Since I'm doing the Long-ROM partials on chins, thought I'd try out a few weeks of band assisted. See what happens when I come back to regular chins if I do "overload" variations for both the top and bottom of the ROM for a while. Might do under foot for a few weeks and then switch to under knee.
According to my logs, this is the first time I've done Front Squats since September of '22. Also, apparently this is a 1 Rep PR? I had no idea at the time, but apparently my previous heaviest Front Squat was 205X2 in 2015. I haven't done this movement regularly since then, and I usually did it for higher reps. Still nice to get a PR while doing ~2X weekly training.
A good deal of low back discomfort has crept in the last couple of days, and it made Squats pretty difficult. I'd hoped to work up to something fairly heavy today, but it took several warm-ups just to be able to get to 315 so I called it there.
No problem on Leg Press or any of the other movements. I worked up on Leg Press to set a baseline for training that movement next block. I was mentally a bit wiped from working through back pain on Squats and maxing Leg Press, so I just worked up on the Press movements.
Pretty good block on Press. I finished last block and started this one with an e1RM ~130. I think having multiple singles plus the overload movement were helpful. Not an earth-shaking idea, but this is the first time I've truly overloaded Press so it was nice to see a promising result. At the least, I think it made me more comfortable with heavier weight in my hands on the set-up.
Solid session even though I was dog tired running on only 4 hours of sleep. I got an iced coffee on the commute to the gym, and just kept topping it off with water all session to keep the caffeine drip running. Seemed like it may have helped get through.
Squats felt pretty good. The second to last single was on the heavy side, but then the top single felt as easy if not easier. I thought about going up one more, but I didn't want to push it with so much work still to do in the session. Back-offs all felt very good.
I pushed the weight up a bit more than projected on both Paused Bench and DL w/ Straps. All went pretty well. DL felt fairly heavy, but still @~8, and it IS meant as overload, so...
Video is of top sets and final work sets in each rep range.
I had a feeling that DL was going to be better than my Training Max would indicate and it was. This projects to be around the same e1RM as I ended the last block. Not sure why this happened, or why I intuited it, but it was nice to have happen. I did fatigue a bit by the end, and ended up only doing 6 reps on the last back-off set. That set is meant to be 5-7 stopping @8, so that's fine.
I haven't done beltless worksets on Squat in a while so I had no idea what to expect. This weight came in around 93% of Monday's belted Squat. I was a little nervous about heavy-ish squatting with no belt, especially after DL, but it seemed fine.
A buddy at the gym gave me an extra single-ply, Inzer Blast bench shirt a while back, and I'm trying it out this block as my bench overload movement. I cut open the back to make it easier to get on and off. I thought I might get as much as 20% out of it, but starting off this is about 105% of Wednesday's regular bench. Interested to see where this goes.
Video is of top sets and final work sets in each rep range.
Conditioning - Rower; HIIT; 20 second rounds; 5 rounds
Solid first session.
This is designed to be a higher-intensity block in a full-body layout with tightly ascending singles to 1@9 on the main lifts followed by 2X4 @8 and 1X5-7 @8, then a slightly lower intensity variation, and a variation with a bit of overload. The last back-off set on the main is 5-7 because I want to see if I can learn a little "RPE on the fly," and also to give myself elbow room for better and worse days without having to add additional work sets to hit the target.
On Squats, the expected top single target ended up being correct, although warm-ups felt good enough that I thought I might go up. However, 357.5X1 was right @8.5, so I stuck to the plan. The second back off set of 4 was noticeably more difficult than the first. That seems about right given the fatigue I would expect to have accumulated on this lift by that point. I screwed up my formula projecting the weight for the final back-off set. It should have been closer to 290, but I don't mind so much on day 1, and we'll see how it goes now that I've fixed it.
Been so long since I benched with a regular pause that I kept forgetting to pause on the first rep. These sets actually got easier as it went along, so it will be interesting to see where the offset between this and the TnG version ends up by the end of the block.
I don't think I've ever really done much conventional DL with straps. I guess-timated a 5% bump over mixed-grip, and that seems like it will be fairly close depending on where comp DL falls at the end of this first training cycle.
