First time squatting at least 3 and a half plates since mid-2024. First time doing it for a set of 5 since mid-2018 when Texas Method almost ended my Squatting career.
Well. 1st Intensity Day in a three weeks due to illness and schedule. Probably went better than I should have expected. 410X3 is an all-around Squat PR. Couldn't get that 3rd rep on the 2nd set, and dumped it like an asshole. Both sets shown.
Shoulder and elbows felt like shit after dumping the bar off my back. Still managed to get the prescribed work sets, but it was hard as hell. 2X3 PR. Both sets shown.
At this point, I was out of gas and everything hurt. I had a dim hope that Deadlift might miraculously come through, but that was not the case. The 1st rep with 395 was slow and felt like the slowest of my life. I knew there was not another rep there. I threw in a back-off set at 365. The way I felt, I was sure I could get 3, but hoped for 5. Stopped at 3. Good news, I guess, is that 395X1 is a Rep PR.
I knew I wasn't going to be back in the gym for several days due to Memorial Day schedule for myself and the gym, so I through in a little bit of chin-up assistance that I knew could be done relatively safely and with less impact on my overall physical feeling.
Not sure what my plan is for the next 2-6 weeks. I have family coming into town, and then a big camping trip. All of this will impact schedule, recovery, etc. I'm not sure how best to approach that yet.
Chin-Ups - BWX 7, 5, 4, 6 (first 3 sets before press, 4th set after)
Pull-Downs - X10, 10, 9 (straight-weight; plus "5" lbs. from last week)
BB Curls - 45X12, 10
Left adductor was killing me, but weight was fine on Squats.
After failing to get 5 reps on any sets with 140 last week, backed off to 135. These were very hard. Last set shown.
Chin-Ups actually felt pretty strong on the first couple of sets. Dropped off on the third. These sets were all done during warm-ups for Press. Then I did the next set after Press and the strength was back.
Upped the weight on pull-downs. Was feeling pretty fatigued, but still tried to keep rests short. Couldn't get a clean 10th rep on the last set.
Forearms were burning pretty good at this point which made curls kind of a bitch. Hoping for some of the 'ol Adaptation here.
Missed Intensity Day for the 2nd week in a row. Decided that I'll just repeat everything from last week and shoot for those I.D. lifts this Friday. Sets with 365 on Squat did feel stronger this week than last, and that was a good feeling. Butt shot back at the bottom of the last rep of the last set, shown.
I did up the weight a bit on bench. I'd done 202.5 for two Bench V.D.'s in a row, and they were fast last week. 205 felt good this week. Last set shown.
Was pretty gassed by the time I got to DL. Maybe just conditioning falling off a bit from the erratic schedule the last 3 weeks. Went with my "off" hand supinated for the last warm-up, and first work set. Then switched to my "regular" supinated hand for the last set. Worked in that the set felt better than the previous sets. That hand still has a strained feeling after going supinated on DL. Hoping that will go away soon. Last set shown.
Pull-Downs - 3 sets of 10 (straight-weight; +5 lbs. from last session)
BB Curls - 45X12, 10
Legs were super sore from the sick time I was away from the gym. Squat strength was obviously there, but every rep sucked. Last set shown.
Failed to get 5 reps on Press. Blerg. I actually missed my last middle-day press session because of programming around a trip. Maybe I'll revisit the weight I was supposed to do that time, and go from there. 1st and last sets shown.
Chin-Ups were okay. Starting to work total reps back up.
Started messing around with progressing the assistance exercises. The plan is still not to add additional sets until Chins stall at 25 reps without increasing density. Don't expect world-shaking results from this, just something I'm trying out:
Upped the weight on the pull-downs by "5" lbs. per set.
Decided to take the curl sets to within a rep or 2 of perceived failure or RPE 8-9. Figure the best way to progress those until sets are added is to put reps until both sets are over 12, then up the weight.
365 for 3 sets of 5 ties my LP PR for Squat. First two sets of squats were pretty hard, but something clicked for the last set, and it was the best of them. I will say, that after my illness lay-off last week, and even though I got in last Friday and had a sort of day of "ramping back up," my legs are pretty damn sore today. That's exactly what I was hoping Friday would mitigate, but we'll just have to see if it gives me trouble the rest of the week. Last set shown.
Bench moved very, very well. Didn't even feel the need for a lift-off/spot on the last set (shown).
