Werther thou goest...

Attention, Met Live in HD viewers: the day you see an Under Armor sports bra land at Jonas Kaufmann's feet during his curtain call is the day you'll know I finally sprang for seats within throwing distance of the stage.

But workout stuff first: this was Week 3 of my second 5/3/1 cycle and my deadlift is concerning me a little.  I tried the hook grip on 135 pounds and it did nothing but nearly kill my hands - I sliced a cuticle open, as a matter of fact, so I'm pretty sure I was doing it wrong.  My top set of 145 went up to lockout with the mixed grip, but it felt unstable.  I'm just going to have to hope I'm getting stronger in recovery as we speak.

On the S&S front, I dropped down to about 6:25 in two-handed swings with the 25-pound bell and started doing TGUs with the 25-pounder too.  I was fairly sure I was going to die of a kettlebell to the face, but no; the TGUs were super challenging but doable. I didn't time them because I didn't want to feel rushed with a new weight, but next time I will.

Also, when your back is sore from deadlifting the seats at the Metropolitan Opera House are murder, which brings me back to Werther.

I often think that there's an odd sort of discrepancy between Jonas Kaufmann live and Jonas Kaufmann in recordings.  As often as I listen to his recordings, I'm always just blown away by him live, whether in lieder or operas. A good example of this is Schubert's Die Schöne Müllerin - relatively tame, if lyrical, on the CD and dark, erotic and edgy in his Princeton recital last year.  Changing interpretations, probably, but I've noticed the same thing with a lot of his recordings; while beautiful, they're missing some essential Jonasness that, when you put him in front of an audience, roars out of wherever it's hiding and burns the place down.  This is on my mind both because he sang like a god in Werther last night and because I raided the Met gift shop and bought the Parsifal bluray and Kaufmann's elusive Winterreise, which appears to be currently available on American shores only through the Met.  I'm really looking forward to kicking back with good scotch, a log on the fire, and the Winterreise CD, and we'll see how it sounds.

And maybe I'll practice cleans with my new kettlebell, too.

Link roundup, the Kaufmann edition

Here's a guy who clearly went to the same Carnegie Hall recital I did.

GiryaGirl on not getting caught up in the social-media version of tabloid trash. Of all things ask, "Does this bring more Jonas Kaufmann into my life?  No?  Forget it."  This is an article I definitely needed to read, because I get sucked into that garbage like nobody's business and it never seems to do anything but make me unhappy.

Grip strength woes

So Friday was deadlifting day.  Which was problematic to begin with, since I sort of overdid it on the bench press/upper body on Thursday.  I may need to rethink my T/Th/F schedule, though it keeps me out of the gym on Monday, which is the only busy day in the weight room.

Anyway; I did 140x5 but my lockout sucked.  I didn't feel strong at the top, or feel like I was straightening up all the way.  So instead of unloading the bar, I glared at it for a couple of minutes and then decided to do another triple.

Same result.  The weight went up, but the lockout sucked.  Also, I could barely hold onto the bar, and on at least one rep it fell out of my hands right before it hit the floor.  So I tried a set with the alternating grip, and boom - the weight went straight up, no lockout issues at all.

I was a little displeased by this, so I tried a backoff single of 135.  It honest to god dropped right out of my hands at the top of the lift.  Between the noise 135 pounds makes hitting the floor and the sound of me turning the air blue upon lift failure, it's a good thing I don't work out at Planet Fatness or my picture would be on Do Not Admit lists all over the country.  Again, 135 with the alternating grip went up just fine.

So I'm going to have to work grip strength.  And this week I'm going to try hook grip and see if that helps.  Also, the tendons in my forearms hurt.

In other fail news, I got the goals backward for S&S - it's 100 kettlebell swings in 5 minutes and 5 TGUs on each side in 10.  That's bad news for my swings, but does mean I should probably think about moving up weight on the TGU.

Link roundup

So it looks like cardio might not actually kill your gainz after all, depending on what you're doing.