260 x 1 (last warm up)
280 x 1 (probable opener)
295 x 1 to 1-board (probable second attempt)
All with a competition pause. Tried to pace out my warm ups as if it was meet day. Felt fine. I will have a PR “test” day in a couple weeks, so my attempts may be shuffled after I get that final assessment of where my strength level is at. But for now, this will do.
Close-Grip Bench to 2-board: 260x3, 280x3, 300x3
The 300x3 was a PR, a true max, and a good grinder.
DB Rollbacks: 45’s 4x10
“Close-Grip” Push Ups: 3 sets, max reps
Pressdowns: 65 lbs x 100 total reps
Seated DB “Power Cleans”: 10’s 3x20
ONE DAY I will have a big bench. Clawing my way there.
Front-foot elevated reverse lunges w/ 25 lb DB’s 3x10 each leg
Side Bends w/ 55 lb DB 4x15 each side
Leg Extensions 50lbx20, 55x20, 60x20, 65x20
Another SSB PR. Its becoming apparent that I still have a lot of untapped potential on my lower body lifts, especially with the specialty bars. Will be tapering those off soon as I’m only 6 weeks out from the comp now. But going forward, going to try to milk that for as long as I can.
For sure! To be perfectly honest, I think I’m stil getting the benefit of newbie gains for my squat and deadlift in the sense that as long as I get my volume in and handle heavy enough weights, they go up. The bench is another story, where every 5 lb PR is an achievement, lol.
Wide-Grip Bench 185x8, 205x8, 225x8, 235x8. Would have been good for a heavier top set but spotters are few and far between on Sunday morning. Have room for more here which I wil exploit going forward.
Neutral-Grip DB Bench: 65’s x8; 70’s 2x8
Assisted Wide-Grip Pullups: 3 sets max reps
Bent-Over Rows: 185 3x10
Inverted Rows: 3 sets max reps
Band Pull Aparts w/ red mini : 5x25
6 WEEKS OUT now. Time to start planning attempts. I have no idea how my squats will look until I properly assess how strong I am in wraps. That will be a goal of the next few weeks, but 440-450 range will probably be my opener.
Bench is tentatively 280/295/305
Deadlift tentatively 465/505 for first and second. Third attempt will be based on how I feel.
Trained this morning for the first time all week. This week was a giant clusterfuck with the 9/15 tax deadline as I work in public accounting. I wasn’t expecting it to be as hectic as its been, but turns out I had to work late a bunch of nights this week and it threw a major bone into my meet prep. There is another deadline at 10/15 and with it looking like I may be just as busy over the next month, an out-of-town meet on 10/22 is starting to look like it may not be my best option. Disappointing to come to this realization so abruptly since I’ve put a lot into this meet prep already. I will need to mull this over.
To top things off, my son woke me up at 2:30 this morning getting in to bed with us upset about 2-year-old stuff and I’ve been up since then. SO thats how I ended up going to the gym at 4:30 am on a Friday, the day after a huge tax deadline.
Anyway I squatted and worked up to 365 for 6. Wanted to go AMRAP but lost my balance on my 6th rep and just racked it. I was shot anyway on just a few hours sleep so the nausea was setting in.
Dropped down to 280 for some pause squats 3x5.
GHR 3 sets of 12,10,8.
Decline sit ups 4x12
And some box jumps 4x10.
Felt good to train but I feel lost with my meet prep derailed. I need to make a decision.
Stick with your plan. I’m in a similar boat: hard week where stuff way more important that training took priority and training suffered with a meet two weeks out. Dig in and power through. A couple of decent sleeps and a good session or two under the belt and everything will look much better.
Thanks for the encouragement @MarkKO. I certainly could still salvage this prep and MAYBE work around another busy few weeks at work. But I know this would effect my preparation and make it less than 100%. I may hold out until a local meet in November.
So I’m changing gears quite a bit here. Long story short, the October RPS meet is out. I just don’t have it in me to half-ass a meet prep. This is a marathon, not a sprint and I’ve made the decision to hold off on a competition likely until 2017, when I can give a full thorough peaking cycle and smash some good numbers.
In fhe meantime, its high-time to drop a couple of pounds. I had been sitting for the past few weeks at 245 and trying to get up to 250, but it just wasn’t happening. It was getting to the point that I would have to force feed to get there, and I wasn’t willing to do it at this level of body fat. With being slammed at work for a few weeks and largely confined to my desk all day, I decided to cut out a lot of carbs to compensate for the lack of activity. The result? I’m down six pounds in a week. Obviously that is mostly water and bloat from shitty eating, but I feel great and its a good step in the right direction. I’m fairly sure I can drop some of this extra weight that surely isn’t doing me any favors.
