Barbell Medicine Low-Fatigue Template Review

 Quick Review of numbers and thoughts.

Diagnosed Diabetic in Feb.'22

Numbers circa diagnosis:

BW: 218

Squat: 375X1 @8 (e1RM 407.5)

Bench: 212.5X3 @7.5 (255)

Deadlift: 415X1 @7 (470)

Press: 112.5X7 @8 (150)

Chins: BWX7 @8 (285)

Dips: BW+25X8 @7 (342.5)

Curls: 80X6 @10 (100)

Toes-to-Bar: BWX5@8.5 (265)

Maxi-Total: 2275

Conditioning: None

Numbers at the end of LFT Block 1:

BW: 200

Squat: 285X5 @8 (352.5)

Bench: 197.5X2 @7 (230)

Deadlift: 355X5 @8 (440)

Press: 107.5X6 @8 (137.5)

Chins: BWX5 @10 (232.5)

Dips: BW+25X10 @8.5 (325)

Curls: 50X18 @9 (102.5)

Toes-to-Bar: BWX5 @7.5 (250)

Maxi-Total: 2055

Conditioning: 2 sessions LISS (Rower and Airdyne) 1 session HIIT (Rower)

Numbers at the end of LFT Block 2:

BW: 203

Squat: 320X1 @6.5 (365)

Bench: 217.5X1 @7 (245)

Deadlift: 385X1 @6.75 (432.5)

Press: 150X1 @10 (150)

Chins: BWX5 @9.5 (240)

Dips: BW+45X8 @8 (340)

Curls: 50X15 @9.5 (87.5)

Toes-to-Bar: BWX7 @9 (257.5)

Maxi-Total: 2117.5

Conditioning: 2 sessions each LISS and HIIT (alternating Rower/Airdyne)

Big Picture: 

First off, my blood sugar is now back in the normal range, and I'm off all blood sugar medications.  I'm effectively no longer Diabetic.  Huge thanks to Dr. Austin Baraki and Barbell Medicine for their content and consultation on this issue.

From the Diabetes diagnosis to the end of the first block and then the end of the second, I lost 18 lbs. of BW (9%) and regained 3 (1.5%).  My maxi-total went down 220 lbs. (11%) and regained 63 (3%).

BW aside, no lifts are stronger now than they were at the time of diagnosis, although all lifts except for Curls are stronger at the end of Block 2 than they were at the end of Block 1.

Generally, I liked these blocks.  More than anything the higher volume combined with all the added GPP feels like it has increased my general work capacity.  Next block, I will move on to the BBM Powerbuilding I template, and see if I like that.

Block 18 (Exploratory). Recap

sRPE was right on target through the block starting at ~@5.5 in the intro week, peaking ~@7.5 in week 4

 

Avg. BW was fairly stable through the block ending slightly lower than it started but ending higher than at the end of last block (+2 lbs.).

The bad:

  Pivot:

  - Curls started off at 84% of the end of last block.  Not bottom-2-tier, but still poor.

  Progress:

  - TTB regressed, finishing just under where it started the block.  It was in a maintenance slot, so nbd.

The less bad:

  Pivot:

  -  Dips, DL, and Toes-to-Bar, all started off below their average block-over-block.

  Progress:

  - Chins, DL, and Press all progressed less than the average.  They averaged ~0.76% increase between the three of them.  All progress is good progress, but I can get better results than this.  Press was particularly disappointing as it started the block with an e1RM of 150, and finished with a peak e1RM of 157.5 which was lower than peak e1RM in the prior block.

The good:

  Pivot:

  - Chins and Squat both came in fairly strong averaging about 97% e1RM from the end of the prior block.

  Progress:

  - Squat and Bench.  They averaged an increase of 2.1% week-over-week between them.  Not quite top 2-tier, but very close.

The best:

  Pivot:

  - Bench came in at 102% e1RM over the end of the last block.  Coming out of a deload into week 1 stronger than the prior block is the goal.

  Progress:

  - I actually lifted weight on Curls I'd never used before (95 lbs.).  Dips had peak e1RM entering all-time territory.  Curls and Dips both had new top 2-tier performances averaging 3% increases week-over-week between them. 

