Dumbell rows: 10x14, 10x30 (PR) Face pulls: 3x10 Lat pulldown: 10x40, 10x45, 10x50 Preacher curls: 2 sets
Meant to do pushups, pause squats and pause deadlifts. Started deadlifting with my friend and he was going to work up to 120kg so I decided to try it double overhand which I got. I tried this about a month ago and my grip went which was one of the reasons I wanted to work on it over the holidays so I’m glad that worked. Racks were all in use after that so I changed plans and did what my friend was doing.
Very happy with the dumbell rows, they didn’t even feel too hard, now I need to work up to several sets of 10 with 30kg. Pull downs also were very easy, 10x50 for them is probably a PR but I don’t track it.
Tomorrow I’ll do more of a leg focused day and OHP 531.
Felt pretty rubbish today but that was a big overhead press PR- previous best was 9 reps so 12 on a bad day is good news. Squats weren’t so good, 80kg felt like a tonne. It’s strange because the bar speed with 60kg is similar to the empty bar. Maybe I just need extra practice with heavier weight. Pushed assistance hard though and destroyed my glutes and triceps.
Rest of this week is a deload. Wednesday I’ll work up to my deadlift TM for a single and test my TM for bench, friday I’ll test my TM for squat and overhead press.
Close grip bench: 2x10x20, 5x40, 5x60, 5x70 Cable rows: 5x10 Face pulls: 3x20 Back extensions: 3x15xBW Leg press: 3x20 Ab wheel rollouts: 3x5
Tested my bench TM for next cycle. My shoulder was still hurting occasionally when I tried my normal grip so for the next couple of months I’ll stick to close grip and that’s what I’ll be doing if I write bench press. Its about 5-10kg weaker but hopefully it will catch up. I was going to do a single with my deadlift TM but I deadlifted heavy two days ago so I don’t think it’s necessary.
Bounds over hurdles x3 Sprints 6x200m (3 mins rest)
Probably the deepest I’ve had to dig mentally for a long time with these. It was extremely windy and I was running into it. Glutes, hamstrings and calves did not want to cooperate after a couple of runs.
Back extensions: 3x10xBW Face pulls ss tricep pushdowns: 3x15-20 Reverse curls: 3x10x15
Overhead press felt great again, 42.5kg will be my TM next cycle. Squats felt and looked terrible. I haven’t squatted in front of a mirror in a while and today I noticed my hips were all over the place- not just vertically but horizontally too. Unsurprisingly my SI pain flared up afterwards too.
I think because of this I’m going to change my plans and not do 531 for squats. Until they’re near perfect I don’t want to push them so I’m going to do some Waterbury stuff I read and do 10x3 with them, adding a rep to each set each week till 10x5 then going back to 10x3 and adding weight. I’ll still do front squats on deadlift day so there will be some heavy squatting but my squat day will mostly be focused on technique and bar speed. I’ll probably start with 60kg.
Kind of frustrating but they’ve been causing me problems for a while and I’ve kind of been ignoring it. I lift weights for fun and to supplement my life so I’m not going to run myself into the ground for it. Hopefully in a couple of months if I’m doing 10x5 with 65 or 70kg and great bar speed I’ll be able to pick back up where I left off and feel better for it.
Isn’t Waterbury 10x3 with high intensities ? If you want to practice technique you might struggle with heavy weights.
I honestly think 5s pro is the way to go and don’t forget lunges or other leg work. You might want to be careful given your athletics workouts though. One more reason not to do heavy 10x3 in my opinion.
If you are thinking about a light 10x3 and work up to BBS basically, I think it is a good idea, but don’t cut out your main work entirely. Keep in touch with fairly heavy stuff and work on your technique with 10x3/BBS
I think he says to use 80% or something I can’t remember, I’m basically just taking the rep scheme.
Like I mentioned I’ll still be doing heavy front squats weekly too so I don’t think I need to use anything like 5s PRO. Any heavy back squatting seems to make my technique go bad and I want every rep to be perfect for the next couple of months. I think worse case scenario it’ll only take a few weeks of getting more used to heavier weight after and I’ll be back to at least where I am now.
Second this. Not very experienced, but my squat went from total buttwinky-ATG-hipshifty crap to something half decent on 5’s PRO + 5x5 FSL on my deadlift days. If it isn’t an issue, I think sticking to 5’s PRO and swapping front squats for 5x5 FSL could help you sort out your form
I see what you’re saying but I still think I’ll stick with what I mentioned before. I’ve tried similar to what you suggested before it didn’t seem to help too much. I’d have to have my TMs so low to work on my technique that the FSL stuff would be pointless and by keeping the front squats which seem OK I’ll still be able to get some heavyish squatting in.
Thank you for your advice though, I appreciate it and you might be right.
