Birthday Squats

LRB Diet - Week 10

BW - 197

Squats -
BarX10 (long pause at the bottom to stretch)
95X5
125X4
145X3
185X2
205X1
125X35!!!

Chins - 5 sets
super-set with
Push-ups - 4 sets

Band Pull-Aparts; Medium Grip - 2 sets of 50

Fucking hell, this was the hardest damn set ever.

To recap, about a month back, inspired by Dave Tate's Halloween tradition of doing a "death-set" of 315, I decided I would aim to do a a 35 rep set for my 35th birthday.  I projected my 40RM, which is a hilarious idea especially in the middle of running 531.  I used 40 precisely because projecting a max for a rep range that's far away from the range you've been working in is a dicey proposition, so I knew I would need a margin of error.  That weight projected to be 125 lbs.

Then for the last 3 weeks I've been adding back-off sets on my heavy squat day with 135.  Again, I used a heavier weight to train for this to create "elbow room" for the 35 rep set itself.  Week 1 I did 135X10, Week 2 135X15, and Week 3 I did 135X20 and then a 50% set of 135X12.  This helped me get used to working in a higher rep range, and with a heavier weight than my "event" weight.

For the programming of the event itself, I used Paul Carter's Big-15 #'s which are designed to over warm-up to a moderately heavy single, and then back-off to some higher-rep work sets. This was perfect.  The 125 felt feather-light for the first 10 reps or so thanks to the over warm-up.  I got to 20 and everything was still OK, but around 25 reps I didn't know if I would make it.  My lower back started cramping pretty hard from holding my arch that long, and that meant that taking a rest at lock-out was really no rest at all.  It was a toss-up as to which was harder at the end, squatting or holding at lock-out.  The weight was so light that I even tried standing straight up and using my hands to hold the weight against my back, but the cramping continued.  By the time I got to 30 there was no option left but to finish, however.  Those last reps will go down as the ugliest squat reps of my life, but I got my 35.  I racked it, and collapsed onto the safety pins and just stared at the ceiling panting.

Diet-wise, I didn't eat any carbs the day before, and on the day I added some carbs back in to breakfast and lunch, and then added a 2nd lunch a couple hours before training along with a cup of coffee.  As a result, I was lean in the morning, but had plenty of energy for squatting. 

This all went pretty damn well.  If I had it all to do over again, the only thing I would change would be to add hypers at the beginning and/or end of every session leading up to this.  That low-back cramping was no joke.

After the squats, I just did some chins and push-ups to make sure I got some push-pull in before my vacation.  No point in recording the reps performed, because the numbers would be extreme outliers after that squat session.  I was just too wiped to be much good for anything.  I will say that I kept both movements strict, and with a tight pause at the bottom of each rep.

Lastly, I threw in some pull-aparts for balance because I got more push-ups than chins.