I was a bit tentative on DL because of last week's lower back issues, but no problems today.
Backing off of intensity has allowed me to push volume in this "pivot" block to 17 worksets in a session over 2 weeks still with headroom to add more. The last few blocks before this I've been capping out around 14 worksets before fatigue demanded a change.
I'm glad I gave a shot to pushing intensity instead of volume, but I think I may be a volume boi.
I've got one more out of town trip this weekend, and then I should finally have a runway for more consistent training for a while. However, I might let this program run a couple of extra weeks just to see what happens before I go back into another specialization block.
Wasn't sure how the reduction in set volume this cycle combined with everything being taken "past failure" would effect recovery markers. Generally I feel as well or better recovered than when I was doing more sets further from failure, and the various trackers in the RTS app seem to agree.
I had provisionally conceived of this as "Deload by HIT," but I wasn't sure how that would play out in practice. Jury is still out, but it's looking like a "maybe."
First session in over a week and a half that felt "normal." No low back trouble, and no quad trouble.
277.5X5 is technically a PR on Pause Squats, but I haven't done low bar pause squats in a long time. This puts them right around 80% of my full squat which is fairly normal based on my history with this movement. Switched from High Bar to Low Bar for these in the hopes that raising relative intensity of my squat supplementals will help with this weird quad DOMS and/or strain I've been having. My theory is that lower relative intensity is allowing some de-training to take place between full squat days. Going to stick with SSB for my "medium" day this week. Hopefully, I can keep the relative intensity at or above this level, plus a touch more volume. Otherwise, I'm not sure I know what squat variant would fall in between full and paused low bar squats. Possibly regular High Bars or beltless Low Bar. If none of those work, I may try tempo squats. I've never used those before, though. Last set shown.
Bench is 10 lbs. off a 5 Rep PR. @8 and after a weird couple of weeks, I'm okay with that. I couldn't do full power bench last week because of my back, and the week before I did 245X1@10 and 212.5X3@8, so 220X5@8.5 seems like a bit of a bounce back. Still toying around with how to do back-off sets of 5 after a top set of 5. Basically dropping 10% here, but the RPE feedback seems off. Top set and last back-off shown.
Block pulls felt good. This is only the 2nd time at this height, and the 1st was beltless. Last set here (shown) was probably 8.5.
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.
Few weird situations going on with these two sessions. Day 2 was at an away gym with no belt. Day 3 was back at my regular gym, but I forgot my shoes and had to lift barefoot.
I went full over to RPE this last week for a few reasons:
1) Not sure how the diet is going to impact programming, and auto-regulating intensity seems like a good move.
2) Since I started the diet, I've had pretty intense DOMS going on in my quads. I'm actually concerned I wasn't getting ENOUGH intensity on my squat supplements to keep up adaptation, so I'm hoping auto-regulating intensity will help with that.
3) The beltless thing, the shoeless thing, and mysteriously crapping the bed on bench as the away gym, meant I wanted a solid framework for "guessing" what weight I needed to use.
Videos are all top sets, final top sets, or final back-off sets.
My quads are getting really achy. Kind of a DOMS way, but kind of unusual as well. They were distractingly achy during my first back-off set of squats. And I woke up to them aching this morning. For me, DOMS is usually a 24-48 hours later thing. I would think it had to do with diet, but I don't see a reason why that would be effecting my quads and not anything else. It may just be that back squat objective intensities are just the highest of any of my lifts. I'm going to try using RPE to see if it raises the objective intensity of my Squat assistance movements so that my legs get more acclimated to heavier loads. I started off this program with assistance at 80% of BACK-OFF sets on light day, and 90% on medium. I've been saying they were too light, so I think that's biting me in the ass.
Anyway, top set of Squats felt @ 9. Didn't get much sleep the night before.
Last back-off set felt @ 8. Fatigue was tempting me to rush these AND get sloppy with them. Really had to focus to be both patient and focused.
