Quads are finally starting to feel a bit better. Seems like time and/or these pivot workouts are allowing the issue to dissipate. Still trouble enough to limit my squatting and leg pressing today (left hip didn't love the single-leg press), but felt MUCH better than the past several weeks.
Bench-Grip press again today to slot it into the "regular" OHP slot I had planned for this pivot block. Felt good. Getting the unrack and starting position more dialed-in.
I wanted to make sure I got good depth on Dips, and so did not push reps at all in order to protect my shoulder. My best is 22. This was X9 at a very conservative @7. Just "dipping" my toe back in the water.
Bench-Grip Press (dead-stop on chest) - 95X5, 5 @8
Bench-Grip Deadlift -
245X8, 8 @~7.5
255X7 @8.5
Rope Cable Curls - X9, 8 (straight-weight)
More improved pivot work. Broke a little further out of the mold on this day by using no comp. movements. Also didn't bother getting video of anything but the BGDL. Wish I'd gotten video of the BG Press, though. Those felt good.
Squatting still difficult because of quad pain. A little better on belt squat, but obviously much lower intensity.
I used to do a fair amount of PBN, but I tried doing these as dead stops on my traps, and they felt like crap. May try them again in the future with a floating rack above the shoulders.
A year or so ago, one of the strongest guys in the gym had mentioned that he got more carryover from the press to his bench if he moved the grip out and allowed the bar to sit fully on his chest. I've had that in the back of my mind ever since. I rolled it out today, and once I found a good grip position they felt great. Feels very stable, especially with a belt on. The lift kind of starts with the hips pushed forward already to allow the bar to sit on the chest. This makes it virtually impossible to use hip drive, and thus makes the movement much "stricter."
Decided to do a wider grip DL and only use double-overhand. SGDL has always made me a bit nervous as far as technique breakdown under fatigue, but bench-grip has always felt comfortable to me. Decided to do this of high single-digit reps. The capped it with some rando-curls.
DB Rolling Triceps 3-3-0: 35sX8, 8 @8, 9
finish with tucked elbow DB Bench X10@8
3" Mat Pulls -
285X6 @6
315X6, 6 @8, 9
DB Rear Delt Flyes - 30sX10, 14, 12 @8, 9, 10
finish with DB Rear Delt Rows X10@9
I was so mentally and physically ready to move on to something different, I just decided to call an audible and start the pivot block early. Everything here was improved, and with out much of a plan. I decided to do a couple of work sets of each of the compound barbell movements that were originally slated, and then move on to single-limb movements
Safety Squats were hard and weak due to the continuing quad pain. Interestingly, the quad pain was still very present in the single leg extensions, but in general feels much better today.
For Bench, the 230X2 felt very solid. I decided to do a higher rep back-off of 7-9 @8.
The way I've always done DB rolling triceps is as an overloaded eccentric movement. That is, the eccentric keeps the humerus perpendicular to the ground through flexion, but then drops down to the ribs so that the concentric is a full press movement. I decided for no reason to turn that up to 11 by adding a tempo protocol of a 3 second eccentric, and a 3 second flexed hold at the bottom. Then finished the last set with a bro-tastic burnout set of tucked elbow DB bench. I'm sure by this evening, the triceps DOMS will be real.
Mat pulls actually progressed to 9 very quickly. Not sure if that was fatigue due to the shorter rest periods used prior in the session, or more general fatigue from feeling beat up by prior sessions. Had intended to just do 2 sets @~8.
Similar to the rolling triceps, I finished rear delt raises with a rear delt row burnout set.
Solid session, thought it did run a bit long. That's a combination of this fully auto-regulated approach (initially) yielding a higher volume of work sets than I've been doing, and a bit more socializing with some of the die hards in an otherwise empty Friday gym.
SSB had 250 as the estimated weight for the day. Took 225 for my test set, and that suggested 250+, and when I took 250 it ended for being X6@7, so I made another jump. I meant to shoot for X6 on the work-sets, but I'm so conditioned to do 5s that I cut the first set a rep short. Whatever. Just happy to have been over the target intensity for decent volume.
As always with Press, I hope today will be the day it feels strong, but it never is. Nevertheless, 140X1@8 was the target, and was squarely hit. Volume sets got heavy kind of fast, and I overshot a touch with a 4th. No big, I don't think.
Deadlift was very solid. I might have done a 3rd rep with 350 to try and hit @8, but I'm more concerned with the back-off sets at this time. The weight felt just right on those, and rewarded me with sets of 6. It did get to @9 somewhat faster than I would have liked, but it was the end of the session, and already more volume than I've done pulling from the floor in...over 2 years according to my logs.
Since I'm dieting and have been having these weird quad pain issues, I decided to just open it up and go sort of full auto-regulation on my programming. Gonna try and stop worrying about the specific weight on the bar, the specific reps/sets, and just try to hone my ability to hit RPEs. I've missed enough reps anyway.
