Bench press
380x1 - Moved fast, I was tempted to go for 405 but I decided against it. No guarantee I would get it and failing isn’t really any use, but soon enough it will be happening. This looked like I could maybe do a triple, although I wouldn’t count on it, but it was way better than Monday for sure.
Slingshot bench
425x3 - Not sure about another rep
385x6
Military press
235x5 - I think this is a PR, based on e1rm calculation this would put me around 275
210x7
JM press
225x10, 7, 6
Underhand band pull apart
super mini x28, 18, 12
Barbell curl
80x20, 16, 12
Band shoulder external rotation AKA “no money”
mini x25x3 - I’m doing these because my right shoulder has been feeling weird lately, I think it’s a combination of sleeping on it and doing side planks every day (McGill big 3). I did these a couple time in the last week and they made my shoulder feel better so I will keep doing them. Nothing really bothered me today but 2 weeks ago military press didn’t feel too good and I had a bit of discomfort here and there. Sometimes putting on or taking off a shirt feels weird too. I never had any serious problem with my right shoulder and I don’t want one, I dislocated the left one several times when I was younger and it was fucked up for a while but it’s not causing any problem these days.
Do you have a planned progression for those lifts, or is it more evaluating on the day? Apologies if you’ve mentioned this before, but is this routine something you’ve written yourself?
Squat - Transformer bar 1.5D
315x2x6 - 45 sec. rest - Using the transformer bar to give my shoulder(s) a break. I don’t think that squatting with the straight bar is the cause of my shoulder issues but it certainly won’t help either.
Deadlift - sumo
525x4 - The plan was 3, I did 4, and now I think I should have pulled a 5th rep. Not sure if this really counts as some sort of PR but it looks like I’m back on track. The last few weeks since I switched back to sumo it felt weird, just uncoordinated and not comfortable, but today it felt good.
475x4 - Did this with straps, I was thinking 6+ reps but it really feels harder with straps, just about as hard as the top set. Straps make it feel like I’m trying to stand up with a bar hanging from my wrists as opposed to holding the bar and lifting it, not sure if that makes sense but it just doesn’t feel right. My thumbs seem to not be as tough as they used to be after a few weeks with no deadlifts and then starting back light.
Barbell row
305x10x3 - these feel easy
So this went well, I’m still confused as to why Monday was so shitty but I guess those things can happen.
Since you were asking, something I have been thinking about is instead of deloading to use planned light days instead. The whole idea of deloading is to prevent accumulating too much fatigue and recover from the fatigue that you have accumulated, but if you haven’t accumulated too much fatigue then you probably don’t need a whole week off from heavy training. And on the other hand, if you wait until you feel like you really need a deload then one week might not be enough.
So the idea would be something like every 4th week a light squat workout, 3rd-4th week one bench day can be light, maybe every 3rd week light deadlift. I would do something like 90% of the last week’s working weight for a couple reps and just cut it there, I start to think that deloaded assistance work is a complete waste of time. Theoretically that could work, and I would prefer that over a full week deload. I just find deloads boring and demotivating. A fast, easy session here and there seems much more appealing. The whole idea is to manage fatigue, it doesn’t necessarily need to be done one specific way.
It’s not so much that it a “big swing”, just the fact that I find deloads boring and the workouts are tedious. Normally I don’t have shitty workouts coming back from a deload, I’m not sure what happened this week but I probably made too big a deal of it anyway.
Here’s the thing though, people have different deload protocols and what works for one person doesn’t necessarily work well for others. A lot of people recommend something like 30-50% reduction in intensity, but I find if I do that then everything feels way too heavy the next week and I’m weaker than before the deload. I tried different things and what seemed to work for me was to reduce intensity by 10% and do about half the total number of working reps. But what I’m thinking with these light sessions is something like 10% off the top set and little or nothing after that, just a quick lighter session. Is there any use in doing assistance work at RPE4? Probably not. It might be better to do that if you have a full week deload, but that’s what I’m trying to get away from.
