I’ve decided to keep a log here to track something new that I’m about to implement in my training. This year started off really great for me in terms of progress when I decided to toss out conventional wisdom (to an extent) and listen to my body instead. Biggest thing I have implemented was counting macros, I’ve dropped from 200 to 180 since December while making small strength gains.
Some training maxes…
Squat: 405 ← this was done when I was heavier, haven’t performed heavy squat since
Deadlift: 520 ← got this 2 weeks ago.
Bench: 315 ← got it shortly after deadlift PR
At the beginning of the year, I decided to solely focus on deadlifts. I trained the hell out of it and managed to bring it from 475 @ 200bw to 520 @ 180bw in a little over 3 months. I only performed light speed squats since any time I feel fresh, I will do spend my energy on deadlifts. Now I’ve decided to give my body a break from this heavy beating and focus on heavy squats now.
Training is a little tricky for me at the moment because I am eating a caloric deficit diet. I’m trying to get to single digit bf% so I have to be cautious as to being able to recover in time from a session before the next one. What I did was ditched higher volume training and opt in for high intensity (singles) and high frequency training (I train 6x/week). So far it seems to be working and I’ll ride this wave until it stops.
Yesterday was squat day but knee was hurting. In fact it was pretty bad to the point I couldn’t even do leg extension with them. Decided not to risk it and ended up doing some presses instead
Press
5x3 @ 155
My goal is to progress from this to 5x5 @ 155
Later on the evening, my knee felt a little bit better so I decided to do some pulls instead.
Chin-ups
5x10 @ bw
Deadlift
20x1 @ 315
Rest about 30s per set
Speed was definitely slow. Not sure if it’s fatigue from earlier session (i attempted many sets of squats trying to work around knee pain) or chin-ups.