Generally, I know what movements I'm going to do that day (although I may need to change the order to make the "main" movement first), and I'll have a target rep range for each movement. Sets of 1-3, 2-4, 4-6, etc. And on the main movements, a top set range and then back-offs. The straight-sets and back-off sets will all be RPE Stop sets. For "light" movements like Pause Squats, I will shoot to keep rest times ~2 minutes to limit total number of sets. "Medium" movements, ~2-3 minutes. Main or "heavy" movements will have ~2 minutes between test /final warm-up set and top set, 2-3 minutes between top set and first volume / back-off set, and then ~2 minutes between volume sets.
So for Low Bar Pause Squats, I was targeting 4-6 reps around 275. Test set/last warm-up of 245X5@6 pointed me right at 275, and that worked well. My intent is to go for @9 RPE Stops, but I've only been doing 3 sets on this day, and figured a week to pivot into higher volume might not be terrible, especially since I'm still dealing with quad issues. So I hit a 4th set @ 8.5 and called that good enough for this week.
Bench was a little all over the place. Was looking for a top set of 2-4 reps in the 235 range. Went for a test set with 210 (90% of target) and felt like it was almost @8 after 2 reps. So I added 2.5% and tried again, but this time got X3@7. So either I wasn't fully warmed up for 210, or my technique was off. Anyway, this ended up being more predictive. Took the 5% jump to 225 and it was just a hair over @8 for 3 reps. Back-off sets ended up getting to @9 pretty quickly. This is why I might need to move the main movement to the beginning of the training session. Just in case adding additional volume to the initial movement of the day may negatively impact ability to do volume on the primary movement.
Block-Pulls went okay although I overshot the first work-set, and ended up with a top set and back-offs (not the plan, but whatevs. AUTO-REGULATED). 305 is heavier than the test sets I've been doing, but this felt @6 and this movement has been moving really well the last couple of weeks. But 335 was definitely not a weight I was going to pull for sets across. Backed down to 317.5, and that felt like a weight I was going to pull all day, but with the 2-3 minute rests, I got to the end fairly quickly, which is how I planned for this to work. So yay me. Tried to get video of all top sets and final volume sets, but missed the Bench top set.
Conditioning - Treadmill Sprints - 20 second sprint / 120 second walk; 7 rounds
Nagging quad pain is playing hell with my squats. W11.D3. also just seemed to be an "off" or "down" day in general. Press top-strength was underwhelming, although back-off strength was higher avg. intensity that previous. Deadlift was definitely down.
Then I went out-of-town for 3 days.
I hoped that the extra day off would help with the quads, but not really. Squat strength on W12.D1. was definitely limited by pain. Was hoping to work up to a triple @ 8, but ended up doing a single @ 8 (no video) and doing triples for the back-off. These intensities are disappointing, but at least I hit another 2-year BW low coming off a wedding trip. Anyway. I knew I wasn't going to be able to handle much volume at a decent intensity for back-off sets of 5, so I decided to use the "fatigue drop" / "RPE Stop" technique of doing volume sets until the RPE rises a certain amount. In this case, I dropped to 3's @ 8, and did them until I hit a 3 @ 9 with that weight.
The high-incline bench was taken on this day, and I hate the gym's other incline bench because it's got a curve at the top that makes it much closer to a flat bench. I was at the gym earlier in the afternoon than normal because I'd take an extra day off after our trip, so I dragged a particularly sturdy DB incline bench over to a power rack and used that instead. Actually may be my favorite incline set up I've used at this gym.
Chin-Ups and rows were fine. Rows felt a little weaker than last week, but no big.
First session in over a week and a half that felt "normal." No low back trouble, and no quad trouble.
277.5X5 is technically a PR on Pause Squats, but I haven't done low bar pause squats in a long time. This puts them right around 80% of my full squat which is fairly normal based on my history with this movement. Switched from High Bar to Low Bar for these in the hopes that raising relative intensity of my squat supplementals will help with this weird quad DOMS and/or strain I've been having. My theory is that lower relative intensity is allowing some de-training to take place between full squat days. Going to stick with SSB for my "medium" day this week. Hopefully, I can keep the relative intensity at or above this level, plus a touch more volume. Otherwise, I'm not sure I know what squat variant would fall in between full and paused low bar squats. Possibly regular High Bars or beltless Low Bar. If none of those work, I may try tempo squats. I've never used those before, though. Last set shown.
Bench is 10 lbs. off a 5 Rep PR. @8 and after a weird couple of weeks, I'm okay with that. I couldn't do full power bench last week because of my back, and the week before I did 245X1@10 and 212.5X3@8, so 220X5@8.5 seems like a bit of a bounce back. Still toying around with how to do back-off sets of 5 after a top set of 5. Basically dropping 10% here, but the RPE feedback seems off. Top set and last back-off shown.
