Did 95/115/135/155 and the first three sets of 145lb with short pauses.
The 185lb felt hard.
Front lever progression (tuck lever)
5x3
The first set felt incredibly easy…and then the remaining sets sucked hard. Couldn’t even hold the tuck lever position for the fourth and fifth set. Not sure what happened, but I’d wager that my back was tired from yesterday.
The 275lb was disappointing. Did reps to get a gauge on my current ability with heavy weights, with the goal to stop when the reps started to really slow down. Hoped that would happen around rep 5.
Need more practice with heavy weights again. IIRC I’ve done 2x5 or so with 265lb last month, but that did take a couple weeks of going at it to get my body used to the weight.
Did the 225lb with minute rests, so half my regular timed rest. Went fine. Didn’t want to kill myself with 10s today. I’ll leave killing myself for Weds.
Hung off a bar for-
50 sec/30 sec/20 sec/20 sec.
Rested in between for however long I hung.
Snatch grip deadlift-
135lb, 3x5
Deadlift-
135/225/275/315lbx1
Practiced hook grip. Planned on going up to 345lb but my fore-arms planned on rebelling if I did that, so nope.
Clean grip reverse lunge-
45lbx5
95lbx2
65lb, 5x5
Couldn’t find 10lb plates anywhere so I thought “fuck it” and went for 25lb plates. This was hard. So I searched some more and found 10lb plates that someone stopped using.
Single leg training is a real eye-opener. Pretty much every part of my left lower body felt it when I did that 95lb lunge… And it’s only 95 fucking pounds!
Moving on. Maybe 345lbx10 really will be possible in Dec!
One can only wish…
Seriously, at the end of every month when I add 10lb, I think ‘probably going to have to deload after this one’, but every single time the x10 isn’t nearly as dreadful as I build it up to be in my head, even if the weeks preceding may have sucked hard.
Lifting really is mostly a mental fight, provided that you use sensible weights.
Pull-up-
no weightx5
+10, 5/4/5/5/4
Decided to go for 2 min rest again starting from the third set.
I think I’m getting weaker at this. The squats tired me out, but shouldn’t have been enough to make me incapable of doing 3x5 with 2 minute rests.
I’m going to treat pull-ups as a serious strength exercise again and start resting more.
Got set up for 175lb but my right wrist hurt. I need to look into the way I’m gripping the bar.
OHP again-
105lb, 7/7/6/5
I want to believe that my OHP is getting worse because my body positioning is actually improving, and so muscles are working in a way they’re not used to. That’s why things feel fine, and in fact stronger, on lighter weight but I bomb on heavier weights.
But only time will tell. We’ll see what happens two or so months later.
Most of the fatigue comes from my upper/mid back right rather now than my triceps/shoulders.
Front lever progression (tuck lever)-
4x3, 1x2
These feel worse, but that may be because I’m holding the position at the top for 1-2 seconds right now.
The 385lb felt solid. Need to build more tension before I pull.
335lb, 5x3
Aggressive deadlift improvement “phase” is over. No more of deadlifts feeling pretty easy.
I need deadlift socks or something. Ripped a chunk of top skin off my right knees during the 335lb after ripping off a scab on the same location during the ramp-up sets. It’s annoying and probably unhealthy to be doing this every week. Gonna get an infection sooner or later.
Squat-
135/185/205/235lbx2
265/295lbx1
The 295lb felt a lot easier than I expected it to be.
Pull-up-
no weightx5
+10lb, 5x5
Weaker on the last two sets, but much more manageable now that I’m resting sufficiently again.
TRX row-
5x6
Bulgarian split squat (why is it called Bulgarian split squat?)
4x8
I need to focus on developing tension and maintaining it throughout this entire movement. This seems to be something I’m lacking on everything except the squat and deadlift, and I can probably do a lot better with the deadlift at that.
Gonna have to read up on this.
Hanging leg raise-
3x5
Also a movement where I really need to focus on building tension and maintaining it throughout the entire movement. I tend to lose tension as I drop my leg down.
Clean from hang and push-press-
95lb, 2x1
115/135/155lbx1
Clean from hang-
135lb, 5x2
Failed miserably on the second rep of the first set, actually. I tried to focus on a slow/controlled first pull with the goal of feeling and working with any body imbalances for these. Something went wrong with the failed rep, I think I pulled way too low and so caught the bar with my balance all fucked. Fell on my ass and let the bar roll over my body.
Felt like laughing my ass off. Thank God no one decided to walk behind me as this happened. Reminded me of just one of the many reasons why doing variants of the Olympic lift in commercial gyms is probably a very bad idea.
Front squat-
135l/185/225lbx1
The 225lb felt REALLY slow, even though it didn’t require all that much exertion. Don’t know why, seeing as how the cleans mostly felt effortless.
