So, as evidenced above, I had some issues last week.
squat hit a wall and felt like it regressed after an initial boost with pause squats. So after taking stock of the training cycle so far, I’m embarrassed of my lack of volume. I’m nowhere near where I was in the offseason. That said, it’s not because I don’t want to do it. But I simply haven’t been recovering the way I expected and the near max singles are sapping my will to do the necessary backdowns. One likely culprit is squatting too often. So I’m going to drop to 3/4 day frequency, which I know I can handle well and seems to be the sweet spot.
more squat issues: my external rotation in my shoulders sucks, and my forearms have been absorbing the difference, which is awful for benching when my arms hurt too bad to even warmup properly. I’m addressing by changing my hand spacing such that I can still tighten the lats per the advice I got last weekend. Furthermore, I’ve realized I’ve been sitting farther and farther back and losing power out of the hole, so I moved up my bar position and stretched my calves better, then drive into my knees more at the bottom. This is why 455 yesterday felt like nothing after having such an awful week.
bench issues: per the pattern I always fall into when benching on my toes, I suddenly start losing tightness in the last third of the movement. This always seems to set in after benching like this for a few weeks. Might have something to do with spinal mobility and losing it from exaggerating the arch consistently, idk. But I went back to heels down and added a tweak to my initial setup, and PRed immediately with 400x4. I’ll just have to make sure I have something to help anchor my feet in the meet.
I’m about 6 weeks out, which leaves 4 weeks of intensive volume left. Home stretch for the meet has begun, and I can’t wait to deload volume in that 5th week and really test my maxes.
Pause Bench
435x1 @10
360x4x3
Absurdly hard, forearm still hurt like a bastard
Swole work
Felt awful after that. Body is so beat down.
7/17
Squat (in flats)
405, 435, 455, 475x2
Pretty encouraging, best squat in prep
Mod sumo
525, 550, 575x2
600x1.5
So I kinda shat my pants during the second rep, which in turn made me a little hesitant to grind. First moved fast and felt good doe
7/18
High-bar Squat
435, 460x2
480x1
Felt really good, other than more of the feeling that my arm is getting raped. Will stick with my heeled shoes after this.
Dude, being as you are someone who is shredded with a huge bench, I wanted to ask you:
You used to carry more bodyfat, and then dieted down and cut off the fluff. When you initially lost the bodyfat, did your bench numbers decline (causing you to need to recover lost ground before moving up), or were you able to maintain/gain strength during that time? If the latter, anything you did during the fat loss that you think contributed?
Whenever I lose fat, I can usually gain/maintain on my other lifts, but my bench always seems to suffer. Wanted to hear your experience.
Moved my feet in on both lifts and everything felt much better. Accept your bone structure, people. Going wide doesn’t do anything but hurt you if your hips are narrow and your legs are short.
Over corrected my stance and went too narrow. Floor speed was insane, but didn’t have enough lockout power. Will widen somewhat, but not as much as before. Squat felt great.
Squat
431x2
451x2
471x2
491x1 @9
Easy, but I got gun shy not having a rack to catch me if I missed.
Mod sumo
550ish x1
585x1
615x1
Felt like utter crap. Stopped in Dayton at a fantastic gym called “The Dirty Little Gym.” Great group, great setup, and had an awesome time. Would highly recommend if you’re ever in the area.
Several PRs up there in bench…pretty sure all of them are, actually. Squat is still a complete wild card, but the deadlift felt good. This week is all singles. Aiming for 525/460/650 by week’s end. Will have very little in the way of backdowns and volume, assistance will be light.
Moved my feet in on both lifts and everything felt much better. Accept your bone structure, people. Going wide doesn’t do anything but hurt you if your hips are narrow and your legs are short.[/quote]
This is me. Maybe that’s why sumo pulls don’t seem to work well. Humm…
Moved my feet in on both lifts and everything felt much better. Accept your bone structure, people. Going wide doesn’t do anything but hurt you if your hips are narrow and your legs are short.[/quote]
This is me. Maybe that’s why sumo pulls don’t seem to work well. Humm…
Nice to see you’re still being a BEAST.
[/quote]
Thank ya, frand! I’m having more fun than I ever have right now. Love all the rep work.
So #fail at logging the rest of that training bloc. Not even gonna try, but I tested out last week during the volume deload, and that’s easy enough to remember, so herego:
Tng bench: 380x4 https://instagram.com/p/8OOcO9KPPD/
Pretty weak. This was the only thing I did during this cycle that felt affected by the diet.
—>weighted dip: +135x12; took it easy bc my shoulder was acting up
3-count Beltless Pause Squat: 405x3 https://instagram.com/p/8Q6QuHKPAB/
Felt great. Love this exercise
—>walking lunge +100 until I wanted to vomit
Beltless sumo: 525x5 https://instagram.com/p/8TaB98KPAC/
Probably had another 10+ pounds for 5, but this tied my belted PR at this weight, so I was stoked.
—>Beltless barbell row 385x12
Pause NGBP: 335x10 https://instagram.com/p/8Wn6YuqPEc/
Easy. Stuck at this weight during the mesocycle but no problem without fatigue.
—>db flat 125x19
Beltless Squat: 430x4 https://instagram.com/p/8Y-NKcqPO3/
Easy 4, tipped forward a little on the 4th and called it to avoid an ugly grind. Easy PR
Beltless conventional: 525x4 https://instagram.com/p/8bOWdOKPBl/
Crushed all conventional PRs during this mesocycle and without the belt to boot. Excited about this moving forward.
—>pull-up +90x8
Will write up the plan for the next training cycle later.
Easy enough to move forward from here. The bench volume was likely just too low for where my bench is. I made the best progress I ever have at 60+ effort reps, so I’ll bump the training volume to that. Squat I’ll probably increase slightly to 60 as well, but the main thing is upping the reps on the primary squats. I counted the assistance pause squats from the last cycle because of the range of motion, so I have to factor that in. Deadlift is super easy. I make great progress on low volume, so I won’t increase too much. I think I’ll add two sets of an assistance movement and see how much more I can get out of this volume range.
Note that “effort reps” is a variable similar to “tonnage lifted.” I just prefer the former.
Planned setup:
Push1-NGBP 4 sets of 8
Legs1-high-bar, narrow, Beltless squat 3 sets of 8, belted pause squat, 1 set of 5
Pull 1-sumo 3 sets of 6 belted, 1 AMAP Beltless backdown
Push2-long pause bench 5x5, optional AMAP tng set
Leg2-belted squat 4x4, 1-2 sets of pause squats
Pull2-conventional 3 sets of 5 belted, 1-2 sets of deficit or pause
Getting ready to change things up a bit and may copy your new setup exactly. Thanks for posting that.
As a guy who’s nowhere near as advanced as you are, would you recommend the ramped sets that you use, or possibly use CT’s double progression? I realize I’m probably majoring in the minors here but I figured I should ask.
[quote]kollak95 wrote:
Getting ready to change things up a bit and may copy your new setup exactly. Thanks for posting that.
As a guy who’s nowhere near as advanced as you are, would you recommend the ramped sets that you use, or possibly use CT’s double progression? I realize I’m probably majoring in the minors here but I figured I should ask.[/quote]
Personally I always liked ramping. If you like it better, you should do it. The best squatter in the world does it. Jesse Norris does a pyramid. Some guys do straight weight. I will probably always use it for heavy squats and deads…just comes with the territory when you’re small framed, IMO.