  Maxi-Total:

  - 2432 lbs.  Best since I started tracking all 8 lifts.

All-in-all, a very good block.  I learned to be a bit more willing to take my foot of the gas mid-block, and then not to go for PRs at the end of the block that are WAY outside of what the training block looked like i.e. to go more for Rep and Volume PRs in the set / rep range I'd predominantly been working with.

Block 17. Quick Recap.

 Average BW was down about 2 lbs. from the previous block.

sRPE was about the same as previous block averaging @6.5

The bad:

Pivot:

 - Curls started off significantly weaker than normal at about 76% from the end of the previous block.

Progress:

 - Squat was the only lift that made negative progress on this block.

 - Squat and Press both ended up worse than where they were at the end of the previous block.

The less bad:

Pivot:

 - Chins and Deadlift had a larger than average drop-off from the previous block.

Progress:

 - Dips, Bench, and Press all increased by less than 1% over the course of the block. Just a bad block for progressing pressing movements.

The good:

Pivot:

 - On the other hand, Bench and Press had very good strength retention from the end of the previous block.  This was the best pivot I've had for Press which came in at almost 97% of where it ended the previous block. 

Progress:

 - Curls and Toes-to-Bar both had their best week-over-week increase since I've been tracking it.  TTB increase an average of 1.24% each week, and curls increased a whopping average of 4.8% week-over-week.  However, that was largely off-set by the terrible week 1 performance which left e1RM slightly lower than the previous block, meaning...

The best:

Toes-to-Bar with the above mentioned weekly progress, a 7.2% increase over the course of the block, and a 2.75% increase over the end of the previous block . 

All-in-all this block wasn't as good as the previous block, but hopefully the lessons of what was good and what was bad will yield a net positive for future blocks. 

Block 16. Quick Recap.

 Solid block.

Average sRPE ended up being ~6.5.  I was targeting 7, but I also had two sessions get split out into 4 smaller sessions for occasional group training with friends.  That being said, aches and pains from training were very minimal, and there were none that made me have to alter my training plan.

As has been usual with this approach, I started hitting Rep and/or Volume PRs around mid-block.  The glaring exception to this was Bench.  I did get a 3X10 PR, but the 3rd set was near-maximal.

This was block 1 of 2 focusing on Curls, Bench, Deadlift, so I'm hopeful that "the way is prepared" for some Bench PRs next block.

I started tracking a "maxi-total" in Block 13.  That is the combined peak e1RM for each of the 8 lifts I consider my benchmarks: S, B, D, P, Chins, Dips, Curls, TTB.  That block I posted a 2255, but then Block 14 was a pretty crap block for me.  I started digging out last block with mixed results, but now have climbed back up and hit a new high of 2380.

Inner-cycle, week-to-week improvement after week 1 was solid at an average of 8.3%, but inter-cycle from the end of the previous block was even better with an average of 5.8%.  That's by far my best cycle-over-cycle improvement since I expanded tracking beyond the powerlifts.

This block was best for:

Curls: 9.5% increase inner-cycle; 14.25% increase inter-cycle; 9 Rep PR

Deadlift: 8.5% inner-cycle; 14.1% increase inter-cycle; 3 Rep PR

Chin-Ups: 11% inner-cycle; 4% inter-cycle; 9 Rep PR

Dips: 5.4% inner-cycle; 7.6% inter-cycle; 1/6/10 Rep PRs

This block was worse for:

Toes-to-Bar: 2% inner-cycle; -1.67% inter-cycle; 3X4 PR

Bench: 6.5% inner-cycle; 2.3% inter-cycle; 3X10 PR

LRB 365: Big-15. Phase 1. Mini-Review

Quick and minimal results and a few notes from the 1st round of Big-15 training on the LRB-365 program:

Bench - Goal met: 155X15.  I labored in the X13-14 range for a couple weeks, and finally hit this during my final bench session.
DB Bench - Goal met: 60sX15.  Got it at the end, and also hit 55sX20 the week before.
DB Incline - Goal met: 55sX15.  Got this 1/2 way through the cycle.