205lb, 1x4, 4x3
Felt my back folding on the first set. That + the slow 225lb + not having safety bars made me decide to play it safe and go with threes instead of fours for the remaining sets. Back started folding on the fourth set anyhow, so I think I made the right decision.
My back is now the limiting factor in my front squats.
Chin-up/dip/single-leg deadlift superset-
5x7 on the chin-up/dip, 5x5 on the single-leg deadlift.
No elbow pain. Going to start doing these chin-ups in true dead-hangs for the hell of it.
The second rep of the 285lb felt quite slow. The 225lb felt fine.
Hanging off a bar-
5 sets of 30 seconds.
This felt relaxing at first, then my fore-arms started to feel it on the last set.
RDL-
135lb, 3x8
Paused deadlift-
135lb, 3x5
Doing stuff that forces me to build and maintain tension. The paused deadlifts didn’t feel all that great since I had to focus on not ripping the scab on my right knee off, so had the bar further away from the body than I should.
Went for a seventh rep on the first set and failed. Tired me out so I guess that’s why the rest happened.
I really am not a fan of my upper body pushing strength. I don’t get why it tires out so easily, or why even a 5lb increase a month is difficult to maintain.
In any case, I did make a change to my bench press tempo, so that “might” explain why I failed on the seventh rep. I don’t know. We’ll see what happens next week.
But at this point I’d rather ditch the bench press as the main upper body builder and go for weighted dips instead. Maybe that’ll finally get me to invest in a dip belt.
Tuck levers-
5x2
Good pauses at the top and felt smooth all the way through. Yay.
OHP-
45lbx10
65lbx5
95lb, 8/8/6/5/5
DB row-
75lb, 5x8
95lbx5
TRX row-
5x6
Barbell curl-
45lb, 4x10, 1x30
Slow, controlled reps for the first three sets; went fast on the last two.
Two things with today-
-The 285lb felt weird. I either lost tension as I went down OR I dropped too fast and allowed myself to drop too deep. Either way it took a lot more energy than it really should have.
-The 6/5/5 were basically maxes, which explains why the reps dropped like a rock on the fourth set onwards. I basically sank into the hole on the fourth set and had to grind my way up. Basically repeated that for all the threes.
All that being said, I’m pleased with today. The last time I tried hitting 265lb for reps was back in Feb. I think the best I ever did was something like 5/5/2/stop because I’m exhausted. I beat that today and probably could have continued on with more 2-3s.
But I think it’s probably a good idea to either go onto some program on the new 5/3/1 book that hopefully arrives by next month, or I do a deload. I needed to be able to hit 3-4x6 on the first week to feel comfortable enough to continue on with adding weight monthly. Otherwise I’m going to start working in the 3-5 rep range and I really don’t want to do that.
Also need to stop going to bed at like 2 AM. That might help with recovery and strength growing.
Pull-up-
no weightx5
+10lb, 5x5
RDL-
135lbx5
185lb, 5x5
My RDL sucks; holding the hip hinge feels difficult.
Deadlift-
185/225/275/315lbx1
365lbx0
Practiced hook-grip. The 365lb was a joke attempt more than anything else; no way I’m pulling that when I’m tired from squatting + no chalk.
RFESS(because Bulgarian split squat just feels silly to type for some reason)
4x10
Yes. It took me over a year of doing cleans on and off to finally start understanding how to do the triple extension.
Videos are one of those things that I really should get on. I’ll have to test whether my 5 year old dinosaur of a phone can take videos anymore to begin with!
Clean from hang-
95lb, couple singles and a triple.
135lb, 5x3
Felt good. I need to know how exactly the traps are supposed to be used in the clean. I think one of my major failures is that I don’t get enough force transfer from my hips all the way up, if you will. I did the last set with the intent to just shrug as violently as I can. The first two reps felt like they just floated up.
The third rep felt high, but a rep PR is still a rep PR.
225lb, 3x7, 1x4 (one minute rests)
This started to feel difficult after the second set, but speed never felt like it dropped.
Pull-up-
5x5 (one minute rests)
Wanted to do neutral grip pull-ups but couldn’t because a guy set up stuff almost directly underneath the only place where you can do neutral grip pull-ups.
Stopped because a rip on my finger (due to dry skin, as always) started complaining rather loudly.
Bench press-
95lbx3
115/135/155lbx1
115lb, 3x10
I’m sick of using the bench as the main pressing movement. I find it really annoying that I’ve gone from having a difficult time squatting 225lb and benching 155lb when I started training seriously, to having an easy time squatting 225lb and having a difficult time benching 155lb. It’s been over about 6 months of largely uninterrupted training. I expected to see some improvements even if my form sucks + I suck at benching in general.
Swan pull-up(or, more accurately, learning how to do these correctly)-