Of course the goal will be to maintain and continue to build on my current strength level as I clean up my body composition. I will be running some 5/3/1 sessions just because of the familiarity and ease of programming. And of course the goal will be to get back on the platform, but at a lighter weight class! I will update the first post of my log to reflect my new direction. Thanks to anyone who has read these posts, and stay tuned for weight loss progress.
Did some 5’s stuff last week on the days I was able to get into the gym, so I’m picking up here in my 3’s week.
Incline Bench (FSL) 190 3x5
Part of this phase of my training is going to be experimenting with new rep ranges, lifts, and training methods. Used the “40 rep method” for some assistance work here:
Skull Crushers 115 x8, x6, x6, x5, x4, x4, x5, x2
EZ Bar Curls 80 x8, x8, x6, x6, x4, x5, x3
Band Pressdowns 100 reps
Band Pull Aparts 150 reps
Interval Sprints on treadmill. Just for 12 minutes. Easing back in to conditioning.
To be honest, I feel kind of lost training like this. Its been a good 5-6 months since I’ve used anything other than a laser-focused peaking cycle with every rep programmed before I get into the gym. I’d like some input from other 5/3/1 posters @MarkKO@andypee@twojarslave . Do you guys have all your assistance work written out or just go by rough template, or how you feel that day?
My strategy right now is to do my 5/3/1 sets, then just attack the shit I suck at. That shit happens to be my posterior chain, rear delts, incline benching, and dumbbell pressing. Thoughts?
EDIT: Just to be clear, I am still going to train other areas as well as those mentioned above. It is just my primary goal to bring up said weak points.
This is me we’re talking about, so yes I have my assistance written out. At the end of each cycle I think about how well I feel it worked and then make any necessary changes for the next cycle.
Im same as @MarkKO I plan all my assisstance work out, sometimes i make adjustments on the fly depending on how I feel but I always go into the gym with a plan in mind!
I plan my workouts for weeks even months in advance then change it every 2 days. The big lifts stay the same and workouts are always based around them, but everything else is like sand in the waves.
To be honest my partner and I have just been winging it for most of the year, using a roughly 5/3/1-shaped plan. I only say that because we work up to one top set each day, except when we don’t. We are really just lifting weights in a lot of different rep ranges without any real structure.
As far as assistance goes, I’m not really trying to bring up weak points right now, but rather put a lot of work in on some rather basic assistance movements, again with the objective of preserving my strength as fat is shed. Each week we will…
Do some kind of rows
Do some kind of chins
Do dips
Do face pulls
Do leg presses
Do some kind of hammy work (SLDL, Curls, Romanian DL)
Curls for the girls
Some tricep work on the cables
Swing the kettlebell
Assuming you are sticking with the plan to drop fat/preserve (or hopefully gain) strength, I don’t think you need to overthink things too much. Focus on getting your food intake right, that’s the biggest thing by far. Otherwise I just put the work in and make sure to train my whole body.
There are surely better ways of doing this, but this has been getting it done for me. Once I get to my goal body comp, I’m probably getting back on 5/3/1. Jim’s new book will be out by then and I plan on running something from it. For now we’ve been having fun and getting results with our shoot-from-the-hip approach.
Edit: One thing to keep in mind is that I’m not a powerlifter. I’m just a chubby IT guy lifting weights after work. I’ve been having success with what I’ve been doing, but I’m sure there are plenty of competitive PL’ers out there who’ve done much better. Success leaves tracks!
I’m probably going to set up something like this. I’ll keep everything fluid so that I can rotate different exercises in and out as needed, but I’ll still write it out ahead of time so I don’t feel like I’m stabbing in the dark at the gym
Press: 115x3, 130x3, 145x9 - cleaned the bar up instead of grabbing it from the rack. I had NEVER power cleaned before so I figured why not try it? It was easy! One of these days I’ll work up and see how much I’m capable of power cleaning, just for fun.
Not happy with my back work today. The overhead work fried my rear delts so they were giving out before my lats. Going to start off with some horizontal rowing movements next week (before or instead of pull-ups) and see if that helps. If not will move my main back assistance day to bench day, and move tri’s to press day.
Finished with interval sprints on the treadmill for 1 mile
I’m discovering a weakness in my lower back, which I believe has been exacerbated by not squatting beltless enough. Going to add some lighter beltless sets after my 5/3/1 work so I can bring that up.
Have decided my conditioning target is to work up to 2 miles for both the weight vest walk and the interval runs. The goal is to aid in fat loss, bring up GPP, and just re-establish a general baseline of fitness and athleticism. No need to become a marathon runner.
Ate some ground beef for dinner that the wife made. Tasted like it had a lot of sodium so I fear the scale will be inflated tomorrow morning.