Squat - Goal met: 205X15.  Hit this on week 3, and got up to 205X17.
Front Squat - Goal met: 125X20.  Got X19 in Week 2, and hit X20 in Week 4.

Chins - Goal met: BW+25X10.  This was an ugly set, but I got it.  May need to start filming these to see if I'm cheating them.  These were all shoulder-width, neutral-grip.
DB Rows - Goal met: 75sX12.  Got it in the final week.  In the previous session, two weeks prior, I got 70X10 for 4 sets across.

Seated PBN - No goal set because I hadn't really done them before.  Hit 95X15 for an all-around Rep PR for all types of PBN, and right around my Rep PR for all OHP.

All the lifts listed above were Rep PRs, and most project to increased 1RM.

In addition, I had my 36th birthday in this time and did my birthday squats that I started last year.  Got 135X36.  125X35 the year before.  Not a major increase but these are mostly a mental effort, excepting that the low- and mid-back fatigue in a way that they don't with lower rep squatting.

Also, on my final Squat day I'd had a few days off and had a week off coming up.  Rather than do the prescribed light hamstring and single-leg assistance, I opted to have some extra fun.  I did something I've never done before which was do all three powerlifts in the same session. 

Because most of my real worksets for a year or so had been in higher-rep ranges.  I decided to just work up to new 2-Rep PRs.  To be clear, I didn't work up to 2RM, but rather I knew I was so much stronger than my previous best 2 rep lifts on Bench and Dead that I just decided to top them both by 10 lbs. 

For Bench that was 185X2, and for Deadlift 325X2.  Bench in particular was ridiculously easy.  Deadlift was a little bit harder, but I had just done a high-rep Squat workout, hahahaha.  Anyway, 185 is projected as my 5-7 RM on bench, and 325 as my 4RM on Deadlift.  So like I said, these weren't humongous efforts, but rather just having some fun bringing my Rep records more in line with the current reality.

Looking forward to the 2nd cycle!

LRB 365: Strong-15 Short (and LRB Split). In Review

My goals for the LRB Split and Strong-15 Short Cycle boil down to:
1)  Chase Rep PRs in assistance work to build supporting musculature.
2)  Focus on the Squat overall.
3)  Eat real food, prepared by myself as much as possible, and try to eat "normally."

More detail on each of these.

1)  Rep PRs.  I covered a lot of the Rep PRs under the LRB Split here.  DB OHP, T-Bar Rows, Fronts, GMs, RDLs. 

Under the Strong-15 Short, I had Rep PRs in Bench, Incline Bench, and more RDLs.  Additionally, the way Paul Carter programs Squats and Deads, you could look at my back-off sets as volume PRs.  5 sets of 3 for both Pause Squats and Deadlifts after working up to the day's single.  In my last Deadlift workout, I backed-off to 4 sets of 3 with 295.  Now I've lifted 295X8 before, but the density of volume is even more here, AND the bar speed was fast on all the reps.  For Pause Squats, at the end of the Strong-15 I did 1 set of 3 with 215.  At the end of the Short Cycle, I did 3 sets of 3 with that same weight. 

Leg Presses were also introduced and used in both cycles and the weight/reps were pushed throughout; you could say weight/rep PRs and volume PRs were set on that as well, but 1) it's a machine and therefore highly variable and 2) it's a seldom used exercise for me and so is ripe for improvement.

2)  Squat Focus.  For the LRB Split, I wanted to emphasize quad development as much as possible, so I did Front Squats on both leg days.  On the heavy squat day, I did 4 sets of 10 with fronts after my back squats, and on on light squat day, fronts were my main movement.  The program calls for working up to a few fast triples on that movement, however I over-rode that, and pushed for max reps on the last set 531-style.  I set Rep PRs every week on that day.  This was all in addition to Leg Presses, BW Lunges, and Leg Extensions.  Really trying to take what Dan Green says to heart.

For the Strong-15 Short, I decided to back all my goals down from what I did on the full Strong-15 earlier this year.  I decided for Bench and Deadlift I would program so that my top single at the end of the cycle would be my Everyday Max (EDM), 175 and 315 respectively.  For squat I programmed to hit 255, or 10 lbs. over what I thought my EDM was.

