This was a good session. I’m really happy with my top set of deadlifts, and it was great to finally do some Turkish get-ups again. Kneeling on my bad knee hurt pretty badly, but they made my hips feel fantastic.
Also my bodyweight really seems to have turned a corner. I haven’t done anything special, I’m just trying not to overdo it lol.
I legitimately think that mindset can actually affect outcome of nutrition. I have noticed that when I think “thin”, I tend to lose fat, and when I think “big”, I tend to gain it.
Weak session today. The squats and bench felt incredibly heavy (although technique was on-point) - only managing 3 reps with 102.5kg bench is really poor. The pull-ups felt reasonable. My upper body has been stagnant for a while, and my lower body has felt broken down all week, so I’m strongly considering taking a deload week next. I think my body needs to catch up with itself a little.
This was an excellent week in terms of bodyweight, and it also feels like a major milestone for my day to day function. I can now keep up with others climbing stairs and run short distances and I can do all of my usual mobility drills (deep prying squats, Turkish get-ups etc) so I feel this marks the point where I’m back to functioning at 100%. Now it’s just a matter of working on increasing my strength.
This week hasn’t been so good in terms of training. I got all of my strength work done, but everything felt heavy. Unfortunately I haven’t done any conditioning this week. I’m going to deload next week, between weeks 2 and 3 of this cycle, which is a bit unusual but I think I will really benefit from it.
I decided to man-up and not take an early deload and I’m really glad - I built up to a single with 100kg, and while it certainly wasn’t easy, it went up reasonably smoothly. A 15kg PR and a huge milestone in my recovery. Afterwards I was shot though, and only managed 10 reps with 57.5kg. I skipped upper body work because I ran out of time - I only had 30min in the gym today.
My bodyweight is up today, but that’s because I went out for dinner late last night so I’m not reading much into it. Should be back down tomorrow.
Plan - Next Few Months
I’ve been thinking about my plan going forward and what I’m currently leaning towards is running another cycle of full body 5/3/1 immediately after this one then taking a deload week and testing my maxes. Instead of 1rms I’d rather do max reps with certain weights (probably 100kg for bench and squat, 60kg for press and 180kg for deadlift). This would take me up to a week or two before my wedding/6 months post injury, and it would be a nice way to conclude the main portion of the recovery period.
After that I think I’ll run another 6 week cycle of 2x/week 5/3/1. This will give me plenty of spare time around the wedding, and afterwards it will free me up to introduce more and more heavy kettlebell work.
That should take me up to the end of August/beginning of September at which point I’ll have to think hard about what direction my training will take. Most likely I’ll go back to kettlebell-based training, with the addition of a 48kg beast kettlebell.
Overall this was a pretty good session, although I felt very tired and a bit spaced out. I prioritised bench press, but it was pretty disappointing as has been the recent trend. I have to admit that I made absolutely no lasting gains from Smolov junior, but I don’t regret the experience of running it. Instead of doing a FSL set I did a drop set to get a higher total volume in, and that felt good.
Instead of ramping the weight on squats I just did straight sets with the middle weight (60kg) and they felt really on-point. Nice smooth technique. The first set of 10 pull-ups felt quite strong, but really smoked me for the remaining sets.
On reflection I haven’t really made any upper body gains at all - I regained lost strength very quickly, but looking at my press, bench and pull-ups they’ve really been very static. I pressed 60kg for 5 seated in week 4, and I’m really not any stronger than that now. Pull-ups are the same - sets of 8 (although bodyweight is up), and so is bench press. But I’m not overly bothered - upper body strength is definitely not my priority.
Hang in there furo!! Sometimes when certain lifts get a bit stagnant it’s usually followed by a breakthrough and then it’s PR city. Lately I feel as if my upper body has been stalled in terms of strength as well but just have to keep plugging along. Keep up the good work my friend!!
I’ve felt tired all week but today was especially bad. I ate more food, because I fooled myself that would help, but it did the opposite. I’m proud that I got this session in, because honestly I wanted to sleep at 19:30 this evening. I won’t train tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll feel good for deadlift and press on Friday.
This was a really good session. Squats felt reasonably challenging, press felt the same as usual (it hasn’t improved at all over the past 20 weeks) and the deadlifts felt strong. The joker with 160kg wasn’t quite locked out, but it felt much stronger off the floor than the last time. It was close enough for me to call it as a gym lift, but I did 150kg so that I could get a 100% clean heavy single.
Training: Very good - 3 strength sessions, 2 conditioning sessions
Nutrition: Not as good this week, some stress eating around an exam yesterday lol
Overall a very good week, especially for my lower body. I hit a 100kg squat single (up from 60kg at the start) and I got 140kg for 7 on the deadlift (up from a single). Upper body was entirely stagnant.
Next week I’m going to increase my squat training max to 90kg (based on the 100kg joker), I’m going to add the standard 2.5kg/5kg to my press and deadlift and I’m going to leave the bench press as it is.
I’m on nightshifts again, and woke up early so decided to train before work. The squats were really good - I’m happy with 75kg for 8, but even more so with the 60kg for 18. Although I’ve only got a grind of a single with 100kg so far, I’m reasonably confident I’ll be able to do several good quality reps before my wedding.
Unfortunately I messed myself up a bit today - I’ve got out of the habit of using my knee sleeves for squatting as I want to get my leg used to handling weight with no extra support, but I would have benefitted from using them today as my bad knee is really sore. I also hurt my left forearm/bicep swinging the dumbbells onto my lap for the dumbbell press - I was able to finish off the pressing despite the pain but when I went to row it was too much. I did 20 reps with 30kg with my right side, but couldn’t do a single rep with my left. I finished up with really light machine row to pump some blood into it, but now I’m back at my flat the pain is way worse.
I’m sure the knee pain will clear up very quickly, but this forearm/bicep pain is pretty bad. I can’t properly extend my elbow now.
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