These never felt difficult mentally. Hell, I didn’t really feel like I exerted myself honestly. BUT, everything felt SLOW. Many of them were grinding reps without any of the exertion that I typically associate with grinding reps out.
Got too slow in the end and I got scared that I’ll hit a wall, so I stopped. Wanted to hit 7x5. Should be doable next week.
Weighted chin-up/various lunges/hanging leg raise (90 second rest)-
+20lb, 8x5 on chin-up, then 2x5 of pull-up and NG pull-up
10x5 on lunges. Used 20lb for forward and reverse lunge.
5x5 on the leg raise, then switched over to 5x3 on tuck levers
Started feeling tired and decided to stop doing weighted chin-ups. Lunges are ok, need to focus more on form, especially when it comes to hip positioning.
Smacked my ankle onto the top of the platform during some sets of the leg raise. I think my core is sufficiently strong now that I need to control the speed at which I go up, otherwise I start hitting things.
No jogging today cause the rest time for the squats ate time up.
The push-jerks felt very easy. Thought about continuing to add weight but decided against it.
Did the volume on the OHP by doing brief pauses at the bottom and top. Also trying to focus more on maintaining good head positioning. In other words… actually focusing on form.
TRX row/DB OHP/sit-ups-
10x5 on the TRX row
30lb, 10x5 on the DB OHP
Did sit-ups and tuck levers, depending on what I felt like doing at the time.
Attempted some full front-levers afterwards. I think I came really close to doing this at one point, though maintaining the position felt impossible- my back didn’t feel strong enough.
DB snatch-
70lb, 6x2 with each hand.
Snatches felt easy. Probably good to do upwards of 90-100lb now.
Everything is stronger/feels more capable except my main lifts.
Ha.
Oh, I wrote that I didn’t feel like I exerted myself on the squats yesterday. My legs begged to differ- Felt sore during sleep and my legs felt it when I climbed stairs.
Deadlift-
135/225lb- bunch of singles and triples and all manners of things… I spend way too much time warming up with these weights. I suppose it’s just form practice really.
275/315/355/395lbx1
335lb, 10x2 (one minute rest)
395lb went up well with a chalked hand. Want to believe that I’m good for pulling 445-455lb now, but I think I can wait on attempting that for another month or so.
Squat-
Did a couple 225lb singles, then spent some time playing around with feet positioning during the unracking.
Good morning-
95lb, 6x5 (45sec rest)
Decided to start doing these after watching one of Alpha’s videos on them. I suck at these due to mobility issues. I figure that improving mobility with these will be helpful elsewhere.
Pull-up(various grip)/various lunges/hanging leg raise-
6x5 on everything (50 second rest)
Jogging-
3% incline at 4.5 speed for 10 minutes.
My hip and the part where the hip/lower back meets felt beat up.
Not squatting low enough. I’m basically just pulling the bar all the way up to my normal height, and so things feel completely out of whack in relation to what I think I should be feeling.
Though this gets me around my tendency to seemingly not extend fully when I do full cleans.
Front squat-
135/165/195/225lbx1
185lb, 5x5
Can keep my body straight the entire time, no more scratching my neck due to the bar shifting as I tire out.
Pull-up(various grips)/lunges(various stances)/hanging leg raise-
10x5 on the pull-up/lunge
10x4 on the hanging leg raise
Having short pauses at the top and bottom is easy on all grips except for extremely narrow ones. Might have been because I started to get a bit tired, but the positioning alone makes it difficult to hold it.
Superset of OHP and BB row-
135lb, 2/2/2/2ish/3 on OHP
155lb, 5x8 on BB row
Did the OHP with a dead-stop at the bottom. Failed on the second rep of the fourth set and did a push-press instead. Did the last set with no dead-stop and it felt ok.
Brought the weight down on the BB row in an attempt to save my hands + Allow myself better form to take advantage of my recent attempts to straighten out my thoracic spine.
TnG deadlift/dip/overhead plate raise-
135lb, 3x5, 185lb, 1x5, 245lb, 2x5, 3x3 on the deadlift
10x5 on the dip
25lb, 10x5 on the overhead plate raise
In spite of my attempts to save my hand, my hand died on me during the deadlift. Stupid grip strength.
Did the dip with a short pause at the top and bottom.
275 and 305lb felt really unstable. I actually lost control and sort of sank into the 275lb.
Found my speed on the 265lb. I think it lost it because I didn’t practice moving moderately heavy weights for a couple of weeks.
Quite pleased that I did this. Going to try for 8x5 next week.
Pull-up(various grip)/various lunges/hanging leg raise (one minute rest)
5x5 on everything.
Did the pull-ups with a longer pause at the bottom and inconsistent pauses at the top. Tired myself out by the fifth set and the pull-ups started to get difficult. Not sure if it’s because of the longer pauses or because I did longer pauses + 5 leg raises.
