Was super-sick the beginning of the week, so training had to be totally scrapped. This was what I did to ramp back up. Squats working up to something a little lighter than what they will be to start the week, but at the same volume. Bench working up to something well over what will start the week, but at less volume. Ladder-up was to give myself the opportunity to feel things out. Everything went very well, and I felt worked out the next few days, but not sore. Ultimate test will be to see how this week goes. I'm picking up the programming right where it was left off.
405X5 is a Rep PR on Squat. These felt pretty good. The first couple of reps were a bit wonky, depth on the first, balance on the second, but the last three went pretty well.
Press didn't go so well. The last couple of warm-ups felt heavy, so I was a bit worried about it, and then when I unracked the first work set it felt very heavy in my hands. The 2nd rep was really tough, but I tried for a third to no avail. Oh-kay. So two session of triples, and forced right into doubles. The 2nd and 3rd sets felt good though. First and third sets shown.
Deadlifts felt very solid, but this only matches my previous 3 rep PR. Would be looking at a PR set next week, but 2 days after this session I got sick as a dog for 3 days and couldn't get out of the house much less train. Gonna repeat this week's middle day on Friday (hopefully), and then try to do the Week 10 #'s next week. We'll see how it goes. 2nd Deadlift set shown.
Squats went pretty well. Still trying to get better depth. Maybe marginal improvement on this day. Last set shown.
Bench was pretty tough. Got a lift-off for the last two sets just to try and save energy. Strength was there, just the medium volume/medium intensity set up for pressing movements on the middle day is always tough. Last set shown.
Decided to mix things up on Chins. I'd told myself I was going to get to 50 total reps on a day before I decided this volume approach wasn't working. Well 50 is an arbitrary number. I knew I needed to change it up, because I was starting to dread chinning at the end of this day. I consume a lot of stuff from various Starting Strength people, and SS adjacent stuff. Inspired by stuff Andy Baker wrote here, and also some of the Barbell Medicine stuff (recently splintered off from SS). The BM guys talk a lot about the importance of volume over intensity, and even over tonnage which is interesting. I don't consider myself nearly smart enough to really grok the big picture of half the stuff they present, and definitely not to experiment with on my own on the main lifts.
But for chins?
From what I gather, their point of view is that intensity doesn't matter nearly as much as volume. Specifically, that once work weight gets into the 70%+ range, it becomes largely equal in it's ability to drive hypertrophy. And that, after a proper novice phase, hypertrophy becomes far more important to strength gains than the neuro-muscular effects trained by super-high intensity. That singles, etc. are still important practice for strength sports, but take a lot more out of you than lower intensities that are just as effective at driving strength. In some ways, it reminds me a lot of Paul Carter's strength programming. i.e. Working up to 1-3 heavy singles, and then do a bunch of sub-max back-off sets.
So that's all to get down what I'm thinking about it at this moment. And that's why I'm moving to less sets of chin-ups (high intensity/stress) and adding in sets of pulldowns and chins to keep the overall volume up on the prime movers in the movement. I had been doing 8-10 sets of Chin-ups @ around 40 total reps. I'm moving that down to 4 initial sets here @ 19 total reps. Then I have 3 sets of pull-downs and 2 sets of biceps for a total of 9 sets "for chins." I will look to add reps to the chins until I get up to about 25 (per Andy Baker's link above). But if the 1st set reps aren't increasing and/or the total sets required to get my reps is plateauing or going up, then I will add a set to pull-downs and/or curls. If I get to 5+ sets of chins, 5 sets of pulldowns, and 3 sets of curls (Andy Baker, again), and there is no progress, I will have to add a 2nd day. I'll reset the 1st day back down to 4, 3, 2, and then both days will follow the previous progression, but the movements on the 2nd day will be those from Baker's 2nd day.
The only problem if figuring out where to put that if I'm on a 3 day split and Deadlifting twice a week. Maybe Intensity Day.
Press was tough today. I had to "get up" for most of the sets, clear my mind, and focus on every tiny detail. Too bad, as it's the same weight as last Press V.D. Guess we'll see what happens. Final set shown.
Deadlift was okay, but I was out of gas at this point. Probably due largely to travelling over the weekend, and not getting a ton of sleep (probably applies to the Press situation as well). Also, my left hand has been starting to bother me being supinated on the mixed grip, so I switched to right hand supinated. Pain went away immediately, but was awkward as I haven't switched my grip in a long time. Probably ought to start alternating at least on V.D. 2nd set shown.
Squat depth was borderline here. I filmed every set from 225 (when I put on my belt) up, trying to get better depth, but the ones that felt deep always looked borderline on video. Need to reach out to my old coaches about tuning up my squat again.
4th rep on bench was sloooooow, so I cut it there, and did a 2nd set of 3 instead. Will progress with 2 sets of 3. Both sets shown.
Deadlifts felt pretty good. Slow, but fairly strong. 2nd set shown.
Squats started off a bit creaky but finished well.
Bench was also creaky, but I ended up getting into some conversations that resulted in 6+ minute breaks between sets near the end, so it finished very strong. No video.
Deadlift felt very, very strong. Hopefully a sign that 315 is becoming a smaller % of my max. 2nd set shown.
Squat reps were all high. Every single one. MAYBE a couple of them were close to parallel. Maybe. My headspace was scattered heading into this set. I knew I cut the first rep high, and from there I struggled to find depth. So disappointing. This week I'm travelling, and so will only be able to go to the gym twice. I guess I'm going to do V.D. on Monday, and I.D. on Thursday, and go ahead and try to go to 400. I'll try to grab someone at the gym I trust to call out my depth. From the video, I believe the strength is there, the execution was just garbage.
Press went well. 2X3 PR. 2nd set shown.
Deadlift also went well. The 2nd set continues to feel better than the first. That's not a new phenomenon in Starting Strength style training at all, but I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to use warm-ups to try to get the FIRST set to feel better. 2nd set shown.