The culmination of the squat focus was that I killed my pause squats and top singles every week, including the EDM+10 in the last week.  And my legs are bigger.

3)  Diet and Food Prep.  Not a lot to say here.  I'm an avid cook, so the main thing was making time one day a week to cook a large amount of lifting friendly food.  This mostly consisted of a variety of grilled meat with some vegetables and rice on the side.  No supplements, and minimized eating out as much as possible.  Over the two cycles my weight slowly and steadily climbed from the low 190s to the low 200s.  About an 8-10 lb. swing, or about a pound a week.

Conclusion.  I had a great time running these.  I looked forward to every training session and felt like I got a lot of good feedback from what I ran.  I set modest goals and hit them.  Now I can only hope I'm setting the stage for continued progress.  It's been an awfully slow climb for me this last year and a half considering how light my weights are.  I'm pretty good about not comparing myself to what other people are doing, but because I like to read up about this stuff it's hard not to notice 175 lb. guys on straight linear progression squatting 450.  I want weight on the bar, but I've just got to be patient and believe it will come if I keep putting in the work and the time on a consistent basis.

LRB 365: LRB Split. In Review

This will be short, as I suspect the LRB Split and the Strong-15 Short cycle go hand-in-hand in a way that will result in a more complete picture emerging at the end of that 2nd cycle.

Generally speaking, the goals for this cycle were to maintain top-end strength on the main lifts relative to where they've been during the conditioning cycle, while allowing some more carbs back into the diet in order to stimulate muscle growth by going hard with the assistance lifts.

My bodyweight started out hovering in the 192 range at the end of the conditioning cycles, and by the end of the LRB Split was hovering around 195-196.

I set the following PRs on assistance work in chronological order:
RDL: 
205X8
225X9
245X10 (with straps)

DB OHP:
20sX25
25sX35
30sX28

Front Squats:
135X10
145X8
155X9

T-Bar Rows:
95X8
110X7

Barbell Rows:
145X9

Good Mornings were a new movement to me with this cycle and I progressed them as well:
135X8
145X7
145X8
145X10

Regarding Front Squats, I was doing them every week.  They were the first assistance exercise following back squats on Heavy Squat days, and they were the main movement on Light Squat days.  All the PRs were set on Light days, however it's worth noting that while I PR'd with 135X10 on a Light Squat day at the beginning of the cycle, by the end I was doing 135X8-10 for four sets across as assistance on my Heavy Squat days.  In addition to all that, I kept my stance narrow on all the Leg Pressing, and went hard to push reps on leg extensions.  Increasing quad size/strength was my primary goal for this cycle, and I feel good about the results.

I also got some good hamstring volume in with all the RDLs and GMs in addition to the maintenance Deads.  Had sore hamstrings every week.

Lots of shoulder volume on the cycle as well.  In addition to the DB OHP, my regular Press was getting within 5 lbs. or so of PR territory by the end.  Lots of high-rep Inclines, Upright Rows, and Rear Delt Flyes to round it out, all pun intended.  Although I honestly haven't noticed very much growth in my delts.  Hopefully, we'll see some of this work translate into Bench strength on the upcoming cycle.

All in all, I had a really good time through most of this cycle.  Hitting PRs on Fronts and RDLs was really fun, and seeing my wheels growing as a result was really great as well.  Near the end, I had a little bit of a crisis of confidence because I didn't instinctively know if my Every Day Max had improved, and was grumpy about what to set as my goals for the Strong-15 Short Cycle.  In the end, re-reading the manual, and reading an inspiring post by Carter along the lines of the Patience and Belief mantra that he and Brandon Lilly have been going over helped me get my head on straight.  I've decided to program lower for the Strong-15 Short than I did for the Strong-15 at the beginning of the program.  My final singles for the next cycle will be right around weights I've hit a million times before.  With the work I did on this cycle, and the extra back-offs I'm planning for the first few weeks of the next, I'm confident that I will be crushing the weights all the way up to the end.  And isn't that what we're supposed to do?

LRB 365: 100 Reps and Conditioning. In Review

The 2nd and 3rd phases of the LRB 365 program are complete.  The High-Rep Lifting/Conditioning Acclimation and Conditioning Peaking phases respectively.

