Ugh.
Tues 11/20
5/3/1 Beginner Prep School Cycle 7 B2-
Yoga flow
Power clean and push-jerk-
95/115/135lbx1, 165lb, 5x1
power cleans didn’t feel great.
Deadlift-
135/225/265/305lbx5, 345lbx10, 265lb, 5x5
Hanging leg raise-
5x5
The AMRAP got very difficult. Should have stopped at rep 6-7 but my ego got in the way.
OHP-
45/65/80/90lbx5, 100lbx10, 80lb, 5x5
Crunches with feet elevated and pulling them towards you? Not sure what these are called-
5x5
Circuit-
Single leg deadlift-5x5
Chin-up-5x6
Push-up-5x9
Kneeling ab-wheel roll-out-5x9
Finally brought my ab-wheel with me.
Tues 11/20-
Jogged .12x8 at 7.6 speed. Tired from the day before and it showed. Yoga afterwards. My upper back and core felt very sore and tired.
Weds 11/21-
5/3/1 Beginner Prep School Cycle 7 A3-
Yoga flow and 15-17 jumps
Bench-
45/75/105/130/145lbx5, 160lbx6, 130lb, 5x5
Didn’t feel easy like it did two weeks ago.
Squat-
135/185/225/255lbx5, 285lbx2
Body felt bad on the 225lb and had to psyche myself up for 255lb. 285lb felt too slow to be worth doing, so I stopped the entire squat session.
Circuit-
Front squat (45lb)-5x12
BB row (45lb)-5x13
Push-up-5x10
Hanging leg raise (to parallel)-5x6
This went well, so I know the issue I had with the bench and squat are not likely to be related to muscle fatigue.
I’m realizing now that AMRAP do not work for me- I have a set rep goal in my head based off previous performances and I get stuck trying to match them. As a result I am constantly finding myself pushing 1-2 reps beyond what I should be doing. Great if I’m doing a true AMRAP, but these are supposed to be higher reps that never come close to failure; which is the complete opposite of what I’m doing right now.
Also annoys me that I’m having a hard time doing things that I did months ago at a lighter bodyweight. I think that’s the main reason- I’m pretty sure I deadlifted 345lb for 12-13 reps and it didn’t feel anything as difficult as this felt. Nor did it break my body down as badly as this set clearly did based on how I feel and my performance on the squat today.
Not happy.
Today’s terrible performance likely comes from a combination of overreaching with the AMRAP + going to bed late yesterday + not over-eating (back on a sensible diet that I have control over, but I need to tweak carbs a lot I think).
Since this cycle is about done (I’m pretty sure I’m going to have similarly bad results on the last session of this cycle), I think this is a fine time to evaluate how things went.
It didn’t go that well in my opinion.
The only real positive is that I’m jogging at an ok speed (while these are broken up in sets, I am doing a mile in under 10 minutes when I jog/walk at 8.8 speed with ease and that’s all I want to be able to do).
Yoga is clearly going to be a long term thing if I want to reap any real mobility benefits.
The worst part is that I’ve gained a good 5lb of what has to be nothing but pure fat in the last three months, since I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten weaker on the barbell lifts. This likely happened because I kept eating as though I’m lifting 6x a week when I’m not. Yoga and/or jogging doesn’t come close to what I’ve been burning from lifting. Too bad full body 3x a week left me feeling even more sore and tired than 6x a week did. Yep, didn’t feel that great even when I didn’t do the AMRAP sets.
Going to go back to double-progression and at least four days of lifting a week. Upper/lower barbell split with assistance and circuit being full-body. The only time I had success with squatting and benching was when I did double-progression going from 5 to 8 reps, but it also left me unable to walk the following day for squats. Since I would like to continue jogging and doing yoga, I need to tweak the reps (and thus the required effort on them) accordingly. Probably 3 sets of 8-10 reps or some such. I’ll adjust as I go along.