3 Broad jumps
3 Underhand toss
10 Straight arm pulldowns
A. Dead
135x5
185x5
225x5
275x3
325x1
325x1
B. Deadstop BB row (pins at 1)
155x3
165x2
175x1
165x3
175x2
185x1
C. Chinup
1x13
1x8
325 moved with the quickness today. Maybe have a PR in this one too, guess we’ll find out next week!
This concludes my run of CT’s ‘Optimal Strength Training for the Natural Athlete’. I didn’t run the program as it was written from the outset, and it slowly changed as it went on further. Mostly just followed the progression model and even then, I halved the last few weeks to shorten it up.
Overall I’d say it’s a good and perfectly fine program, but it is not the program for me. Too many days per week lifting for my preferences. Recovery wasn’t an issue due to the fairly low volume but just trying to maintain that frequency is annoying. I like my weekends free for other stuff.
I’m still a bit undecided on that matter. I’ve narrowed my choices down to: start up 5/3/1 programming or give Brian Alsruhe’s linear progression program a run.
If I do go 5/3/1 I think I’ll get my feet wet with Simplest Strength Template, and there’s a bunch of programs in Forever that look fun I can transition to whenever I need a change. It’ll also make switching gears to training for a triathlon a bit easier so I’m leaning in this direction.
Did a little testing yesterday and today, so now a little reporting!
Tested my press yesterday, and as predicted, maxed out at 105. Weak sauce. I’m not really surprised though, I neglected this lift quite a bit since April and it’s been giving me headaches lately (err, always actually). Having a dedicated press day back in my routine is going to be sweet and awful.
Squats today, matched my old PR at 265. I’m actually pretty happy with this. I haven’t squatted anything over 240 (and only a couple singles a few days ago) since April so I wasn’t really expecting to set a PR and figured I might not match my best. Turns out I did and it was a really nice lift, probably looked a lot better than the last time I did it! Got ambitious and tried for 275 but no bueno. It didn’t feel bad on the descent, good control and all, but I didn’t have much explosion left getting out of the hole so I set it on the pins and called it.
I’ll see about my bench Wednesday (when it’s PR time!) and my dead Friday or Saturday, depends when I get back from my mom’s later this week.
PR! Worked up to 205 on the bench today, 10lb PR for me and my first foray into the 200+ lb club.
185 moved with the quickness as I thought it would, so I put 200 on there to ensure I was topping my old max. Got it fairly easily. 205 was hard but I pushed it through strong. Went for 210 and if I had a little more juice off the chest I may have gotten it through the sticking point but it didn’t want to go today.
I’m pleased. I’ve started benching with a brief pause at my chest (probably .5-.75 second pause) rather than tap-n-go which I always trained before. That makes the PR a bit more satisfying!
Time to go dominate my friends in our annual pickup football game and then get my ass kicked in basketball after. Hard to believe it was just 5 years ago when being tackled by a grown man onto the cold hard ground was enjoyable, and 10+ beers was the best road to recovery. Now it’s 2 hand touch and I’ll be surprised if I finish a sixer lol.
Pulled 355 today for a comfortable yet very difficult single. Not sure how those two feelings mix but somehow it happened today haha. 10lb PR!
I think on a perfect day I could’ve pulled a bit more (probably 10, mayyybe 20) and this morning was anything but so I’m happy.
Still feeling pretty beat up from football/basketball; crazy what 2 hours of sprinting, cutting, jumping, and bodying people up will do to you when you’re not used to it anymore lol. Have the full body DOMS and lived pretty unhealthy the last couple days and still managed the PR.
I decided to call it after that pull instead of going for an ugly rep. My upper back started rounding slowly mid rep which is fairly normal for me during a max effort pull. It was taking a while to lock out though so didn’t want the low back to start rounding as well which would have definitely happened on subsequent reps.
Also been weighing in consistently at about 170, so setting some PR’s down 5 lbs is cool. I’ll need to gain some weight on my stick frame lol.