Bench press
365x2 - I wanted 3 but it didn’t look like it was going to happen, the 2nd rep wasn’t a grind but it was slow enough that I don’t think I could do 3. This isn’t terrible, it’s 5lb more than last week, but it could be better.
330x5
Floor press
330x4, 4 - Managed to match the 1st set, better than last week
High incline
270x3
245x6 - 1 more rep than last week
Chin ups - close neutral grip
bw+40x9, 6, 5
No money shoulder rotation
mini band x25x3
So overall this was slightly better than last week, 5lbs more and an extra rep here and there, but it would have been better if I got 365x3. Last year 345x3 was the PR I could neither match nor exceed, now it’s 360x3. At least it’s up by 15lbs and my singles on Thursday are looking good. In a couple weeks I’m going to reduce the weight on the top sets and do some more reps because I’m nearing the end of the road with this.
Squat
485x2 - This was ugly, 2nd rep took about 4.5 seconds to finish. Depth looks about right at least. The issue I had today was that it felt like I was kind of drifting forward, not just on the top set but on warmups too. And looking at the video I can see that as I descend the bar gradually shifts forward a couple inches. I wasn’t having this problem last week, I get the feeling that it has to do with adding high bar pause squats and maybe the transformer bar squats on Friday. That second rep made my head feel like it was going to burst, I could feel the top of my mouth swell up and I looked in the mirror after and my face was beet red and eyes bloodshot. It took a lot out of me, it would have been much easier if not for the technical issues.
Squat in wraps (SBD)
525x1 - Initially I was thinking maybe I would go for a double but after that 485x2 I thought it would be better to play it safe. That was a good decision because this was hard enough. These wraps actually don’t make it that hard to hit depth, I was right at parallel which while not exactly good isn’t bad either considering that I haven’t squatted in wraps since April. I can only get 6 revolutions out of these, the elastic is strong as hell. Maybe if someone wrapped me I could get one more but my feet were starting to go numb from this anyway, not sure how much more I could take. The idea here was both to do a bit of overloading to make my non-wrapped squats feel lighter and also to gradually get back into wraps.
Some more squatting in sleeves:
425x2 - I was going to go for 5 but I had this weird feeling of pressure (or so it seemed) on the sides of my neck, both at the front under the law joint and towards the back under and behind my ears. I’m guessing it had to do with straining on the two previous sets, I never had that happen before. Anyway, the 2 reps here were easy but I didn’t like how it felt and today isn’t my day to die so fuck it.
I cut pause squats too, I was already thinking of either skipping them or switching for something else (since they appear to have thrown off my technique and the two first sets took a lot out of me) but then after my neck started feeling weird it just wasn’t worth it. My neck feels fine now, it’s just when I’m coming up from a squat that it doesn’t feel right.
Split stance RDL
195x8x3
As far as wraps go, I also have EliteFTS Kraits and Super Heavies. The Super Heavies are even heavier than they sound, I don’t think they would be any use without someone else to wrap me because they are so thick and stiff and the elastic is strong as hell. The Kraits are kind of similar to the SBDs, the SBDs seem just slightly thicker and stiffer (plus they have a nice soft finish which is a plus) but they are more or less equal from what I can tell without actually trying them. I will try the kraits another time but right now I’m leaning towards SBD.
And yeah, this was a kind of fucked up session but the absolute minimum objective for the day (485x2) was accomplished and I got out of there in one piece so I can’t really complain.
I’m asking myself the exact same question right now.
The idea is that constantly training the same movement pattern can have negative effects, like stressing the joints and connective tissues at the same angle over and over leading to overuse injuries. But I think that’s more of a concern if you’re doing a ton of volume and/or using drugs that inhibit connective tissue growth.
The other thing is that theoretically you can have diminishing returns from training the same lift all the time so for example if your quads are holding your squat back then spend a few months doing high bar or SSB squats (paused or not) and your squat should increase. It looks good on paper, but I’m starting to think that maybe it’s more powerlifting dogma than actual fact. Training the muscles involved in the lift is one thing, and in the example of squats it could be done with leg press or hack squats which require no technique and aren’t as fatiguing as actual squats, plus the fact that it isn’t really a squat means that it shouldn’t affect your squat technique either.
