she'd taken meaningful losses then I feel the division would be left in a better state. And the truth is Statlander still feels like a work in progress. I suspect that if Hayter had been around, Cargill would have put her over in a Champion vs Champion match first. Oh well. It's no disaster, but I think undefeated streaks are generally a bad booking strategy - Gunther is probably the closest to an exception, but he has been pinned/submitted by a couple of people albeit primarily in NXT, has lost tag where he wasn't pinned, and will presumably do the honours for Gable or Ciampa which will elevate whichever one they go with. I don't think Jade Carter even lost tag matches.