I used a weight that left me with a great pump in the paused squats. That left me with no choice other than to go light on lunges and they still sucked because I was ready to be done.
I think I rested for 2 minutes on the main sets and 90 seconds on the paused squats. I really struggle with taking adequate rest breaks. I set my watch for 1 minute and I’m usually back to work by the 90 sec mark once I get ready again and my workout still take 90 minutes or more some days. It’s kind of dumb because I know how much rest is needed for hypertrophy, strength, and power workouts.
I can relate, I was trying very hard to talk myself out of doing the lunges. “Dinner is ready”, “You’ve done enough for today”, “Your knee is starting to hurt a bit”, “Dinner will be cold”, etc, etc.
Managed to push through and get the prescribed work done.
Yeah, I never time my rest periods unless I’m doing an EMOM set or something. I’ll start the timer at the beginning of the workout and then stop it at the end (if I remember) to get an idea of how long it took. The last two sets of lunges were actually done back to back since I wanted to be done so bad. I didn’t even take the bar off my back. Seemed to act as a good ‘finisher’ of sorts. a.k.a kick started the profuse sweating again.
BENCH PRESS
135 x 6
185 x 6
225 x 5
295 x 4
295 x 4
295 x 4
295 x 4
295 x 4
These top sets were starting to get pretty shaky near the end. 2+min rests between sets.
DB SLIGHT INCLINE BENCH - Deep stretch
70lb DBs x 8, 8, 8, 8
FLOOR PRESS
225 x 6
205 x 8, 8, 8
DB TRICEPS CROSS BODY EXTENSIONS
30lb DB x 10, 10, 10
RED MINI BAND TRICEPS PUSHDOWNS
12, 12, 12
Running off about 5hrs sleep, I wasn’t moving too quickly through this one. Plus my wife was out visiting a friend of hers so I was milking my gym time here.
Damn bro kinda browsed through your log, and you are jacked as fuck! You look super athletic and got some big lifts.
It looks like you switch up what you do quite a bit. Is there a certain style or split or anything that you prefer over others? Seems like you are always progressing no matter what style of lifting you are doing.
My favourite bit is where you look back and check out your own ass
All three looked good brother.
I have nothing constructive to add except you should keep growing your beard out
Thanks man, I really do appreciate you saying that. I try to keep my athleticism up as much as possible as I still like to participate in sports (albeit, not super competitive, typically beer leagues) so I try to work my mobility and explosiveness when I can fit it in.
I actually prefer switching it up! I could probably benefit with a little bit more structure to when and why I’m switching it up but:
Bodybuilding splits have no doubt added to my overall mass
5/3/1 has been the main driver behind my strength progress
Strongman lifts humbled me and improved a lot of weak points and conditioning
I have been fortunate that no matter which style I’m currently running that it has pushed me further towards my goals (of being stronger AND looking stronger).
Awesome, glad to have you here. Join the PARTAAYYY!
Gotta check out those gains, bro.
Thanks man! Unfortunately you were about 3 hours too late on this comment. Beard has been shaved, well, trimmed.
I was actually lifting with no music, all you could hear was my creaky bench, lol. The metal was just the first recommended song by YouTube. Can’t go wrong with some metal while lifting though.
So this morning I had a morning weight of 207.8lbs…I think I jumped off, moved the scale and tried again like 10 times because yesterday after breakfast I was 211.8lbs. 207.8lbs every time, hmmm.
I did eat light yesterday after about 6pm since I was already over my calorie goal for the day, so maybe I just had significantly less food in me than the day before? Either way, I’ll take it.
I’m going to TRY and start tracking my weight and cals/macros each day - I know I’ve said this multiple times before - but here goes another attempt.
Little higher in cals and carbs with 5 pints last night. They may have been parking lot pints at the BINGO hall. Yep, myself and 3 buddies popped our BINGO cherry last night.
It was actually good, cheap fun. I’m not ruling this out as a repeat adventure lol
DEADLIFT
135 x 5
225 x 5
315 x 5
405 x 3
495 x 4 ← Mixed grip; this set felt heavy, I may have jumped up to this weight a little too quick
495 x 1 ← mis-grooved my 1st rep, so I stood up, reset and then…
495 x 1 ← wow, felt wayy too heavy…
495 x 4 ← added straps and went for it. The last rep was grindy, so I called it quits there for my heavy stuff. This is typically where I would force out my remaining sets and then tweak something. I’m hoping this was the right call in moving on, it sure doesn’t feel like it right now!
