Bench (paused first and last reps) - up to 185X5 @7.5
Pause Squats - up to 275X6 @~8
Cambered Bar Bench - up to 160X6 @9
Machine Flyes - X10, 10, 10 @7/8.5
Rower - HIIT; 16 minutes
As usual, the long lay-off over Thanksgiving meant my first day back was great, but then soreness on this second day was a bit of an obstacle.
Weight on Bench was a fine starting point, but execution just felt a little off due to soreness. Hoping this bounces back a bit as I get back in the groove. (although I expect my pecs to be pretty sore in a day or so from this workout).
I did add a pause on the first and last reps. I expect we'll be pausing in the mock meet. This block will be mainly singles and doubles on bench. I only paused the first and last reps because this workout sets my "training max" for next week, and I wasn't sure that the e1RM from a fully paused set of 5 would give me as accurate of a starting point i.e. it might have artificially lowered the max.
Squats felt a little wonky from soreness, but pausing actually sometimes helps with that. For me, not trying to bounce out of the hole can help things like adductor fatigue be less noticeable.
300 for 2X8 is a Volume PR on Squats. Effort increase significantly between the first and second set, so even though I still felt fresh, I didn't want to do another hard set of 8. Instead I decided to work up with some singles. My target was 365@~7. I hit the 345X1 @6 very comfortable, but when I squatted the 365 it ended up being high and wobbly, so I'm not counting it. Just a little out of practice with heavier singles.
239 (BW+20)X14 is a Rep PR on Dips.
Skipped OH extensions and Gaspari Curls, but felt like trying out 135 on the pin presses. I figured singles or doubles. Doubles were do-able, and BOY are 2@9s a different experience from 3@8s on these. Weird how "do-able" they were, but also how mentally taxing. It was pretty fun.
Press definitely didn't feel any stronger, but also didn't seem to backslide.
Bench high reps felt terrible on the warm-ups, but then the singles just seemed to lock in somehow, and I had a big, 10 lb. jump over last week, even with self lift-off. Hit the first back-off set, but it felt like it wasn't there (forgot to get video), so I skipped the second set, similar to Squats the day before, since this is the last week of this block. Just didn't feel like backing off more in the last week.
Likewise, chin-ups and pull-downs were all comparable to last week. Plateaued at the end of the block.
Press strength and/or technique on the top singles seemed to jump up a bit. Back-off strength, not so much.
Bench also felt very good. I was working in with someone, and we mis-loaded my second back-off set. No big.
Chin-Ups felt MUCH more locked in and stable on this day. Almost a 3% e1RM increase over last week's weighted session, and over a 6% increase over last week's BW-only session. Forgot to get video.
Pull-Downs - X11, 8, 7 (straight-weight; same weight as previous)
BB Curls - ~60X11, 10
Starr Rehab Squats were expected to be sets of 8 today, but the Squat had other plans. 6th rep with 315 was challenging technically, so I called it there and went ahead and dropped to sets of 5. These all "felt" like real work sets and my legs were nice and achy for about 24 hours following. I'm just going to switch over to standard LP progression with 10 lb. jumps (hopefully) between sessions. Adductor still feels a bit sharp on the initial warm-up sets, and feels a bit spasm-y at times outside of the gym, but nothing nearly as debilitating as it was. Current plan is to run the LP up to the mid-to-high 300's and then switch back into regular programming with an HLM, top-set followed by back-off sets approach. I'm hopeful that lower intensity back-off volume will help continue the healing process while also driving adaptation for the top sets. All 3 work sets shown.
250X1 is a Rep PR on bench. Nice to get it for 5 sets, too! The first set was really close as the descent was a bit slow, and touched a bit high. Those were the two cues I took into the other sets, and they were all much better. I may try to push this up one more time. Would be nice to notch 255 before I switch over to HLM, but we'll just have to see. Last set shown.
Chins were fine. Still strict and double-paused.
RDLs still feeling good with the straps. So good, I'm probably sand-bagging on switching back to pulls from the floor. "I'm talkin' to the man in the mirror."
Pull-downs were the same total reps as last time, with a slightly different distribution. All these chin-up accessories are probably going out the door once the adductor feels good enough to switch back to regular programming. Looking back at my log, I have added about ~15 lbs. over the course of about 2.5 months. Went from getting ~105X8 to getting ~115X11-12.
Likewise, I've taken barbell curls from getting ~50X9 on the 2nd set to getting ~60X10 on the 2nd set here. If I start to miss these movements because my chin-up strength starts going backwards, this is stuff I could potentially mix in on off days at the gym in my office building, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. The main thing is to get back to regular, progressive work on the multi-joint barbell movements.
Intervals - alternated jogging/walking the trip home in 2 block intervals.
195 felt too heavy to be an over warm-up, but not heavy enough to generate adaptation, so I did 2 singles.
