Saturday, July 25 - 2nd bench day
Bench press
330x3x3 - too many 3’s for my liking
Band pushdown
light band x10
super mini x17, 13
W shoulder rotation
super mini x3 sets
Monday, July 27 - Squat day - easy session
Squat in sleeves up to 475x1
Squat in wraps (Kraits) 535x1 - Not bad but not as fast as it should be, enough for today.
It’s surprising given your proportions, but your conventional strength off the floor looks better, your speed is definitely better, and your hips don’t rise like they do with your sumo either, although that’s probably because your starting hip position is pretty high, haha. Looks very solid, dude.
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The thing with sumo is that to get the most out of it you need to be able to kind of wedge your hips between you and the bar when you set up. Due to my proportions, shorter arms and longer femurs, I just can’t get into that position.
Wednesday, July 29 - Main bench day
Just not my day today
Bench press
405x failed twice - The way 395 moved last week I was sure I had this but it just didn’t happen. Wasn’t supposed to really be a max attempt either. I don’t even know what my problem was, warmups were fine (375x1 was the last before 405) but it just wasn’t going up.
315x7 downset
Arnold press
75’s x8 - I don’t know if it was more psychological than physical, but my energy seemed to drop after benching and I could barely even get the dumbbells in position. It’s usually a pain in the ass, but it was more like max effort this time and then I only got 8 reps vs. 12 last week. I figured that no productive training was going to happen so I just shut it down.
I kind of feel like I’m fucking around with my training lately, I was thinking I would do some heavy singles for a few weeks but it doesn’t look like it’s going far at this point unless I want to turn it into an actual peaking cycle, and there is no sense in doing that. At least not for bench, apparently. I’m going to weigh my options going forward, the only thing that really matters is making progress and not wasting time because there is no meet coming up any time soon. At least I managed a 1600lb training total, although the squat was a bit sloppy and not to depth.
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Maybe not force weight progress over a blocks too hard. Just take what’s there on any given day and get a good stimulus.
Directed adaptation sub principle says is better if there’s a general direction/progression but SRAs the main principle.
Like even if ur hitting the exact same work on paper each week it’s still progress in that ur maintaining performance as fatigue accumulated over a block.
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I used to train like that following RTS style programming and it never worked too good for me. If you can’t at least match last week then something isn’t right and trying to push through shitty days just leaves me more fatigued. The thing here is that I couldn’t grind at all, I just got stuck and it dropped, maybe has something to do with changing up exercises after beating up my elbows.
Except Monday was an easy squat workout so I should be less fatigued than last week.
I’m trying to avoid accumulating much fatigue in the first place.
Throw in an extra 0.5kg each side per week if it makes u feel better lol
Not sure if I agree with it completely but there’s plenty who ascribe to the school of thought that if ur not accumulating fatigue overtime enough to need a deload ur out training hard enough. To be fair ima go a while without deloading so maybe i needa train harder.
I’m learning for myself that ur training readiness is hard to predict or plan for even if u do the whole trial and error spiel. What works or is predictable at any one moment in time might not be in the same way next week. Life things ebb and flow, we get stronger and so on. That’s what I’m learning at least
That’s why I have easy sessions here and there, like normally I pull heavy every 2nd week and every 4th or 5th squat day or so is easy. I just stopped using week long deloads on a regular basis. Actually, I was supposed to have two more easy-ish sessions this week and I’m thinking I will just go full deload instead.
Overall I’m just frustrated with my progress on bench. I changed up my technique a bit to keep my ass from coming off the bench which resulted in numbers going down temporarily, I made some progress but I’m kind of plateaued now, and irritating my elbows wasn’t helping with that either. Squat is making gains, I had a couple shitty weeks not long ago but overall I’m ahead of where I was before (adjusting for different wraps which make 15-20lbs difference) and conventional DL is looking good so far and has lots more potential.
Here’s another theory that I came across earlier, the only thing I might be doing wrong according to this is benching too much. I don’t know what to think anymore. I suppose theoretically I could make gains benching only once a week, I’m barely making any gain with 2x.