The high-rep/acclimation phase was 6 weeks, and the peaking phase was intended to be 6 weeks.  However, due to a long vacation and some other scheduling considerations, the peaking phase went for 8 weeks as I chose to repeat weeks 3 and 4 after my vacation.  So 15 weeks total (including vacation) comprising all of March, April and May, and a chunk of February and June as well.  That's important to keep in mind.

This whole section of the program is a little bit more difficult for me to wrap my mind around, because I've never done any serious dieting, and I didn't do any for this until the final 4 weeks.  As a result, this felt more like "working-out," rather than training towards any kind of specific goals. 

So for the High-Rep/Acclimation phase there's not a lot to say.  I got a lot of snappy reps in on the big lifts, and a ton of high-reps in on support work.  I learned that I hate walking in the weighted-vest.  Not because it was particularly hard, but because it was boring as hell.  I actually like going for walks, but because I live in a major urban center, and have occasional gang-violence in my neighborhood, neither my wife nor I were particularly comfortable with my walking willy-nilly through our part of town in what looks like a bullet-proof vest.  Also there were some school shootings this year, and the Boston bombings.  What I ended up doing was picking a straight section of sidewalk right by our building that avoided major roads, schools, and public buildings.  It was about a 7.5 minute walk one-way, and I would walk back and forth on it until I made time.  Like I said, boring as hell.  For the HIIT, I started off just doing interval sprints on the treadmill, but for the last two weeks the weather started to improve, and I decided to take it out to my hill.  I decided to do the %'s for the first week of the peaking phase here so that I could easily slide into that phase.  My hill is something like 65-70 yards, and I took an initial max time of 13.5 seconds.  Week 1 of the peaking phase calls for 10 sprints at 75% of that, or 18 seconds.  Hardest part of this was going that slow.

For the Peaking Acclimation phase, the program doesn't prescribe specific percentages on the lifts, but just leaves it up to you as long as you stick to the over-warmup technique.  I've been enamoured for a long time with the idea of 45/25 training to I stuck close to that.  45/25 meaning that as much as possible you try to only use 45 and 25 lb. plates.  The idea being that these big jumps will force you to really dominate a given weight before you jump to the next higher weight.  This worked fine and kept everything nice and snappy throughout the program.  It also gave me the freedom to back-off a little on some days, or push a little on days I felt strong.  I liked it a lot.

The evil bastard parts of this phase are the body-weight ladder/circuits.  Four bodyweight movements done in circuit laddering up to a top set and back down again.  The upper body day was particularly brutal because you do "heavy" bench or incline and then follow that with a ton of dips and push-ups which strain the hell out of your already fatigued triceps, plus chins and full hanging leg-raises which just take a lot of energy to do.  I was so pathetic at all of this the first week that I slashed all the prescribed rep intervals back to intervals of 2 (some of intervals are as high as 5), and slowly worked my way up throughout the phase.  I managed to work everything back up to the prescribed intervals except for push-ups.  I got these up to intervals of 4 on lower body day (when my pressing muscles weren't fatigued from pressing and dips), and intervals of 3 on upper body day.  I feel positive about this.

As my schedule crunched down on me in May, something had to give and that something was the walking.  I hated the weighted-vest walking, and was having trouble even justifying separate walking sessions within my schedule.  I ended up just using the 20 minute walks to and from the gym, and to and from the hill to stand in.  Did what I had to do.

The hill-sprints went great.  By the final week I was hitting the challenging but doable 15 sprints @ 90% with confidence.  My left knee was a little aggro at the end, but it was the end, and now it has some time to recover.

