Paused Olympic speed squats 245x3x3
Speed DLs 385x5x1
SLDLs against quad micro minis 195x2x10
DB rows 120x2x10
Shrugs 285x2x15
Pulldowns 4x12
Leg curls 5x15
Pushdowns monster mini for 150 reps total (65,45,35)
Summary: I’ve had some kind of sinus/throat deal for the past several days so I’ve been feeling like I’m walking through a heavy fog. Yesterday’s session wasn’t greatly affected by it, but my speed pulls weren’t quite as speedy as I would have liked. However, I did make a conscious effort to pull back more in effort to make the lockout easier. Seemed to work pretty well. Triceps were in agony once again from the pushdowns and I used the monster mini this week to make things harder on myself.
Squat w/ belt 345x2,375x2,395x2
Squat w/ average bands 255x1,275x1,295x1 (no belt)
Seated band abductions (monster mini) 3x12
Good mornings 135x2x10
Pulldown abs 3x8
Seated band leg curls 4x15
Summary: Kind of a crappy performance. For some reason I kept using way too narrow of a stance and 395x2 was a lot harder than it should have been. I did feel a little zapped from limited carbs on top of the sweltering heat in the garage, but that shouldn’t be a reason to have trouble with a weight that I hit w/o a belt pretty easily just a few weeks prior. Gonna chalk this up as one of those shit days that comes along from time-to-time. At least the band squats were decent. My setup was much better on these and the band tension provided a nice kick in the ass.
Sounds like an underwhelming week in the gym, but no doubt a minor blip in the road in the grand scheme of things. Are you enjoying the current training set-up? I love squatting against bands when I followed a Westside template.
Oh, and your gym looked farking crowded from the box squat vid. How often do you train in your home gym?
[quote]Element_26 wrote:
Sounds like an underwhelming week in the gym, but no doubt a minor blip in the road in the grand scheme of things. Are you enjoying the current training set-up? I love squatting against bands when I followed a Westside template.
Oh, and your gym looked farking crowded from the box squat vid. How often do you train in your home gym?[/quote]
I’ve been training some days on like 20-30g of carbs and I’m still adjusting to that. Certainly that has had an impact on my performance. I really like the program Adam Hires is setting up for me. I don’t feel like I’m overworked, but I don’t feel underworked either. Kind of a goldilocks territory.
That gym is ridiculously packed in the evenings when I train there. Some nice things to look at, mind you, but still a pain in the ass to have people practically standing on top of you when you are trying to do something.
Summary: I was supposed to do a top set of 3, but I didn’t look closely enough at the paper and ended up only doing a double with 315. To make up for it, I did another double about a minute later. Worked up to a moderately difficult single with 365 on the 2-board; positive thing is it didn’t feel too heavy in my hands despite the fact that’s the most weight I’ve held in a long time. Despite the mis-read on the prescribed reps, not a bad day IMO.
[quote]Adam-F wrote:
Are you still following my videos? be interested to here any feedback you have! [/quote]
I saw that you posted a bazillion of them a week or so ago. Didn’t have the chance to check them out, but I will them a look over soon. I also noticed that you are on the DH forum now. Are you having better success with CBL than you did with the carb cycling regimen?
Ha - that was so I could edit them into 1 sensible video - one for deads and one for pressing! They are deleted now
Indeed I am, so far yes - it’s only been 3-4 weeks but my BW is holding nice and steady around 213-4…I am just playing around with carb choices, monitoring macros etc to see what works best!
Deadlifts 425x2x1 (no belt)
Box pulls 425,445,475,500x1 (belt)
DB rows 120x17(R),17(L)
Barbell shrugs 285x2x20
finished up with Pulldowns, Leg Curls and Pushdowns
Summary: Not a bad session. I wasn’t pulling with a lot of authority on the two singles with 425, but the pulls still felt very easy and smooth. It has been a long time since I’ve pulled from a 3" box height and FFS it has got to be tougher than pulling from the floor. That last attempt with 500 was a farking grinder. Haven’t had one of those in a while. Phew.
Smooth for sure…I was always curious about pulling of blocks, it seems as if it inhibits you from using your lower half and defecits forces to use your lower body and get down more…could it be said that pulling off blocks is actually harder?
I always found rack pulls ridiculously uncofortable and hard for this reason…
[quote]MattyXL wrote:
Smooth for sure…I was always curious about pulling of blocks, it seems as if it inhibits you from using your lower half and defecits forces to use your lower body and get down more…could it be said that pulling off blocks is actually harder?
I always found rack pulls ridiculously uncofortable and hard for this reason…[/quote]
Nearly everyone will have a box height that they will struggle with. For me, it’s the 4"-6" box height that kicks my ass and it likely stems from not using your quads to break the bar from the floor and losing the momentum from that initial pull. Deficits are harder because of the added range and different leverages; once you get below a 2-3" deficit, quad strength comes much more into play.
I don’t like rack pulls because they can f up a bar and the carryover to a deadlift was never really that good for me. But they are awesome back strength builders.
Box squats 275x5x2
Pause squats 245x2x5
Good mornings
Leg curls
Note: Really good speed on the box squats today and was able to remain more upright thanks to some suggestions from Adam. Had to cut the assistance work because the wife needed some help with the rugrat.
Summary: Since that storm knocked out power across much of the area on Saturday, I had to cobble days 2 and 3 together. I thought it was going to kill me with all the volume and the fact that I was lifting in the morning in a fasted state. I actually made it through pretty well. I felt strong on the bench and pulls, although the weights were light and it’s easy to feel strong with light weights, lol. I trained at the commercial gym, but received the great news that our power had been restored while I was training. House was a cool 86 degrees when I got there.
Squat (no belt) 405x1
Box squat (+average bands) 245x4x2
Sumo Dimel DLs 185x3x10
DB Bulgarian SS 30x3x10 (fuck, I hate these)
Pulldown abs 3x10
Seated leg curls 5x20
Summary: IT band was bothering me some today so I did some extra foam rolling. Then added some capsaicin+blue heat to that area and lower back - bad idea on a really hot day. As soon as I stepped outside and the heat hit that area, it reactivated the stuff. Felt like a flamethrower, ouchie. The top set with 405 felt OK, but was a little slower than I would have liked. Banded box squats were pretty good and had good hip pop. Finished off with the assistance work, but damn those split squats to hell.
