UB: Strong Week 2. Deadlift

No warm-up

Standing Calf Raises - 225X16, 265X15, 305X15

Deadlift -
145X5
165X5
195X5
215X5
235X5

Power Shrugs - 275X16, 295X10

Chin-ups - Gym BW 202X10, 4

Cable crunch - Stack + 45lb. PlateX15, Stack+60lb.X15, 18

10 minute brisk walk on treadmill

Forgot to pack shorts or sweats in my gym bag today and had to work-out in my work slacks, lol.  Skipped warm-ups to help make sure I didn't rip out the crotch.  Ridiculous.

Jumped up a few more plates on the calf raises.  Just a few away from the whole stack for whatever it's worth.  Pretty confident I'll be there by the end of the cycle.

Felt pretty focused on the DL's today and everything moved pretty smoothly.  The first or second rep almost always feels like the best, though.  That kind of seems to make sense with the way I read other lifters talking about having to program the Pull somewhat differently from the other lifts.  In the future, I may condsider keeping the reps in the 1-3 range for work-sets of this lift.  I almost feel like it would be better to do multiple sets of 2-3 at the same weight I might do 1 set of 5 with on lighter days. 

Next week my top set will be 255, and while my 5 rep max projects to be 265, 255 is actually the most I've lifted for 5 or more reps (I pulled 255X6 in the middle of my 2nd 531 cycle back in early December).  Looking forward to seeing how that feels.  Hopefully I'll be feeling focused and fresh like I was this session and everything will move smoothly.

First day using my new wrist straps on the shrugs, and of course they made a huge difference.  I think I should probably jump to 315 for these next week and see how that feels.  That would be a little above my most probable current DL max.

10 chins at a gym body-weight of 202 may be a PR.  I haven't been keeping track of my bodyweight for chins and dips like I should have and just focused on raw rep numbers.  10 reps is still about as good as I've ever done at ANY weight, so I feel pretty good about it.  Carter recommends swapping out a move that you don't progress on for 3 weeks in a row on this program, so if I fail to improve on this weight/reps for the next 2 weeks, I will swap chins out for free standing T-Bar rows.

Added a full plate to the stack for the cable crunches, and then added two 7.5lb. of those little rubber stack weights.  I think this is a fine place to be with these, but I may want to add 2 more sets going forward.  I originally thought that since I'm doing 5+ sets of leg raises one day, and 2 rounds of core circuits another, that I would split the difference, but it just feels like more sets would be better here than trying to up the weight.  We'll see.

I only did a fast walk on the treadmill because of the slacks.  Still sweat a little.  Probably fine.