Once I decided to do some real dieting, I had a solid little drop in weight as well.  When I started 365 in mid-December I was fluctuating between 199-205.  At the end of Phase 1 (Strong-15), I was staying in the 198-201 range.  At the end of Phase 2 (High-Rep/Acclimation), I was 196-199.  When I got back from vacation, I had done 4 weeks of Phase 3 (Conditioning Peaking) and had decided to repeat weeks 3 and 4 before continuing with weeks 5 and 6.  At this point I was holding steady in the 195-198 range.  I decided to cut out all carb-dominant foods except for one cheat night a week to allow for socializing and/or nights out with the wife.  Within 5 days, I shed about 4-5 lbs. that have stayed off, and I've been bouncing between 190-191 at every weigh-in.  The only exception to the diet was alcohol.  I try to make less-bad choices, but the way we live, I just ended up having a drink or two a couple nights a week outside of my cheat meal.  This upcoming week is a 50%, or light week in the gym, and then we're going camping with a bunch of friends for the weekend.  The camping trip will mark the end of low-carbing for awhile, as I look to add some quality mass in the upcoming phase.

Overall these two phases were a gigantic mind-fuck for me, but a learning experience as a result.  I got very much to the point where I was fantasizing about other programs that would give me the feedback I wasn't getting here, i.e. weight on the bar.  I'm very glad I stuck with it.  I had a real wake-up moment when I realized that this had been 15 weeks.  So what kind of seemed like an eternity really was a good chunck of a lifting year.  I don't know if I can explain it now, but this made me feel a lot better about everything.  Looking back on the program, I see that I set aside 15 weeks to recover a little bit from the Strong-15, get my conditioning up, and even start to explore how my body reacts to some classic low-carb dieting.  I pushed through all those brutal body-weight circuits and was feeling strong(er) on them by the end.  I'm eager to start doing the body-building type stuff on the next phase, and see if I can build some mass and additional confidence/perspective to take me into the strength phase that will follow that.  If I were to run this program again next year, I think I might dread these 12 or so weeks, but I may also look back and find they were invaluable.

LRB 365: Strong-15. In Review

The full Strong-15 run that starts Paul Carter's LRB 365 manual is complete.

The biggest difficulty and most important thing switching into this program is determining goals for the cycle.  I switched from 531 to Carter's Ultimate Beastdom program last winter as well.  I just don't have the experience to easily switch from a training max based approach to a goal based approach.  When I did this last year, I charted my E1RM progress over the previous 531 cycles and used that to project goals for the strength phase of the UB program.  This was based on the assumption of equal or better progress.  It worked okay, but I had mixed results for a variety of reasons.  Mostly related to poor form as I approached my goal weights.  Again, inexperience.

It was a bit easier this time because Carter goes into a lot of detail around using what he calls the Every Day Max (EDM) as the baseline for the goals here.  He is very much talking about feel and intuition about what you can lift, but after working in E1RM for so long, I still wasn't positive about what that should be because I was still getting 5-10 reps on all my 531 top sets.  So this time I took my E1RM for each week of 531 for the prior 3 months and averaged it.  I decided that my EDM should at least be in that ballpark.  I then set different, modest (I thought) goals for adding to each of them.  It broke down like this:

Squat - EDM (3 month 531 avg.) 275.  Goal - 285 (+10 lbs.)
Bench - EDM 200.  Goal - 205 (+5 lbs.)
Deadlift - EDM 360.  Goal - 365 (+5 lbs.)

I should note that although I averaged ALL my 531 weeks together, it occurred to me afterwards that it might have been smarter to only have used the 3rd week of each cycle since it's the heaviest.  However, when I go back and look at that, those weeks yielded the highest E1RM of each cycle across the board.  So this still seems fairly conservative.

Now the good news is that I didn't miss any lifts on the program.  The not so good news is that Carter wants the final singles in Week 9 to be "crushed", and they really weren't. Here are the results by the numbers:

Final Squat - 265:  This was really smooth and there was no doubt I would make the lift, however it was a bit slower than I might of hoped.  Still probably my favorite result of the program.

Bench - 185:  This is a true EDM for me in the sense that I've hit this weight on multiple occasions, including in Week 8 of this cycle.  The real news here is that I set rep PR's on my back-off sets each of the last 3 weeks of the cycle.

Deadlift - 335:  This was the biggest letdown.  This matches my previous best actual lift, which is okay, and it was smooth, but it was really, really slow.