So it’s not so much that training different movement patterns doesn’t work at all, obviously it does something, but it seems like there are negatives to it as well and maybe it’s not the best way to go. Like last winter I got my SSB squat up to 500 for a single and then when I switched to low bar with wraps I wasn’t really to far ahead of that, if I had been doing low bar squats instead I probably would have had a much bigger increase in numbers with the wraps. And now after all these SSB squats in the summer it was like I had to learn to squat again, the back injury complicated things but SSB and low bar feel totally different so I’m wondering how much carryover there really is.
But stressing the joints and other involved structures should also cause it to heal and come back stronger, right? On the assumption you do give them time to heal of course, by managing volume, frequency, and intensity correctly. And yeah, you aren’t taking anything, so there’s that. I guess like most things, balance becomes important.
I’d agree that training variations have their benefits. I’ve always thought that doing variations was to help build muscle for the main lift and to get stronger at the sticking points of the main lift. But yeah, the big question is, what’s that point of diminishing returns? There’s that whole other realm of geared lifting where variation lifts are used more, and surely, there’s something about Louie’s madness - it works. So dogma? For geared lifters, maybe. For natty? Dunno. Honestly, I’m just talking out of my ass cause I’m obviously not at that level of strength to know which ones are more beneficial and which ones aren’t. The other stronger people in the forums (and those with experience in conjugate) would have more input with more substance, that’s for sure.
Yeah, that’s the whole idea, overuse injuries are a result of doing too much and doing too much isn’t good to start with.
What I’m saying is not so much about diminishing returns, but rather about possible negative effects. For example, I knew a guy who was always doing pause squats on his 2nd squat day, he got so good at pause squats that he could do almost the same weight as a regular squat but on his comp squat he wasn’t really getting any rebound out of the hole. Pausing makes you lose some of the stretch reflex, but overdoing it can make you lose it on regular squats.
But then the next thing is about training different movement patterns, with the example of high bar squats there is the possible benefit of building up your quads and forcing yourself to stay more upright but if that results in your low bar squat technique getting thrown off is it worth it? You see that closer to a meet most lifters mostly do the comp. lifts and close variations, there is a reason for that. So is it a net benefit to use those sorts of variations further out from a meet?
That’s a different situation. The gear makes multiple reps pretty much impossible and technique in gear is going to be drastically different. They pretty much have no choice but to use variations of the comp. lifts. Westside is the far end of that spectrum, it can work for raw lifters too but the question is not so much what can work but rather what is better.
Um, I think you are mixing up equipment and steroids here.
I’d love to see what answers you come up with with this. It just occurred to me… Why do you do high bar paused squats? For the quads? Seems like a totally different movement pattern compared to low bar
Also, yeah, natty was wrong. Meant to say unequipped lifters
Quads, plus teaching you to stay upright because if you fold forward with high bar you are in trouble. I wouldn’t say it’s a totally different movement pattern, it’s pretty close, but it simply isn’t the same thing. So if an exercise that is intended to correct one movement fault instead causes another is that good? I notice that a lot of Russian coaches and lifters basically never any non-low bar squat, they might use variations but it’s the same movement pattern being trained. It’s the whole idea of “dynamic correspondence”. Too much variation equals little or no carryover. Whereas something that has nothing at all to do with the competition lift (leg press for example) can help build muscle but shouldn’t have that same sort of interference.
That’s exactly what I was starting to think. This guy has a lot of interesting posts and a lot of it is along the same lines as what I have been saying lately. In another post in the comments he was saying that he doesn’t think deloading is useful and it would be better to use less volume, intensity and frequency instead. Also training while fatigued from a previous workout will reduce motor unit recruitment, resulting in less or even no gains. I wish someone had told me that a few years earlier.