U r a strong bench presser to be fair but elite level benchers still smashing out 2-5x per week. I don’t think is that simple. In the end it’s getting in as many productive sessions as possible and appropriate weekly/monthly/yearly workloads that will get u the long term gains. If u bench once a week there’s no margin for error, no room for medium/lightsm every sesh has to be highly productive. If anything once a week is too far in between sessions are theres the opportunity cost of being ready to get in productive sessions but waiting a few more days. Sometimes things are just shitty for a block but at least for me can always come back to 2-8 working sets of bench x 3-6 reps or more reps if looking to accumulate volume per workout and I know its in the productive even if feelsbadman or no PBs
Not necessarily, more is not always better. You need an “appropriate” number of sessions. My squat is stronger than ever before and I only squat once a week now, at one time I was squatting 3+ times a week and making no progress. You’re thinking in a Sheiko-style approach, which isn’t necessarily wrong but isn’t the only way either. Also most Russian lifters don’t train like that nowadays.
I don’t see anything wrong with that.
No PBs = no progress. You can’t expect a PR/PB every workout but you should be seeing some kind of gain every few of months.
Tell you the truth, if I’m going to be barely making any progress on bench I wouldn’t mind only benching once a week, it will save my energy for squat and deadlift. If I believed that more volume and frequency were the key to progress then I would do that, but I tried all kinds of stuff and it either didn’t work or I was getting a bunch of aches and pains.
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When I talk about productive i mean like the minimum to be stimulative per session. Is not very much. So like an easy session probably doesn’t have enough work volume intensity to overload or contribute efficiently to a week or month’s worth of overload. So a productive session would be anything at or above minimum effective volume (in combination with appropriate intensity) and thats a big range.
U could have medium days all week but undulation is apparently good so something like Medium-Easy-Hard. You can spread the work in many ways and have each session be productive and each week or month or whatever unit of time length be overloading. Like JTS’ scientific principles of strength training comes down to SRA and overload.
Can overdo it as well. If ur hitting all medium sessions for a week might be exceeding weekly recovery and making no gains even if each sessions is in the stimulative range
If Im doing the above i.e. being productive well at least i can hit a PR consistently. So the way i understand it is if ur working hard enough to be productive per session and weekly there’s gonna be some accumulated fatigue masking max performance. I’m not that strong so on most days especially planned heavier days I am capable of pushing up to around rep PR territory.
Like last sesh i tripled 190kg when my best a few weeks ago was a double at 187.5kg at a higher RPE. So that’s very blatant gains, a rep PB at lower RPE. Not all PRs or signs or progress are that clear cut. I could’ve loaded 187.5kg and hit it for a double again last sesh that’d be significantly lower RPE. That’s a PB. I could’ve hit 170kg for a triple @ sub 6 which Estimated 1RM wise is a PB. I could’ve done nothing but the prescribed work without bumping the weight ~ 160kg @ RPE nothing but at that point it;d be hard to call it a PB. I know the sets/reps moved easier than ever but hard to use estimated 1RM to gauge at that point. Thing is I didn’t need to set the big rep PR to make gains or even to know I’m progressing. If anything staying at trips with 170kg would’ve been plenty stimulative while accumulating relatively less fatigue than 190kg which is like 95% 1RM rn (Israetel talks about the strength range 70-85% or someshit outside of single and how above it is still decent gains but a bit inefficient for the fatigue like stimulus fatigue ratio)
For yourself u may find that ur making gains but ur strong enough that ur fatigue accumulated masks them until you take a light day or two, deload a week or maybe for the most advance lifters they only realise their gains, as in being able to hit a new 1 RM at the end of a full peak cycle.
I like going out of my way to hit rep PBs even if they are a bit inefficient in the overall training process because its fun and i like the positive feedback. Id do just as well if not better not going all the way to testing/demonstrating the PBs
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See this:
I would discuss this some more but it’s late and I’m tired, I will get back to you tomorrow. To make a long story short, I have read a lot of stuff including Israetel’s book and I understand everything you are talking about, I just don’t think that everything is necessarily as they claim. I was sold on all the volume and high frequency and all that at one time, I tried experimenting with less and it turned out that worked better for me.
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Its fun to discuss and get something practical to takeaway. For when u get back:
Think I’ve come across this study before. I always tell peeps that volume is like diminishing returns. One or two hard sets and ur 80% of the way there.
I’m not an advocate for smashing people with volume. It’s kinda a brute force way of making gains with little nuance and for many people its too much.
