Monday, October 1 - Main bench day
Bench press - rest pause singles - 30 sec. rest +reset
355x4 singles - this was terrible, last week I did 11 singles with 5lbs less. I thought I should be able to get at least 8. I failed the 5th rep but there was not even a struggle, I must have been out of my normal groove because the weight went up a few inches and back and then straight down on the pins, like it was in a spot where I couldn’t even move it. The first 4 weren’t easy either, the first was OK but it quickly went downhill. I was considering deloading because I was feeling burnt out at the end of last week but I decided to push it for another week, which turned out to be a bad idea. I didn’t really feel that tired this morning but once I started warming up everything just felt off and I didn’t have my usual drive. After this I reconsidered my previous plan and decided to turn this into a deload after all. The weight was not a deload weight but the volume so far was less than half of last week
Plyo pushup
3x2 - lacked explosiveness, nothing like last week.
CAT bench
250x3x3 - 90 sec. rest - moved fast but the weight was very light
Close grip slingshot
345x2x2 - I did 315x2 as a warmup so that makes up for the down set, I guess
Floor pause DB flys
40’s x10x2
Chin ups - wide neutral grip - paused at the top
bw x5x3
One thing I have noticed is that anytime I decide to keep going until I really need a deload (which I did in the previous block) then I burn out fast in the following block. The last block was messed up because of moving so I was kind of confused as to what the best move would be, in the end it went alright but this week I need a break. Another thing I realized is that doing a lot of volume in wraps sucks, it’s hard and stressful, especially since I’m wrapping myself, and adds a lot of fatigue at the expense of volume. I could wrap looser but there seems to be no point, it’s easy to hit depth and there is less carryover so it’s not really the same thing.
So right now I’m contemplating my next move, I was originally going to do this meet in Montreal two weeks from now but I decided against it after moving because the training cycle seemed messed up. That was probably a good decision. There is an EPC meet in Guelph in November that I was looking at but it’s like a 6 hour drive plus entry fees and a hotel, it will come out to about $600 or more and I don’t have money to burn plus there is no guarantee I can get the time off work. I probably won’t compete again until the next CPF meet here in Ottawa, which should be in April or May. Seeing as that is a long time from now, I’m thinking of changing things up again to set myself up for some long term gains. High rep deficit DLs seemed to work so I will start those up again, I should probably take a break from the knee wraps for now and build up my raw (as in totally raw) squat and work on bottom end strength. I will stick with the rest pause bench for a bit since that seemed to be doing something, last week it seemed like I could keep going forever with 350. Mostly I will shift the focus to variations of the competition lifts (or squat in sleeves rather than wraps) instead of pushing volume since I’m big enough, just not strong enough.