HLM. Week 11. Day 1.

BW - 219 (lightest since Sept. '15)

Squat -
365X3 @ 8.5
335X5 @ 9
315X5 @ 9

High Incline Bench -
155X5 @ 7.5
160X5, 5, @ 8.5
160X5 @ 9.5
150X5 @ 8

BB Row - 210X5, 5, 5 @ 8

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.