UB: Strong Week 4. Squat

Defranco Mobility Work

Good-Mornings - BarX10X2

Standing Calf-Raises - 305X15, 365X15, 385X15

Squats -
BarX10
135X5
155X5
185X5
215X5
235X5

Front Squats - 125X11, 125X6

RDL - 175X10, 6

Hammer and Tire - 4 rounds of 20, 1 round of 15 swings "per arm."  10 minutes

I have some sort of strain or something in my mid-back on the left-hand side.  It's been bothering me for two weeks.  I've set Deadlift and Chin-up PR's with it, so it hasn't been interfering with my lifts so far.  However, I got the idea that it might interfere with my Squats today, so I did some empty-bar Good-Mornings with the idea that if a back-strain was going to hamper squats, GM's would be the best candidate for warming-up that part of the back before-hand.  If that makes sense.  Hard to say if it worked or not.  My back didn't bother me during squats, and the painful area felt the same after the work-out as it did before.  This may just be something I have to ride out.

For the calf-raises I again raised the weight on the first two sets, but not the top set.  So increasing volume but not top weight.  Next session I will go up another plate, and I think that will be the full stack.  I don't know how much of this increase is neural and how much is muscular at this point.  Calf training is kind of dicey anyway, as true gains seem to mostly come from being heavier, and weight-training is more of a topper.

I decided to break from plan with Squats a little bit, in that I didn't add weight to the warm-up sets the way I have been.  The way I laid out the program was 5X5 to a top set of 5, and that every week all 5 sets would be heavier than the week before.  All of a sudden this week I had the thought that as I'm working in PR range on the top sets, it might be a good idea to not be pushing as much on the lead-up sets.  So I worked up to, and set, a 5 Rep PR, but the total, accumulated weight for my Squat workout was less than originally programmed.  I feel totally fine about how this worked out as I hit my top-set goal.  It was certainly the hardest set of the cycle so far, but the reps moved smoothly.  That seems to be on target.  Next week will push me into projected increase to 1RM territory on squats.

Rep PR/projected 1RM increase on Front Squats.  Don't know if I could have gotten another rep, which is about where I should be in "going to failure" on a move like this by myself.

Similarly with RDLs, a Rep PR/projected 1RM increase and went until I didn't think I could get a next rep.  Hammies are still killing me two days later.

Weather had been crappy, so I scrapped the plan for a 45 minute brisk walk as conditioning, and swung the hammer instead.