I’ve started sitting with my foam roller between my legs in an attempt to enforce better sitting position, since PT folks seem to suggest that you place something in between your thighs during certain PT exercises for neutral hip position.
No idea if it’s actually helping with my sitting/neutral hip and such, but god-damn my crappy left shoulder/lower back/hips get sore real quick.
I actually think this might be why heavy squats yesterday felt sorta fucked.
Deadlift-
135/225lb-warm-up stuff
275/315/345/"375"x1
335lb, 10x2 (30 second rest)
My entire back started to get a whee bit tired and achy by the end of that.
I think I loaded 375lb, but now that I think about it, I might have loaded 5lb instead of 10lb. Either way, my grip felt bad.
Squat-
225lb, 5x1
Pull-up(various grip)/modified single-leg squat/hanging leg raise (one minute rest)
10x5 on everything.
Did the pull-ups with no pause. Much easier.
RDL-
135lb, 5x10
Ehh. Didn’t want to go home so I just did a bunch of RDL afterwards.
Didn’t jog because it’s really warm in the gym and I detest jogging in the heat.
Couldn’t fit going to the gym into my schedule so just did a brief workout at the apartment gym
Pull-up/dip/body squat and then cossack squat-
10x5 on everything.
This felt really, really bad. Muscles felt stiff and tired. I think it’s because I didn’t really warm-up or anything.
Now I’m sore everywhere, especially my hips and hamstrings. Dear God, the first rep of cossack squat felt terrible. I’m having a bit of a hard time believing that I feel better doing lower body assistance stuff AFTER I’ve done a bunch of squats than beforehand.
Squat-
135/185/225/255/285lbx1
245lb, 5x7 (one minute rest)
This felt very challenging. Definitely felt like the most challenging thing I’ve done since the 3x8 with 265lb.
Took a good six minutes afterwards to be able to clench my fists properly and feel good enough to continue on.
Chin-up/various lunges/hanging leg raise-
5x5 on everything, with 20lb added to chin-up (90 second rest)
Lat pull-down-
105lbx8
90lb, 4x8
Did these slowly and attempting to get as much thoracic extension going on as possible.
This felt about the same as last week, though I had clearly run out of steam by the seventh set- felt like some of these came very close to/if not outright being good morning squats.
My guess is that lower back didn’t recover fully.
Pull-up variations-10x5
Alternating between forward/back lunge and cossack squats and one-leg deadlifts-10x5
Hanging leg raise-10x5
Pausing the pull-ups at the bottom feels pretty good now. Going to now focus on letting myself extend all the way down, then pausing.
Hanging leg raises got rough by the end. The hardest thing out of this superset.
I fucked up today. I got to the gym pretty late and so decided to do 4x8. Sets of 8 went beyond desired intensity though, and so decided to cut down to sets of 6. Would have been more productive if I just did 6x5 as last week with the pauses and such.
TRX row- 10x5
5x one tuck lever then a tuck lever into a leg raise (no idea what to call this), then 5x tuck lever into a leg raise
DB OHP- 30lb, 10x5
The tuck lever variation is too hard on my shoulder/lats when I attempt to come down into hang with my legs straight. Going to just raise leg and drop back into a tuck for the time being.
Deadlift-
135/225lb-singles and triples
275/315/365/405lbx1
355lb, 4x2, 6x1 (60 second rest)
405lb feels like a solid 85% now. Not difficult.
Feeling beat down by set four, so switched over to singles. Not sure if it’s because I went with the 405lb pull or because 355lb is too heavy.
Maybe worth it to drop down to 315lb and basically repeat this with sets of 5 or something. I’ll determine after next week.
Pause squat-
225lb, 4x1 (30 second rest)
Good morning-
95lbx5
115lb, 6x5
Started to difficult by the fourth set. Good mornings are hard to do!
Weighted alternating between chin-up and pull-up/modified single leg squat/hanging leg raise (90 second rest)
6x5 on everything.
+20lb for the chin-up/pull-up
Power clean-
135/155lbx1
135lb, 8x3 (90 second rest)
These are shitty. I’m having too much impact on my arms and legs started to starfish a bit on the last set.
Front squat-
45lb, 2x5
135/165/195/225lbx1
185lb, 4x5
Pull-up/dip-
10x5
Superseted the front squat and pull-up/dip together. Breathing started to get heavy once I got to doing reps with the front squat, but not felt anything as far as muscles being tired.
Pausing the pull-ups and dips feels pretty easy now; I have much better control over the entire range of motion.
Winter is finally upon my neighborhood, and with it comes my yearly dried out skin. I currently have some split skin in the middle of my finger that just refuses to heal. It doesn’t help that I’m irritating the skin with a barbell every single day. The split skin got annoying during the power cleans.