5/3/1 Full-Body: Cycle 4. Week 3. Squat

LRB Diet - Week 9

BW - 197

Squat -
BarX10, 10
95X5, 5
135X5, 5
180X5
205X3
225X7
135X20, 12

Pendlays -
BarX15
120X3
155X3
140X15

Dips (paused at bottom) -
BWX5, 5, 5, 5, 3

Hoo-boy.  I did not get very much sleep the night before, and this session was mentally and physically exhausting.

225X7 is in line with the top-sets of my last two sessions, but no weight PRs.  That's fine and good, but the real story is then in the back-off sets.  Jefit says this a volume PR for me, even over the 195X20 session I did back in May when I was cutting my squats much higher.  I'd thought about form in the days between my last session and this, and theorized that if I kept my butt pushed back a bit at lock-out, I would be able to take a breath or two between reps without losing my arch as much.  This worked out very well and holding the weight with locked knees felt much safer for my back.  Also, being able to keep my arch tighter resulted in an almost painful low-back pump.

My goal for the back-offs was to hit 20 reps with 135 (5 more reps than last session), and then do a 50% set.  I was nervous going into the 20 because I felt a bit wiped from the top-set, but the new lock-out positioning helped me get it very solidly.  I then rested ONLY 60 seconds (this is how 50% sets work after all), and went back for another set.  I thought I would be lucky to get 10 as tired as I felt, but I ended up getting 12!  I probably could have gotten 15 with an all-out-maybe-dump-the-last-rep set, but I'd beat my goal, and called it good.

So that's my last regular squat session of the cycle.  I have two more pause-squat sessions, and then it's on to the "Birthday Squats."  I'll be using my current, projected 40RM of 125, and working up and then backing-off to it using Paul Carter's "Big-15" progression.  That will look like this:
BarX45
95X5
120X4
145X3
180X2
205X1
125X35
Gotta make sure I get more sleep the night before, and eat up a bit.

As fried as I was, 140X15 is an all-around PR in Pendlays.

For Dips, I'd been saying I was going to work up to +45 by 5, and then re-set my form to full depth and with a pause at the bottom.  I got to thinking about this, and realized it's the same bullshit I used to tell myself with Squat and Bench.  "Yeah, I'm gonna reset my bench form to close-grip and pausing every rep at the bottom, but I just want to hit 225 with my hands past the rings and a lot of bounce of the chest first."  Why?  All that does is delay me hitting the target with the harder form.  So I said fuck it, 45X5+ will feel so much sweeter when I hit it deep and with a pause at the bottom than it will cutting high.  And how shitty would I have felt about myself if I'd done +45X5 today, and then discovered next session that I can't get much more than 5 BW reps with a deep pause?  Not lying to myself is a good thing.

Honestly, I almost skipped dips altogether because I was so tired, and that meant ab wheel was just not going to happen.