Everything else but the chins felt strong, and the reps weren't too taxing. Felt solid for the first "heavy day."
Intervals were technically weighted, as I had my laptop case stuffed down in my backpack. Just cinched the thing down so it was tight against my upper back, and didn't bounce too much at all.
Back strain seemed almost gone, but I was still really nervous about going in to squat today. I warmed up with empty bar low-bar and high-bar squats since high-bars seemed to aggravate the injury the most last week. Both felt good so I went forward. The goal for 305 was 2 reps, which I got for a Rep PR. The goal was also 13 total reps with the weight. I thought, "fuck it, I'll just play it safe and do it with singles." Because of my caution I was slow at the bottom and wasn't getting much rebound. This was making everything harder, and I felt whatever muscles are strained in my back really working hard on the 2nd single, so I decided to stop. I did a back-off set with 225 and called it good. Still, I'm filled with more confidence for next week, and I think it's time to go ahead and get my 315 squat done.
I re-tested High-Bars with an empty bar and they still felt good so I moved on to them. Here I thought I would play it safe and do sets of 3 instead of the sets of 5 I'd been doing. What I didn't do was remember that I'd been using 205! Only after the 2nd set did I realise I'd jumped weight up that much, but decided to move forward with it. On the last set, I hesitated a moment in the bottom on the 3rd rep and didn't feel confident I could get it back up so I let it go. Still, these sets also worked to increase my confidence for next week.
I didn't want to tempt fate with Good Mornings, so I did some glute-hams instead and super-setted them with the single-leg work. All good.
80% session. I have a tight schedule early this week, and so had to do bench a day early. Because that had me going Press, Squat, Bench on consecutive days, I made some slight tweaks so that there wasn't as much overlap with what I did on Press day. That means taking the focus away from my shoulders a bit.
First, I chose not to go for a rep max on my top set, but rather to just get the required single, and then take my training max for the cycle for another single. Wendler has written a lot about this lately, and it made sense for this day. Both singles were heavy, but the rep was smooth on both. Very satisfied with that result.
Second, rather than do BBB sets on Incline, I did more flat bench with a 50% set. I kind of thought I would get more than 10 reps, but I'm fine with this.
Pretty satisfying session, and looking leaner than I've been in over a year. That 210X3 still felt pretty heavy though. Probably an 8 or 9 out of 10 on the ol' RPE scale.
Klokovs felt a bit back on track. I approached them somewhat differently, in that on the first 3 sets I paused every rep on my back so that I would have to take them from a dead-stop. Then on the top set, I paused every 5 reps for breath. The hardest part of this lift is breaking it off the neck, and that's why I "trained" the pause/break on all the up-sets so that I would be prepared for the top-set. As the weight increases on this lift, I'm going to try and incorporate more pausing. The difference between attempting this lift from a pause vs. with the stretch reflex is pretty drastic.
250X11 is right in the strength range for my last session, is a Rep PR for the 9-11 rep range, and everything felt pretty good. So that's a good session.
So with shrugs I really hemmed-and-hawed and decided to go up to 455 for singles, and then when I decided to do max reps on the last set, I got 5 which is hilarious. So next time, I'll do 455 for my triples I guess, and do 475 for singles and see how many reps I get at the end with that.
Heavy, heavy back day so I did crunches for my core work.
Pause Squats felt a little heavy today, but not as heavy as...
...Klokovs. As you can see from the notes above, I was completely baffled and caught off guard here. I even "got up" for the top set because I was concerned by how heavy the other work sets felt. 3 weeks ago, I hit 75 for 15, and 2 weeks ago I hit 70 for 20. It's inconceivable to me that a 5-10 lb. jump can cut my rep range down from the high-teens to the mid-single digits. I'm gonna chalk this up to fucking astrology or fatigue from Bench Day or something, and I expect to rebound next time.
Deadlifts went really well however. 270X8 projects to a # 2 all time 1RM, and is a Rep PR. What's more, the set was more about focus than straining, and I didn't walk away feeling gassed, nor do I feel wrecked today. All good signs that my favorite lift is in pretty good shape at the moment.
Wanted to start flirting with increased weights on the shrugs so instead of hitting a back off set in the 300's after my triples, I started adding 10's and doing singles. My form/ROM felt a little shitty, but I was able to get 3 on my last, all-out set. Next time I may go with 425 for the triples, and bump up to 455 for the singles.
Skipped hypers at the top of the session to make sure my back was super fresh for Deadlifting, and so finally made myself get some ab work in the session. I think that since I added in the additional shoulder work, the sessions just feel to damn long with both hypers AND crunches, so I'll have to start alternating. I'll probably settle on crunches on Squat and Deadlift day since they've got heavier low-back movements, and do hypers on Bench day.
