Quads are finally starting to feel a bit better. Seems like time and/or these pivot workouts are allowing the issue to dissipate. Still trouble enough to limit my squatting and leg pressing today (left hip didn't love the single-leg press), but felt MUCH better than the past several weeks.
Bench-Grip press again today to slot it into the "regular" OHP slot I had planned for this pivot block. Felt good. Getting the unrack and starting position more dialed-in.
I wanted to make sure I got good depth on Dips, and so did not push reps at all in order to protect my shoulder. My best is 22. This was X9 at a very conservative @7. Just "dipping" my toe back in the water.
Bench-Grip Press (dead-stop on chest) - 95X5, 5 @8
Bench-Grip Deadlift -
245X8, 8 @~7.5
255X7 @8.5
Rope Cable Curls - X9, 8 (straight-weight)
More improved pivot work. Broke a little further out of the mold on this day by using no comp. movements. Also didn't bother getting video of anything but the BGDL. Wish I'd gotten video of the BG Press, though. Those felt good.
Squatting still difficult because of quad pain. A little better on belt squat, but obviously much lower intensity.
I used to do a fair amount of PBN, but I tried doing these as dead stops on my traps, and they felt like crap. May try them again in the future with a floating rack above the shoulders.
A year or so ago, one of the strongest guys in the gym had mentioned that he got more carryover from the press to his bench if he moved the grip out and allowed the bar to sit fully on his chest. I've had that in the back of my mind ever since. I rolled it out today, and once I found a good grip position they felt great. Feels very stable, especially with a belt on. The lift kind of starts with the hips pushed forward already to allow the bar to sit on the chest. This makes it virtually impossible to use hip drive, and thus makes the movement much "stricter."
Decided to do a wider grip DL and only use double-overhand. SGDL has always made me a bit nervous as far as technique breakdown under fatigue, but bench-grip has always felt comfortable to me. Decided to do this of high single-digit reps. The capped it with some rando-curls.
DB Rolling Triceps 3-3-0: 35sX8, 8 @8, 9
finish with tucked elbow DB Bench X10@8
3" Mat Pulls -
285X6 @6
315X6, 6 @8, 9
DB Rear Delt Flyes - 30sX10, 14, 12 @8, 9, 10
finish with DB Rear Delt Rows X10@9
I was so mentally and physically ready to move on to something different, I just decided to call an audible and start the pivot block early. Everything here was improved, and with out much of a plan. I decided to do a couple of work sets of each of the compound barbell movements that were originally slated, and then move on to single-limb movements
Safety Squats were hard and weak due to the continuing quad pain. Interestingly, the quad pain was still very present in the single leg extensions, but in general feels much better today.
For Bench, the 230X2 felt very solid. I decided to do a higher rep back-off of 7-9 @8.
The way I've always done DB rolling triceps is as an overloaded eccentric movement. That is, the eccentric keeps the humerus perpendicular to the ground through flexion, but then drops down to the ribs so that the concentric is a full press movement. I decided for no reason to turn that up to 11 by adding a tempo protocol of a 3 second eccentric, and a 3 second flexed hold at the bottom. Then finished the last set with a bro-tastic burnout set of tucked elbow DB bench. I'm sure by this evening, the triceps DOMS will be real.
Mat pulls actually progressed to 9 very quickly. Not sure if that was fatigue due to the shorter rest periods used prior in the session, or more general fatigue from feeling beat up by prior sessions. Had intended to just do 2 sets @~8.
Similar to the rolling triceps, I finished rear delt raises with a rear delt row burnout set.
Solid session, thought it did run a bit long. That's a combination of this fully auto-regulated approach (initially) yielding a higher volume of work sets than I've been doing, and a bit more socializing with some of the die hards in an otherwise empty Friday gym.
SSB had 250 as the estimated weight for the day. Took 225 for my test set, and that suggested 250+, and when I took 250 it ended for being X6@7, so I made another jump. I meant to shoot for X6 on the work-sets, but I'm so conditioned to do 5s that I cut the first set a rep short. Whatever. Just happy to have been over the target intensity for decent volume.
As always with Press, I hope today will be the day it feels strong, but it never is. Nevertheless, 140X1@8 was the target, and was squarely hit. Volume sets got heavy kind of fast, and I overshot a touch with a 4th. No big, I don't think.