All done in about 40 minutes. Technically I’m a little high on my pull assistance category, but I think that’ll be alright. Giant sets through most of the session, push ups were harder than anticipated for me but elicited a great pump. Finished with a little jaunt on the bike contraption- hate this thing but it’s what I have haha.
I’m going to need to invest in a weight vest sooner than later for sure.
Hey. Your deadlift is pretty sick. Any tips? I feel like my conventional stance is almost too wide, and my sticking point is really breaking the weight off the floor.
Was going to do this yesterday, but I forgot. I think I’ll keep it on Tuesdays cause that’s silly. I also immediately regret buying a dial scale instead of a digital one. The hashes are so small I can’t really see, suppose I could step on it and drop into a full squat lol.
Yo! Thanks, I’ll agree once I’m pulling closer to 500 lol.
I can walk you through my set-up - my stance is fairly narrow, about hip width with my toes turned out just a few degrees, I flex my ass as hard as I can and set my feet. Big belly of air, lock the whole midsection down and lower down to the weight as if I’m lowering a previous lift. I pull double overhand, so grab the bar as hard as possible (hook if I start pulling any kind of heavy) and try to hike it back like a long snapper. I then fire the glutes first and try to push the floor away from me, like grabbing rim on a basketball hoop.
Idk if this will help ya at all. Best tip I can give you is that your set-up can always be tighter, so work on creating maximum tension prior to your pull each time.
SS doesn’t really put too much emphasis on the deadlift, so depending on your leverages building your squat will only improve your deadlift so much. This is totally okay of course, just something to keep in mind.
Also, just something that I’ve been meaning to ask you: why are my Squat and DL numbers so close together? Does this indicate a weakness somewhere? Squat is 300, DL 320.
I’d say if explosiveness off the floor is your issue, then yeah they should help. If it’s a static strength problem then likely not, something like deficit pulls would probably be more beneficial.
It could really be a number of things really. Maybe it’s individual leverages giving you an advantage on your squat, it could perhaps be a specific weakness somewhere in that chain, it might be that your training program isn’t giving you the deadlift volume you need to drive the lift.
Have you posted a form video in the powerlifting section? Those guys are pretty good about dissecting this kind of stuff.
Somewhere between 40-45 minutes again. Got a little cute with the giant sets today. It didn’t diminish my squat performance which is mostly what matters, but I’m gonna dial it back a bit for next time. I can afford the 5-10 minutes added on, although I did do a great crossfit impression today. Threw in some small lifts to hit my reps for each category.
50 jump rope singles - fairly quick
30s heavy bag combo - speed focus
2min hard stationary bike
1 round:
100 jump rope singles - moderate pace
90s heavy bag combos - technique focus
10min moderate stationary bike
I liked this combo a lot. Put 5 different punch combos on my whiteboard that I ran through each round, then twice per at the end. Big takeaway: my footwork is so rusty. Not that it was ever really great anyway but I felt almost clumsy today. Wouldn’t mind being able to separate speed and power a bit better too, definitely landed some heavier shots than I wanted.
Next time I’ll make a couple changes. MMA gloves instead of bag gloves so I can just leave them on instead of disrupting the flow. Shorter bike sprints (60s probably) so I can push the pace harder.
Side note. Pretty solid DOMS these past couple days, haven’t had it from lifting in quite a while. Feels good! Probably won’t happen much again after this week until the next big stimulus change.
Bodyweight tricep extension (bar in hooks at 15):
Head under - 6, 5
Nose to - 10, 8
Chin to - 11, 11
Pretty nice session today. I only record the weight on the bar for the landmine stuff cause I can’t be bothered to figure out how much bar weight I’m using. The twists into the rows provides a nice dynamic-to-static core engagement, and nice upper back contraction.
First time trying body weight skull crushers. I liked them, they’d probably be better with blast straps, I’ll rig up something along those lines someday.
Threw in some small lifts to hit my reps for each category.