Last set of Inclines felt @ 8. Looks fast though. Again, poor sleep.
Had to use the shitty pull up station for neutral grips. They were fine. Was hoping my lighter bodyweight would make a noticeable difference, but I guess 3% isn't that big an off set, haha.
Rows were fine. No straps. Played around with hook grip a little, but finished with plain ol' DOH. Gym was crowded so no video.
No easily perceptible change in bar speed between the first and last reps of the last set. So probably RPE 6 at most. Going back and looking at my heaviest session with this movement from a few weeks ago, that would appear to be the same there. I probably need to up the intensity a bit to get into @7-8 range at least for the last set (shown).
Top set of Bench is interesting. Felt like at RPE 9-9.5, but bar speed between 1st and 3rd rep looks more like @7.5. Mis-grooved the 2nd rep which made it feel harder than it should have been. But technique break-down often comes with high-intensity work. As far as the discrepancy between "bar speed RPE" and "feels RPE," I would submit that my bench strength tends to drop off a cliff more-so than other lifts. Nevertheless, I will try to keep this discrepancy in mind. Back off -sets were all easy <@6. Top-set and last back-off shown.
I think I'm finally figuring out some stuff on the RDL bar path. I'm just not pushing my butt back far enough to keep the bar in contact with my legs throughout. This really felt like it started to click half-way through the last set. For me, the cue might not just be "butt back" OR "bar on legs," but rather BOTH push back so that the bar feels SOLID against the legs. The only thing is that my low back "feels" less extended this way, although it looks fine. No real difference in the bar speed between first and last reps, but it "feels" tough, so I'm gonna call the 2nd set @6. Last set shown.
Paused High Bars felt good, and looked good. Weight is probably too light. Last set shown.
Top set of bench felt solid. Didn't feel the need for a spotter. This weight is my 3X5 PR, so this is as it should be. Back-off sets were almost speed work. Top set and first back-off shown (forgot to film last back-off).
RDLs were nice and heavy. Nevertheless, I focused on a really controlled eccentric and reversal to try to correct the issue of the bar swinging out on the reversal. Seemed to help a bit. Hamstrings are very sore today. Last set shown.
Also, I ordered my first belt today. Should show up in a 4-6 weeks.
Leg had been feeling so much better, I decided to play with some Squatting. Low bar regular wasn't feeling great, so I moved my stance in a bit, and it felt better, but really awkward. Moving to High-Bar seemed to make it feel more natural. I started working up in sets of 3, taking small jumps. If it hurt a little, or felt awkward, I would repeat the set. Got into the mid-to-upper 200s and I was starting to have some discomfort through the quarter of ROM right around parallel, but it felt all good at the very bottom. I switched to doubles, and then singles to get up to 300. Did a couple of sets there and they felt a little sharp, but not too bad. Got a little greedy and went up to 315. First set was okay, but the second set had a very sharp twinge in the adductor, and now it basically feels like I've lost 10 or so days of recovery process. But hey, my previous best HBS was 250X5 (in 2014), and at least these were fast.
All I really wanted was to keep motor pathways fresh with some higher-intensity / very low-volume squatting in the hopes that would facilitate a more rapid "come back" once I can low bar Squat pain free. Oh, well. Luckily I'm going camping for 4 days this weekend and won't even be in the gym. When I come back, I'll just have to take it super slow. Last set of 300 and last set of 315 shown.
Definitely wasn't putting my feet back on the ground for bench after this. I'd already proactively decided to cycle down to triples at this point on the feet-up bench. Again, just trying to keep relative intensity high while frequency has been reduced by schedule. These moved well.
Pull-Ups also felt pretty good. +1 rep from last time.
Supinated Pull-Down weight is now at a challenging intensity. Probably the best strategy for next week is to stay at the same weight, and try to go for 12 on each set.
Arms felt worn out by the time I got to Hammer Curls. Same results as last time.
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.
