Ended up just taking a 5 day break around the Thanksgiving holiday. Rather than try to finish out the (already extended) General S+C template, I decided to jump right into prep for a mock meet on 12/31.
After all the lower specificity training the last few blocks, I had to really hold my emotions back and stay calm. Tried to funnel all the arousal into extreme focus on technique. In particular, reminding myself that the supplemental lifts can help build technical cues on the mains if I let them.
Mash-up a couple of GPP sessions and still skipped conditioning, lol. Just a lot going on heading into the holidays so getting in what I can/what I'm motivated to do.
Backed off a bit on TTB reps as calluses were bothering me.
142.5X6 is a Rep PR on the Press. Felt pretty good I think. Tried to video it from the back to see if I could learn anything new from that angle, but the phone fell over.
231 (BW)X10 is a Rep PR on Chins. No video on this day.
355X7 is a Rep PR on Squat. Finally. It's taken me 4 weeks to dig myself out of the hole I found myself in after my Thanksgiving trip where I ended up not squatting for 3 weeks. 4 weeks to undo 3 weeks. What a pain in the ass. Anyway, things had started to feel better last week, and everything felt really good all through warm-ups on this day. The first set was hard in the usual way of a 3X5, 2nd set felt really good, and I was fired up for the last set. Also, the video of the first working sets showed a really solid bar path. Hopefully this is a sign of what the coming weeks will be like.
First day back lifting after a week-and-a-half layoff for Thanksgiving travelling. Everything felt slightly off as a result, and there were no PRs to be had on the barbell lifts.
Pressing felt okay, but needed 9 for a rep pr.
One nice thing is that 255 (BW+30)X3 is a Rep PR on chins! Gym was full, so I had to use one of the wobblier chin stations in a part of the gym that was too crowded for video. I feel confident that the reps were consistent with what I've been doing, and the back-off sets felt pretty good too. This is one of those days on the back-offs where it feels like I can do as many chins as I can hold my initial breath for, but after I have to take a 2nd breath the strength seems to go.
I was completely wiped when it got to squats. Also incorporating rehab movements from my P.T. between all sets was really annoying. I was ready to be done after I finished my last warm-up. Still by the time I got to the AMRAP set, I was determined to get more than 5, and did. Needed 9 for a PR.
Hopefully, this first session back will set the stage for barbell PR sets over the next few sessions.
Kind of a low-intensity, medium RPE day. I'd been sick for a few days, and then really busy, and that kept me out of the gym for about a week and a half. And I'm about to be out of town for a week for Thanksgiving. So I didn't want to think of this as a "regular" programming day, and decided to push some lighter weight on the barbell lifts, and just get some volume in on the bodyweight movements.
All that being said, 185X10 is a Rep PR on Bench. Probably RPE 8. One more rep without a spotter for sure.
No weight added for Chins and Dips. Just getting some volume in, especially on Dips following a higher rep set of Bench.
I was really close to pulling 405, and I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do on DL. With being sick and away from the gym, I didn't feel confident coming in and pulling a heavy double. And about to be gone for a week, I was worried about how that would effect my training. Ultimately, I decided to be conservative. Reset the DL along with everything else, but also plan to advance with 10 lb. jumps for a while. The goal is to try and get DL to pull even with squats on intensity, and then drop to 5 lb. jumps.
275X10 matches a Deadlift PR, hilariously, from October, 2012. I didn't know that when I went into this. The Greyskull reset was going to have me starting at 295XAMRAP where 9 would be a PR, so I just decided to do 275X10 today. When I went to look this up later, it turns out I haven't gone over 7 reps on DL since May of 2014, and hadn't gone over 8 since 2012.
What was surprising about the movement itself, was how fatigued my actual legs started getting. I squatted 285X10 as recently as June of this year, so that was unexpected. Still, everything felt solid, and looks okay. I'll be gone for a week, and then I'll come back and really start the GSLP in earnest after the holiday.
245X2 is an all-around PR on Bench. I was supposed to do 242.5, but I'm ready for a reset, and so said 'fuck it.' Jumped to more of a milestone. RPE 9.5. Back-off sets felt strong. 2nd back-off shown. Will now reset Bench to the GSLP.
325X9 is a Rep PR on Squats. Gave my legs a week off after hitting 405X2 in the hopes that rest and a GSLP reset would allow the adductor strain to fade away, but it came roaring back on these sets. Next thing will probably be to meet with a P.T., and probably plan a longer lay-off of squats around our annual Thanksgiving trip. Still this was maybe RPE 8.5. Definitely could have gotten one more.
351(BW+25)X5 is a Rep PR. Failed the 5th rep on set 2 (shown in video). I will run this back next session and see if I can hit both sets. First BW set felt surprisingly strong, and thought I was gonna run to 10, but the bottom dropped out as it usually does on this movement for me.
Had a little over a week off with Thanksgiving travel and holiday, so coach backed everything up 10% and we'll make 5-10 lb. jumps on everything until we get back up to where we were. Basically end of next week.
85X20 is the Rep PR on PBN I was looking for before moving up to work-sets with 95. It seems a lot easier to get these standing vs. seated. Some of that is that I find it awkward to unrack the bar by myself on the PBN bench, and sometimes the bar hits the pins as well. May just try to do them standing from now on.
Since I was back home for Thanksgiving, I was just going to work up to a single set of my next tier working-weight with Deadlifts. I thought maybe a triple or a set of 4. When I got the 4th rep, I decided to go for a 5th which would have been a PR. Strained something in my lower or mid-back on the attempt. That's two Thanksgivings in a row where I've injured my back in the gym. I'm blaming air-travel and the guest bed at my parents house.
So I was completely on track for some big Squat PR's over the next couple of weeks, and that will probably be de-railed while my back heals up. I'll go in for squatting and see how it feels, but will absolutely not push it. If anything feels even unusually tight, I'll just make this a bench focus week, hahahaha.
Good session. 295X3 is a Rep PR and, along with 14 total reps, my goal for that weight. I'll move up to 305 after Thanksgiving, and everything looks on track to hit 315 next month and start working towards my next squat (and other lift) goals.
All the assistance was good. 135X13 is a Rep PR on GMs, and I pushed up the reps on the single-leg work.
Running Thanksgiving errands, so I went to a L@Fitness near my house. Because it was Monday, there was a queue for all the benches. So fuck waiting for a bench and/or switching up my bench workout to accommodate that crap. So instead of waiting for one of the 3-4 benches, I went over to the lone squat rack, dropped the bar on the ground and did Deads.
This gym has some of those crappy angle-sided weights that move around at the bottom of deadlift reps. I knew that would suck ass if I tried to go for a lot of reps on my top set, so instead I pulled my programmed 531 top-set for a triple, then pulled my training max for the cycle for a triple. 315X3 is also a Rep PR. Pretty fun.
