I should have mentioned above that I’m starting 5/3/1 next week, not midway through this week. I’m on nightshifts tonight and my lower body (knees in particular) are really beaten up, so I just stuck with an extremely low volume/low intensity session today. Nevertheless I managed some new things - my first bodyweight lunges and my first swings with the 40kg kettlebell.
This week isn’t going to log impressively, but the main focus is going to be on walking. Between camping and my nightshifts I will have done exponentially more walking/moving this week than the last, and in that regard this week will (hopefully) be a huge success.
Training: Loads of walking/moving - lower body feels quite beat up. Reasonable upper body.
Nutrition: Meh
A decent week - huge progress with walking, but it has left my joints pretty sore from all of the weird movement patterns/compensation. Loads of leg swelling during my nightshifts. Upper body training has been reasonable, although the bench press 1rm of 125kg was a little disappointing.
I’d love to say that this was a really easy session, but that would not be the truth. All exercises really hurt my right shin, but I can’t hide behind that - the limiting factor on my squats was definitely strength, which is pretty embarrassing. The bodyweight lunges probably hurt the most (both sides hurt my right shin, interestingly). I was hoping to finish off with some calf work, but I was in too much pain.
Goals
The 16th of July is going to be both my wedding day and the 6 month anniversary of my injury, so I want to set myself some goals. I’m going to shoot for a 180kg deadlift and 5x10 single arm swings with the 40kg kettlebell in 8 minutes. I think that if I achieve both of them I will have a baseline level of conditioning and lower body strength. I’m not going to set any upper body goals: for now I’d be happy just to maintain my Smolov gains, and I’m also not going to set any squat goals, because it’s hard to get excited about squatting right now lol.
A really nice session today. This was a bodyweight bench press challenge with @jblues85 and so I rounded up to 97.5kg (215lbs) and managed 13 reps, which I was pretty happy with. I’m sure I’ll get smashed, but it felt good. My gym maths failed me lol, so I did 82.5kg for my first set instead of 72.5kg lol, but I don’t imagine that’s of any consequence. The presses felt surprisingly challenging - I’m not sure I’ll get many reps on my top set next week!
So that’s my first week of 5/3/1 complete (and it only took a weekend haha). I really enjoyed it - it’s nice to have set weights to hit, and to be able to go all out on a top set. I’ll fill the rest of this week with kettlebell swings.
Another solid conditioning session - I’m relying on these having some carryover to the pull-up challenge with jblues85 and hopefully ActivitiesGuy. My bodyweight is up but I think I’m the leanest I’ve been at this weight, so it’s all good.
This was a good conditioning session, targeted for my pull-up challenge with @jblues85. I did the pull-ups and bodyweight squats every minute on the minute for 15 minutes and got a total of 50 reps, which seems like a reasonable starting point. The crosstrainer worked my shin harder than I thought it would, but that’s a good thing.
Haha next time we should definitely do a challenge with a fixed weight, rather than based on bodyweight, because it’s unfair to keep making a 6’4" beast do bodyweight challenges lol!
Training: Excellent - 2 strength days and 3 conditioning days.
Nutrition: Acceptable, but not great.
I’m about to start nightshifts again and I’m pretty tired, so I’m not going to train today. This has been a very good week - I have thoroughly enjoyed 5/3/1 so far and the conditioning has gone well too. I’m really looking forward to the upcoming pull-up challenge, it’s going to be tough.
Haha! When I think of myself I certainly wouldn’t use the word beast unless we were STILL talking about the Chinese Buffet!! I like the Bodyweight Challenges personally. There will be some I am better at than others