Slept in this morning, rushed around, didn’t pack a lunch so I had a protein shake and a muffin, then slammed another shake when I got home pre-workout. I had nothing for this workout, so I hit some fluff to at least get something in.
On the power Look program, this week shouldn’t fell to heavy.
Next week: 5 sets of 5 is tough
BUT week 4: 5 sets of 6 is a beast.
So prepare yourself for pain and struggle in a couple of weeks.
Then it’s kind of easy a couple of weeks, then in the last 2-3 weeks it’s tough again.
So get your head down, and see the damn program to the end. after the next couple of weeks it gets a bit lighter. In terms of volume that is.
I’m chalking it up at a bad day. 5 sets of 3 last week didn’t seem too difficult. I wouldn’t have been able to hit 5 x 3 for this workout, so it was clearly an off day.
So hopefully it turns around, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I had to drop the weights slightly in order to get my reps in.
EDIT: My actual 1RM are typically higher than my calculated 1RM from a 3-5RM.
I actually think I failed to hit all of my reps on weeks 3 and 4. I maxed out before the program so I know my percentages were correct. That program is just a beast. You’re trying to push your 1 RM to a 3RM on multiple lifts in 10 weeks…that’s an aggressive approach.
Coming from a typical 5/3/1 progression this is significantly more aggressive than I’m used to. Nutrition and sleep haven’t been on point, so I really need to dial those in if I want to successfully complete this program.
This weekend was all over the place. Eating out, pizza, beer, whisky, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I had a FANTASTIC weekend but now time to reel it back in for the work week.
Week 2 - Day 4
PUSH PRESS
95 x 3
115 x 3
135 x 3
185 x 3
215 x 4 ← Uh oh, this felt difficult compared to last week…
215 x 4 ← Still tough.
215 x 4 ← MUCH easier, tried to keep the bar more in the palms and less in the fingers. This let me drive a lot more into the bar instead of relying on the leg drive. Bar is still able to stay in contact with my shoulders, just much more uncomfortable on the wrists.
215 x 4 ← Yep, pretty easy. Direct correlation between wrist pain and ease of lift. Need to keep working on my wrist/shoulder mobility so that I can painlessly hold the bar this way.
215 x 4 ← No issue.
STRICT OHP
145 x 8
145 x 8
145 x 8
145 x 8
-SUPERSET-
HIGH INCLINE DB PRESS
60lb x 8
60lb x 8
60lb x 8
60lb x 8
Oh yea, big time! Although, deadlift day has been the real ass kicker. Squat day is a good test, but hasn’t even come close to the difficulty of deadlift day (DOMS seems to be much greater after DL day as well).
You’re tempting me to run this program again. I can’t relate to the deadlifts since I didn’t do that portion. But now I’m curious.
EDIT
Just looked at the calendar and I can get 9 full weeks in before my surgery. I could probably force myself to lift Sun-Wed morning to do week 10’s workouts but there wouldn’t be a retest of my 1RM.
Sadly, I’m not in peak form right now so all of my maxes are well below my PRs. That’s good and bad. I should be able to build up to a 3RM with my current max but I won’t be setting any new PRs.
This might be a good program to run leading up to my surgery since it definitely requires some rest or lighter training once you finish.
Now that I’ve run a couple weeks and have had a chance to feel the difficulty it makes perfect sense if I actually step back and look at the prescribed strength work.
5/3/1’s heaviest week is: 75/85/95 OF a 90%1RM, so ~68/77/86.
5 x 68%
3 x 77%
1 x 86%
AVERAGE: 9reps @ 73%
Complete Power Look’s LIGHTEST week: 80% of true 1RM: 5sets x 3reps. 15reps @ 80%
The program only becomes more difficult from here. I’m definitely not used to hitting this type of volume in this intensity range, so I’m going to try and prioritize recovery (specifically trying to get more sleep).3
[DISCLAIMER: I am not bashing 5/3/1, as I know + sets and supplemental work will accumulate volume/intensity but just the basic rep scheme was used for illustration purposes only. I will no doubt be doing 5/3/1 again once this program is finished…if not before…)
in a couple of weeks.