With the deadlift, it could be that I overestimated my EDM, or it could be just additional stress of heavy squatting before deadlifts.  Regardless, I came up with a new way to track EDM for myself, that is SUPER-conservative and still allows me to have fun playing with programming spreadsheets.  I've always tracked my Rep PR's, and now I'm just averaging the E1RM of all of those together to give me a result.  Again, this yields amazingly conservative numbers because some of these Rep PR's are really old.  However, if I'm going to buy into Paul Carter's sub-maximal philosophy for a whole year or more, then it seems like a decent way to go.

5/3/1 Full-Body: In Review

Yesterday I wrapped 5 cycles/4 months of 531 - Full Body.  I'm going to go over the way I set it up, and then the progress #'s.

Here's a comparison of the textbook version of this variation and what I did:
3-Days
Wendler:
Regular Squat every session; one 531, two with lower %/reps
Me:
Regular Squat on 531 day, Pause Squats the other two with the lower %/reps.  Pause Squats help me keep my form in check.

Wendler:
Military Press with 531 sets/reps on Press/Deadlift day
Me:
I used Klokov presses instead just because I wanted to give the movement a good try.  Also, every 3rd or 4th session I would use Paul Carter's Strong-15 scheme to understand where my top end strength on the movement was in comparison to the high-reps I was getting on my 531 top set (it was always lower than projected).

Wendler:
Puts out a lot of DB/one-arm/one-leg movements as potential options for assistance
Me:
Everything was done with a barbell, or lifting my body off the floor (chins and dips)

Wendler:
One Squat, One Press, One Pull movement per session.
Me:
That plus a few cycles where I threw in ONE additional accessory movement per day targeted to bring up one certain muscle group per cycle.  So I would settle on a muscle group, and add one movement to each lifting session for that area.  I did this for two cycles with shoulders/traps, and one cycle with legs.

That's it.  I consider that directly in-line with the principals of the program as laid out by Wendler.  The only place one might quibble is with the additional movement added to bring up a muscle group, however I always had enough energy to get a quality work-out on all the lifts, and my numbers never seemed to suffer from the added work.

On to my progress:
There are a few ways to look at this, but I'm going to start with progress on the individual lifts.  One note on this: I reset my max on everything after the first cycle because I was stalling really quickly following the 2-day program I'd been on for the summer, and that's why the initial weights don't seem far off from the final weights.  I also started pausing all bench reps on my chest, and this further reduced my initial #'s.  With that out of the way:

Squat -
Best lift first cycle: 225X4, projected 1RM 250
Best lift final cycle: 225X8, projected 1RM 280
30 lb. increase

Bench -
Best lift first cycle: 160X4 (touch-and-go), projected 1RM 180
Best lift final cycle: 165X6 (all paused on chest), projected 1RM 195
15 lb. increase PLUS added pause at bottom

Klokovs -
Best lift first cycle: 70X12, projected 1RM 95
Best lift final cycle: 85X11, projected 1RM 115
20 lb. increase

Deadlift -
Best lift first cycle: 295X1 (awful); projected 1RM 305 (previous best was 345)
Best lift last cycle: 290X8; projected 1RM 360
60 lb. increase

Something else I started tracking, and another way to look at progress, is that I logged my projected "total" for each week, and then my average total for each cycle.  So for example, in week 1, I projected at 240, 175, 305 for a 720 total, I found that number for each week, and then took the average of all 3 weeks per cycle to get my average total for the cycle.  Progress looks like this:

Cycle 1 -
720, 735, 720 for Average Total - 725

Cycle 5 -
780, 835, 820 for Average Total - 810

85 lb. increase

Looking at it this way results in a very conservative number by which to judge my current standing.  Rather than just taking my best individual lifts across the whole program and saying my final total is maybe 835, I can safely say that my total is at least 810.

So there are two different ways to look at my progress.  I think the bottom line here is that progress was demonstrably made.

As to how I feel about the training like this?  I loved it.  I really did.  It was hard to talk myself into transitioning into something else.  This type of full body layout using only a compound barbell or bodyweight movements is the kind of thing I've wanted to try since I started reading Chaos and Pain, and it really worked for me mentally.  Also, I've long felt that in addition to the Big-3, my long-term staples would be standing OHP, BB Rows, Chins and Dips.  This program allowed me to ONLY to do those things for a long time, and it was awesome.  I expect I will return to this from now on for a significant portion of each year's training.