5/3/1 Log: Cycle 1. Week 1. Pause Squats

Defranco Hip Mobility

Pause Squats -
BarX5
105X5
135X5
160X5
185X5
210X5

Front Squats - 135X5X5

RDL -
135X5
155X5
175X5
195X5
215X5

Hammer Swings - 15 seconds AFAP, 45 second rest; 15 minutes

Wow Pause Squats.  Paul Carter once said not to go above 5 reps with these because they are so taxing, and I definitely see what he was talking about.  I used 80% of my regular squat max for my training max here, and I don't know if I could have gotten much more than 5 reps on my top set if I'd tried, but frankly all the work sets felt hard.  I dropped a line to Carter about this to see if he thinks that's normal, or if I should drop the training max even more.  He said I should leave it for this cycle, and drop it in the future if necessary.  After the top set of 5, my heart was pounding like it did after my set of 20 at the end of my last cycle.  Crazy.

I programmed alternating Front Squats with Deadlift every week for 531 here, but when it came time it didn't make as much sense to work-up/warm-up to my top set after all the pause squatting, so I decided to do 5X5 straight across with 135.  This was kind of hard, but mostly because of fatigue and burn-out from the pause squats.  I'll tweak this as necessary as I go along.  I may do a 50% set next time instead, depending on how I feel, but I think what I'll do is 5 sets of 3 at 90% of my training max in two weeks, and then 5 singles at 95% in the next to last week of the program.

For RDL's I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do coming into the gym, but I had so much fun doing 5's with all the Squats, I decided to do 5X5 with RDL as well.  In this case, I worked up to a new 5RM and projected increase to my 1RM on this movement.  After the initial "get-to-know-you-again" period in the first two sets, I ended up dead-stopping all the reps on the floor for the last 3 sets.  Fun stuff.

Finished off with 15 minutes of sledge hammer swings.  Tried out/made up a new protocol for this time around where I swing the hammer as fast as possible trying to get 15+ swings in 15 seconds, and then rest for 45 seconds.  I think this is okay because the rest period feels ridiculously long at the beginning, and a tad too short by the end.

Ultimately, it could turn out that doing medium-to-heavy sets of 5 or less with 3 different lower body movements on the same day could run me into the ground, but I'm still only lifting 2-3 times a week with only 2-3 days of conditioning (including steady-state).  I'm going to try and stay very aware on how I'm feeling mentally and physically, and calibrate as necessary.  I've got an important show opening at the end of this cycle, and my priority needs to be hitting that on all cylinders.  So it's completely possible that I get to the end of week-3 of this cycle and decide to cruise through to my opening rather than do another 3 weeks.