5/3/1 Full-Body: Cycle 1. Week 1. Press/Dead

BW - 204

Reverse Hyper - 5 sets of 10

Pause Squats -
BarX5
95X5
115X5
135X5

Klokov Press -
BarX5
55X5
60X12

Deadlift -
135X5
205X5
235X5
265X5

Chiro Crunches - 5 sets of 25-30

Really nice session.  Seems like the best in awhile.

Doesn't seem to matter how little weight is on the bar, full, ATG pause squats just feel like they don't want to go over 5 reps.  Weird.  These all felt good though.

Just my second time ever trying these "Klokov" presses.  No matter, I went ahead and based by 531 training max on the lone, other session and predictably got a lot of reps on the top set and projected an increased 1RM.  The way Squat and Bench day went, it was nice to feel like the first week of a 531 movement was easy for a change.  Shoulders were smoking after that top set, though.  It was great.

Deadlifts felt solid.  My top strength has certainly dropped off a bit since I pulled several PR singles to push up my 1RM a couple months back, but that seems to be expected, as top end strength peaks and drops off again.  The cool thing, looking back at my progress over the last several months is that my "baseline" pulling strength seems to have shifted permanently from an average max range in the high 200's to the low 300's.  Roughly from the 285-290 range to the 310 range.  The good thing here is that 531 seems like the perfect format to sit back a tad and, hopefully, allow that average to creep up slowly.  Of course, if I'm feeling awesome one day, I will go for extra reps.  In the meantime, I'm doing hypers, rows, and chins together with tons of squatting, so there's plenty of work for the support muscles of the pull, without having to push the lift itself very often.  That's the plan anyway.  Starting with this session, I'm also holding the last rep at lockout to test/increase my grip strength.