There’s something to be said for doing more if u can recover from it but that’s a big ask for normal people and most people are never able to consistently maintain nearer to MRV training. Like for pro athletes sure; their environment is strictly controlled and optimised for recovery or even YouTubers like Israetel himself can train hard and long af while getting that juicy RP subscription monies.
For your average person shit happens. U can get busy all of a sudden and recovery capacity can suddenly be down significantly for poor sleep diet stress management and so forth. As usual a middle ground approach is probs best so u can get more gains if the opportunity is there but not commit or over commit to training that may well be overdoing it. I think this is where auto regulation and tracking overall wellness/readiness/recovery comes into play and adjusting from there. A lot of what powerlifting coaches do is this to keep their lifters in the pocket so to speak but indivduals can do it for themselves also as long as data is being collected ala Sheiko Gold (shameless plug) use my discount code for 5% off
Hi everyone, I am new to this forum, Really I am so happy to be a member. A lot of useful things I find here. I’ll just study these training logs and then start my workout for weight loss
How is the gym up north with all this covid?
I used to do more volume and frequency and I was pushing close to MRV or overreaching at the end of every mesocycle but I was making slower progress than I have more recently with less volume, and in spite of being more advanced now. Look at my deadlift, a couple years ago I was doing plenty of volume and an extra DL variation or two, in one year my deadlift went from 540 to 545. Switching to a DL bar might have been part of it, but I just wasn’t making any progress. In the last year I made better gains than that despite fucking my back up last summer and wasting a whole bunch of time.
Some people make better progress with high volume, but these are the outliers.
I felt like I had a lot to say last night but I didn’t want to get carried away in the discussion and then not be able to fall asleep, today I don’t really have a lot to say. There are different training styles that work, if what you are doing is producing results then stick with it. If not then try different stuff. If I thought that training full body 4-6 days a week would give me the best results then I would do that, but I have tried and it doesn’t. It seems to me that I make better progress when I avoid accumulating much fatigue, and more frequency doesn’t seem to do much either.
There are different ways to get stronger, you can improve technique, increase force production, or build muscle (which gives you the potential to produce more force). There is a minimum amount of volume needed to build or at least maintain muscle (without the appropriate drugs), and twice a week seems to be significantly better than once for hypertrophy. For technique it depends, for a newer lifter there are some significant benefits to practicing the lifts more frequently but beyond that not so much. In my case, I don’t feel that my bench technique is lacking now that I fixed the butt lifting issue, and my squat only has issues with heavy weights in wraps - I could squat 500+ in wraps multiple times a week, but recovery will quickly become an issue. I don’t feel that there is anything to be gained from a light squat session, I used to have one every week but I cut it out and continued to make progress.
As far as force production, again you don’t need a ton of volume. See the thing I posted last night, one set twice a week can increase 1rm. To increase force production you have to generate high forces in training, which becomes impossible if you are carrying a lot of fatigue. There were a bunch of posts on Chris Beardsley’s instagram a while back talking about this, I don’t have the time or patience to look them up right now but the message I got (which I was already concluding on my own) was that more moderate volume is the way to go.
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Same as always in my basement.
Gyms are open now, just seems like a lot of bullshit with social distancing and masks. I have never been more glad to have a home gym.
When I’m benching, and due to Covid it’s been 6 months, I seem to have an every other week rhythm. I don’t know why, but if I have a good session this week, I won’t next week and vice versa. I have no explanation, I just know that it happens. Have you cinsidered backing off to triples for a while? The Ed Coan maxim of feeling like you still have one in the tank (Which isn’t always true - as you find out if you go for it LOL) each set. It seems to help with the recovery.
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I was doing a lot of triples and doubles on bench recently, I just wanted to go for some heavier singles but I didn’t get far. My elbows were getting a bit beat up from heavy JM presses and I had to drop those, looks like maybe I lost the ability to grind or something.
Maybe that would help, I don’t often go for RPE 10 squats or deadlifts and I have been making better progress there.
You normally bench only once a week or what? Last year a couple times I tried cutting it down to once a week but after a few weeks it felt like my bench was down rather than making progress. In retrospect, I think if I stuck with it for more than 3-4 weeks I would probably start to see some progress, once a week might be theoretically suboptimal but you should still be able to make progress. Right now if I can add 20lbs to my bench every year I would be happy, it’s been moving slow for a while and I have tried a bunch of different stuff.