No worries, do what you reckon will work best. Have you tried looking at the Ed Can and Max Aita squat videos on SuperTraining? They’ve got some good cues for squatting
Superset Pause front squats: 5x20, 3x40, 5x2x50 Chins: 5x1xBW
Superset Front rack holds: 3x20sx 70 BW hangs: 3x15s
Lat pull down: 3x12x35
OK first workout of the cycle. Deadlifts were hard and I expected more than eight reps on the top set but despite that the effort was definitely there. Also felt it a lot in my glutes and hamstrings instead of lower back so that’s probably good. Assistance was also OK, it’ll be interesting to see how it progresses.
Good workout- PR with 62.5kg is 14 which I did recently but that was to absolute failure so 12 isn’t bad at all. By the end of overhead presses I was pretty spent and had a great upper body pump. Treadmill wasn’t fun but it’s probably what I need.
Superset Back squat:
5x20
5x40
10x3x60 Chins: 10x1xBW
Ab wheel rollouts: 3x5 Face pulls: AMRAP in 3 mins
Woke up 30 minutes late so didn’t have a lot of time and had to skip barbell rows. Squats felt good for most reps. Bracing well is something I really need to work on.
I was supposed to do 5x10 w/ FSL but after the PR set there was no chance of that- I couldn’t have gotten an 11th rep on the first back off set. I’ll probably have the same problem in future with BBS overhead press and bench after PR sets so I will have to have a think about what to do. Did a lot of good work though and I’m happy with what I’m lifting right now.
Doesn’t look like much but this was an absolute killer workout. My friend who started going to the gym with me back when I started uni has slowly been catching up to me in strength and now our deadlifts are pretty much the same. For a bit of ‘fun’ we decided to have a competition to see who could do the most reps with 100kg double overhand.
I went first with the goal of putting up a number high enough that he wouldn’t be able to get it even with a target and got 12 then he went after and got 14- both pretty much to failure. I’m annoyed I lost because I really wanted to win but it’s a two rep PR and last time was with mixed grip and also to failure. In fact it was one of the toughest sets I’d done at the time and messed my back up for a few days after. Right now my back feels great and I’m feeling strong.
To punish myself for losing I hit a few more reps with 100kg, also double overhand: the second set I actually dropped the bar on the way down because my grip went. Then to finish I decided to wipe myself out with 20x60. All in all, a fun but also absolutely horrible workout. There was nothing left in the tank for assistance so I skipped a few things.
I had been planning to do a bench variation after overhead press and vice versa but after one week it’s already becoming pretty clear my shoulders won’t be able to handle that. I think on bench day I’ll do face pulls ss with tricep pushdowns instead and on OHP day I might do tricep extensions. These might need changing too in a few weeks but I’m experimenting with what I can and can’t do so right now that’s fine.
I haven’t really mentioned it but I’ve had some degree of pain or discomfort in one of my SI joints pretty much every day for the last couple of months. Aside from obvious things like bad lifting that’d cause it, sitting without back a back support really set it off and it also seemed worse when I did less lifting like during deload weeks. I wasn’t sure what exactly was causing it but I now think it was my hips shifting laterally when I squatted. I noticed this a couple of weeks ago which I why I changed my plans regarding them and fortunately since then I’ve had very little pain, even when sitting without my back supported. It makes sense too because I noticed a similar issue last year which I thought I had fixed and I also had SI pain around then. Perhaps I did sort it but then got back into a bad habit again.
I have increased how many calories I’m consuming by quite a bit and suspect I haven’t been eating enough a lot of the time in the past. I’m not sure how this works because I’ve always been carrying a bit of fat and not lost weight but thinking about how much I was eating, it wasn’t much. On an average day I’m having: either muesli and yoghurt or a big bowl of granola for breakfast, some sort of sandwiches for lunch, around 250g of beef mince and a load of veg for tea then 0.5-1L of milk and several snacks on top of it which aren’t always good food choices. Ideally I’ll cut out the bad food and I’ll start increasing the dinner portion and how much milk I’m drinking, that’s the easiest way I can see to do it. I have alcohol once a week at most and it’s a lot less than I used to drink. I also have a takeaway most weeks where I eat a lot- recently at Mcdonalds I had 2 meals, 2 double cheeseburgers and 20 chicken nuggets to myself. Workouts are usually between breakfast and lunch and I try to eat most of my food around them.
Sleep has been good with me consistently getting eight hours. A lot of nights recently I’ve been sleeping and getting up earlier which feels more productive. I’ve also felt a lot less stressed recently which I’m sure helps.
My conditioning has definitely improved over the last few months. Walking up steep hills has got pretty easy and I’m less tired out in the gym. I think it’s from weekly athletics and also walking up hills a lot each day, particularly with a heavyish bag. My university house is at the top of a very steep hill and I also have to go up one to get to university from the gym. On top of this I always have my laptop, charger and books in my backpack basically wherever I go. They probably weigh at least 5kg and I’ve noticed walking without it feels extra easy. Hopefully with extra conditioning added in now as well this will only get better.
Did some discus for the first time which I seemed to pick up pretty quickly. Someone else wanted to do javelin so we went onto that afterwards but only got a couple of throws in before we were hit by torrential rain and had to go inside. It was also very cold and windy so I ran several short sprints in between each throw to stay warm. Nothing too difficult this week.