Deadlift was very solid. I might have done a 3rd rep with 350 to try and hit @8, but I'm more concerned with the back-off sets at this time. The weight felt just right on those, and rewarded me with sets of 6. It did get to @9 somewhat faster than I would have liked, but it was the end of the session, and already more volume than I've done pulling from the floor in...over 2 years according to my logs.
Since I'm dieting and have been having these weird quad pain issues, I decided to just open it up and go sort of full auto-regulation on my programming. Gonna try and stop worrying about the specific weight on the bar, the specific reps/sets, and just try to hone my ability to hit RPEs. I've missed enough reps anyway.
Generally, I know what movements I'm going to do that day (although I may need to change the order to make the "main" movement first), and I'll have a target rep range for each movement. Sets of 1-3, 2-4, 4-6, etc. And on the main movements, a top set range and then back-offs. The straight-sets and back-off sets will all be RPE Stop sets. For "light" movements like Pause Squats, I will shoot to keep rest times ~2 minutes to limit total number of sets. "Medium" movements, ~2-3 minutes. Main or "heavy" movements will have ~2 minutes between test /final warm-up set and top set, 2-3 minutes between top set and first volume / back-off set, and then ~2 minutes between volume sets.
So for Low Bar Pause Squats, I was targeting 4-6 reps around 275. Test set/last warm-up of 245X5@6 pointed me right at 275, and that worked well. My intent is to go for @9 RPE Stops, but I've only been doing 3 sets on this day, and figured a week to pivot into higher volume might not be terrible, especially since I'm still dealing with quad issues. So I hit a 4th set @ 8.5 and called that good enough for this week.
Bench was a little all over the place. Was looking for a top set of 2-4 reps in the 235 range. Went for a test set with 210 (90% of target) and felt like it was almost @8 after 2 reps. So I added 2.5% and tried again, but this time got X3@7. So either I wasn't fully warmed up for 210, or my technique was off. Anyway, this ended up being more predictive. Took the 5% jump to 225 and it was just a hair over @8 for 3 reps. Back-off sets ended up getting to @9 pretty quickly. This is why I might need to move the main movement to the beginning of the training session. Just in case adding additional volume to the initial movement of the day may negatively impact ability to do volume on the primary movement.
Block-Pulls went okay although I overshot the first work-set, and ended up with a top set and back-offs (not the plan, but whatevs. AUTO-REGULATED). 305 is heavier than the test sets I've been doing, but this felt @6 and this movement has been moving really well the last couple of weeks. But 335 was definitely not a weight I was going to pull for sets across. Backed down to 317.5, and that felt like a weight I was going to pull all day, but with the 2-3 minute rests, I got to the end fairly quickly, which is how I planned for this to work. So yay me. Tried to get video of all top sets and final volume sets, but missed the Bench top set.
Conditioning - Treadmill Sprints - 20 second sprint / 120 second walk; 7 rounds
Nagging quad pain is playing hell with my squats. W11.D3. also just seemed to be an "off" or "down" day in general. Press top-strength was underwhelming, although back-off strength was higher avg. intensity that previous. Deadlift was definitely down.
Then I went out-of-town for 3 days.
I hoped that the extra day off would help with the quads, but not really. Squat strength on W12.D1. was definitely limited by pain. Was hoping to work up to a triple @ 8, but ended up doing a single @ 8 (no video) and doing triples for the back-off. These intensities are disappointing, but at least I hit another 2-year BW low coming off a wedding trip. Anyway. I knew I wasn't going to be able to handle much volume at a decent intensity for back-off sets of 5, so I decided to use the "fatigue drop" / "RPE Stop" technique of doing volume sets until the RPE rises a certain amount. In this case, I dropped to 3's @ 8, and did them until I hit a 3 @ 9 with that weight.
The high-incline bench was taken on this day, and I hate the gym's other incline bench because it's got a curve at the top that makes it much closer to a flat bench. I was at the gym earlier in the afternoon than normal because I'd take an extra day off after our trip, so I dragged a particularly sturdy DB incline bench over to a power rack and used that instead. Actually may be my favorite incline set up I've used at this gym.
Chin-Ups and rows were fine. Rows felt a little weaker than last week, but no big.
