Food’s been on point every single day (600/300/90), and took an off day yesterday. Summer vacation lets me sleep 8+ hours a night with a 90 minute nap after every workout.
After I maxed out on deadlift at 415 about a month ago, I pulled 3x355 a week later. Last week I bumped that up to 3x375.
But I come in today and miss 405. It’s stuck to the floor.
Then I try squats - 135 is a slow ugly grind.
Then I go for a pull-up. Could not do a single one.
Then I see if I can hit a plain old pushup. It feels like I’m pushing the entire Earth. Literally stuck to the floor grinding singles.
I’m considering taking 7-10 days off. This coincides conveniently with upcoming summer vacation. It used to be on days like this I could still go for a good pump with some high rep assistance. But now I can’t even do that.
But then, what if today is just a bad day? Should I bother going in tomorrow? Or do I just need another box of Corn Pops to fuel up on?
What you experienced was not, by any means, a “phantom crappy day.” Double-check the big picture of your last few weeks. If I can quote some snippets:
7/27 - “Another shit awful day.”
7/25 - “Today was absolute shit.”
7/22 - [after setting a PR on dips] “All I did was drive myself into a hole and let myself recover from it.”
7/20 - “Didn’t recover from yesterday and I paid for it today; was expecting it.”
7/18 - “Felt myself burning out again.”
7/17 - “Nothing is concrete but literally four days this week were wasted on ugly little half sessions where I burnt out halfway through.”
7/15 - “So another shitty day”
7/13 - “Tried to do pull-ups and dips - another day where I couldn’t even do one of either. … I WANT to train, I’m just running out of gas.”
7/12 - “When I went to the gym I tried starting out with some pull-ups - that shit wasn’t happening.”
7/9 - “Absolute shit.”
7/4 - “I’ve been noticing this trend of sporadically being weaker than normal starting to crop up. For the past two weeks all I needed was an off day. But now I’m having bad days every other day.”
I’m not sure if you’re just honestly evaluating those sessions, if you’re being a little pessimistic/harsh, or a combo of both. But when pretty much every other workout is some version of “shitty” or super-draining, something needs to be corrected ASAP.
If bboy practice is your priority right now (and it seems to be), I think you should consider significantly reducing your lifting volume and/or frequency. Lifting 2 or 3 days a week can be fine with a well-designed program. For example, 5/3/1 has a great 2-day template. Lifting 5 days a week seems to be too much for you, especially the way you’re doing it.
It also looks like you’re going pretty heavy (lots of work in the 1-3 range) for some decent volume (5 to 10+ sets per exercise a lot of the time, several exercises per session). If you want to keep that kind of heavier low rep work, keep the volume per movement pattern to 10-15 total reps. That’s much more in line with “in-season” work for athletes, when skill practice is the priority.
Lastly, you’ve mentioned your sleep and food, but I’d re-examine both of those and make sure you really are recovering maximally. Have a protein-carb shake when you train, keep your sleep on schedule (it does sound like you’re on point with this), and make sure your total calories are on point seven days a week, not necessarily “eating less” on non-training days.
Thanks so much for all the input and especially Chris for taking an objective look at my log. I saw the lifting PRs but I didn’t see how many sessions were being cut short or skipped. I am on vacation now, so gym logistics are shoddy. But I will start up on WS4SB the day I get back.