Block pulls felt good. This is only the 2nd time at this height, and the 1st was beltless. Last set here (shown) was probably 8.5.
Low back was finally feeling good, so I took squats for a ride, and the back was fine....however the left quad is very unhappy. I'd been experiencing some nagging quad achy-ness two weeks ago, but it had seemed to be fading right before I threw my back-out. It was back with a vengeance on this day. My working theory is that all the novel movements I used to work around the back pain last week (leg press, belt squat) maybe provided novel stress on the quad issue as well while de-training the back-squat a bit, and then upping the intensity with a fully loaded low bar back squat blew it back up. Feels somewhat better the next day, but we'll see. I was limping around after this session, and having trouble with stairs. I'm going to try switching my light squat movement mid-week from paused high-bar to paused low-bar and see what effect that has. I've a feeling, in general, that I need to bring the relative intensity of my variations closer to that of the full squat. Hopefully, it helps with this as well.
So this is all to say, Squats were interesting. Managed to work up to an okay triple, but the resulting quad pain played hell with the back-offs. I videoed the top set and the first back-off, but when I had to drop to 315, I was too disgusted to want to see it back on tape.
Oh, there was also a full PL meet going on in the gym this day. Luckily, the were in the final flights of squats when I got there, and the rest of my session didn't cross-up too much with the lifters warm-ups.
High Inclines went fairly well. Looking at the video of the last couple of session, I was pretty sure general fatigue was possibly inflating the RPE a bit. I have to be careful with assuming that ahead of time, because pressing movements for me drop off a cliff very quickly rep-to-rep. Nevertheless, I was open to higher intensities being available to me on this day, and they were. 160X5 is a Rep PR at this bench angle. 3rd set was feeling dicey, so I dropped down for the 4th. Only took video of the final set of 160.
Skipped chins because my preferred chin station was a camp ground for lifters competing on this day.
Rows came in very strong today. 210X5 is a Rep PR for both deadstop and hanging rows (usually "stronger" on hanging rows). Only took video of the first set when I decided to go to 210 to make sure I wasn't kidding myself about form.
Chest-Supported T-Bar Row - 125X5, 5, 5 @ 8
super-set with
Seated Leg Curls - X10, 10, 10, 10
"Novelty Week" or "My Continued Adventures with Back Pain" continues!
Back was a little bit better on this day, but still didn't feel like I was ready to load my spine. Hoping the third session of the week will be
Tried out the belt squat for the first time. It took me 7 sets to arrive at the 165 work weight I used. It's a very different squat feeling, and took a long time to dial-in technique so that I felt like the weight was staying over mid-foot, I wasn't falling forwards or backwards (the weight being attached at the hip caused the upper body to feel a bit more out of control), and that I could apply full power to the movement. I do feel like I got some work in here.
Tried full power bench, but my back wasn't liking it. Went with feet-up. It was still painful at times (mainly getting on the bench and in position), but I got through it. These numbers are low compared to what I did with this movement when I was rehabbing my adductor, but I think low back pain just takes a bigger toll on everything. Overshot a little bit with 195 on the back-off work and couldn't sustain it for 5X5, so had to drop down to 185.
I really couldn't think of what to do in place of block pulls here. So I went with Chest-Supported rows again, but for lower reps, and superset it with leg curls to get some hamstring work in. I tried lying leg curls, but my back HATED that, so I had to switch to the stupid seated machine.
Because I wasn't doing any movements where I'm concerned about long-term proficiency, I didn't grab any video.
Threw my back out right before I left work for the gym. Lately, I've been shrugging off back spasms within a few hours. This one was really bothering me, though. Went to the gym and tried to Squat. Worked up to 185X1. I took 225 out of the rack and it hurt pretty bad so I re-racked it. Waiting a minute, and took it again. I got it for a single, but the pain was too distracting to maintain, and the intensity was too low to be useful for training.
The regular leg press was occupied, so I used this antique one in another part of the gym. I was about 3 sets in when I realized I'd forgotten the gym has a belt squat. Whatever. If my back is still giving me trouble on Wednesday, I'll try it out.
Inclines went okay, and chins were fine.
Didn't want to even try to mess around with bent row, so I used the chest-supported T-Bar.
Few weird situations going on with these two sessions. Day 2 was at an away gym with no belt. Day 3 was back at my regular gym, but I forgot my shoes and had to lift barefoot.
I went full over to RPE this last week for a few reasons:
1) Not sure how the diet is going to impact programming, and auto-regulating intensity seems like a good move.
2) Since I started the diet, I've had pretty intense DOMS going on in my quads. I'm actually concerned I wasn't getting ENOUGH intensity on my squat supplements to keep up adaptation, so I'm hoping auto-regulating intensity will help with that.
3) The beltless thing, the shoeless thing, and mysteriously crapping the bed on bench as the away gym, meant I wanted a solid framework for "guessing" what weight I needed to use.
Videos are all top sets, final top sets, or final back-off sets.