Deadlift was also solid. Nice and fast as this weight has been for the last 5 weeks I've had it as my work weight on Volume Day. I've got one more week with 315, before it starts to go up. Left-hand still feeling sore when I use it for the supinated grip. May just need to switch to right-hand supinated for a few weeks to give it time to recover. 2nd set shown.
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.
Squats moved well today. First set was sort of awkward, but the rest were right down the middle. 3rd set shown.
Press was tough. Wasn't positive I was going to get all 25 reps, but did. Hopefully keep getting the adaptation to make that happen. Otherwise, may lower the % slightly so that the weight isn't going up every single V.D. Final set shown.
All in all, a solid if not spectacular session. Squat moved well.
Bench was probably about RPE 9.5, but felt good.
Once again, I was hoping to come in and pull 375X5, but this time the bar started slipping out of my hand on rep 3, so it was another 2X3. I'll just progress 2X3, I guess. Per the Barbell Logic podcast, they believe it is important that the weight on I.D. continue to move up. Both sets shown.
Squats were fairly easy both today and on Volume Day. 6 weeks in (4 weeks since I tweaked it based on the Barbell Logic podcast, and some SS forum posts), I'm starting to suspect that I need to increase the weight at least on the light day. There is a quote on the podcast about, "light day should feel as hard if not harder than volume day" and "if you do two sets on light day and it's easy, you better add a set, and you might need to go up in weight." I'm already at 3 sets. I've been going at 87.5% of VD weight. That's because the suggestion was 85-90% and I decided to just go in the middle so I had room to adjust up or down in that range. Believe I will adjust up now, but just 1% and go from there. I.D. weights are in PR territory from here on out. My warm-ups on I.D have felt pretty crappy until the last single or so, therefore I want to make sure I'm not dipping to far into my recovery to fast. Final set of this day shown.
Pressing movements on light day have been at a much higher relative intensity, and continue to feel like it. 2nd set was a bit of a struggle as bar path got off at lockout on the final rep. Pulled it back together for a decently hard 3rd set (shown).
Big jump in chins today. Went from 37 reps in 10 sets last week, to 38 reps in 8 sets this week. That's my first time averaging 5 reps per set since I started this volume experiment! I did get into a lengthy chat with the gym owner before the last two sets and so was well recovered, but I got 5 reps on both sets, which is pretty big for me. Still telling myself I will take this experiment to 50 total reps before making any changes.
Everything moved pretty well on Squat and Bench. Final sets shown.
The increase in Deadlift weight from 310, has these feeling a bit more like real work-sets and not as much like speed work. That's good. I'm contemplating if I need to add another set on V.D. because of last I.D.'s shit-show. But I want to give the weight increase a chance to drive adaptation first. Trying to avoid increasing both weight AND sets at the same time so that I've got a better chance of understanding what's working and what's not. Final set shown.
385X5 is a PR on Squats. As has been usual on Intensity Day, the late-middle warm-up sets didn't feel great, but the last single of warm-ups felt okay, and then the work set felt really good.
That was the good news. The rest wasn't so good. Press felt very heavy in the late warm-ups. I girded my loins and still went into the work set looking for 5, but failed on rep 4. So okay. We'll move on to 2X3 for Press on I.D. Technically, this is a 2X3 PR. Both sets shown.
Deadlifts were an even bigger disaster. Based on advice I got from a Starting Strength coach on their forum, I reset my DL by 15 lbs. so that I could progress again with the preferred 1X5 -> 2X3 -> 3X2 -> 5X1 ID progression. Well, I failed on rep 3. However, watching the video and being honest with myself, I think I gave up on it pretty quick. The 2nd and 3rd sets of 2 looked plenty strong and fast. Therefore, I will go at this weight again next week. I will either get the 5, or look for 2X3 to progress on. 1st and 3rd sets shown.
Squats moving fast, but leave me feeling achy. Hopefully, that's about right for the middle day. 3rd set shown.
Achy-ness from the Squats made Bench fairly uncomfortable. Probably because I plant my feet slightly far out. These moved well though. Got a hand-off on the last set, and that always helps.
Squats moved very well. RPE 8 at the most. Glad the weight is going up next week as these may be starting to feel to easy. Final sets shown in all videos.
Press volume felt better today at heavier weight than last Press VD. RPE 8.5 on the last set probably. Technique felt much more dialed-in and controlled for one thing, and probably a bit more acclimated to 5X5 staring week 5.
Deadlifts starting to feel heavier, so probably (hopefully) closer to the correct weight/volume to trigger adaptation. Probably RPE 8 on the last set.
