This was my second bench session with Andy and I feel okay about how it went. Actual bench was great, 2 board and floor press not so much. Doing those exercises has made me realize my mid range sucks and is what needs work in the future.
-Surprised and happy with my speed here. I haven’t taken a bench video in forever but Andy wanted one so here it is.
Two Board
1x2 285
1x2 305
1x2 325 PR +1 Rep
1x0 335 -I thought I would get at least one, apparently not.
Floor Press
1x2 245
1x2 265
1x1 285 -I failed on the second which pissed me off, so I waited and tried again do I could at least match last week.
1x2 285
1x1 295
Low Incline DB
2x15 65s
Seated Press
4x10 115 -This felt better than last week, I really need to explode from the bottom when I do these.
This session was ridiculous. I had a wedding to go to at 5:30 and I worked until 3. I cut out of work a bit early knowing this session would take me at least an hour and a half, it took an hour and 40 minutes and I made it to the wedding with about four minutes to spare. I literally pushed this session as fast as I possibly could and even alternated the last two exercises and it still took that long.
Doing a decent amount of weight and volume on both squat and deadlift on the same day is hell, did I mention I am also on a ulta low carb diet too? My weight is around 224 so it is moving the right direction and getting below 220 should be no problem.
Bench
1x5 135
1x5 175
1x3 225
1x3 240
1x3 265
1x1 285
1x1 310
1x2 310
1x1 310 -This was supposed to be 3x2 but I only got one set of two, wasn’t feeling the best.
Floor Press
1x2 255
1x2 275
1x1 295
2 Board
1x2 285
1x2 310
1x0 335 -I just can’t seem to hit this off a two board.
This was another day where I wasn’t feeling great, my BW was down to 222 this day and I was feeling pretty depleted.
Squat
1x5 135
1x5 185
1x5 225
1x3 265
1x3 285
1x3 310
1x1 350
3x1 385 -This was supposed to be 3x2.
Speed Squat
3x2 265
Deadlift
1x5 135
1x5 185
1x3 225
1x3 265
1x3 315
1x3 350
1x3 395
3x2 450 -These felt pretty decent, I am still thinking a big deadlift PR is in the cards for the meet.
Everything felt pretty good today. I went to a concert last night and I swear the bartender gave me two regular cokes instead of diet coke. If she did that would fuck up my diet, but I felt strong today, it is what it is.
Paused Bench
1x5 135
1x5 175
1x3 225
1x3 240
3x2 275 -These all felt good, I think I’m going to open at 300.
Floor press
1x3 225
1x3 240
1x3 255
1x3 280 PR -I actually felt strong on these today.
This was my last squatting and deadlifting before the meet. My squat hasn’t felt great so I think I am going to open at 365, deadlift I think I am going to open around 485 so that it’s easy and then I will make a big jump for my second attempt and hopefully a big jump for the third.
Squat
1x5 135
1x5 185
1x5 225
1x3 265
1x3 285
1x3 315
1x1 335
3x2 355 -I did these set up in a rack facing toward everyone in the gym and without listening to music so I could simulate squatting in the meet. They weren’t super fast but my form felt good and I was hitting dept consistently without a problem.
This was my last session, now I’m sitting around until Saturday, I may possibly still run some intervals to get my weight down. I should be able to hit 220 without having to do any real water manipulation other than going to the bathroom and not eating before weighing in Friday afternoon.
Speed Close Grip Bench
5x3 135 minis
Pushdowns
3x12 115
Dips
3x6 BW +70 -These felt really good. I’m better at weighted dips than BW dips.
This style of training was really, really fun. It was high volume and different from anything I have ever done. This wasn’t a fair judgement of how this affects my strength, as I lost about 10 lbs during the four weeks I trained with him, although I feel I at least maintained my strength and peaked well for my meet on Saturday.
That said I will never hire him again as the way he writes out his training makes no fucking sense, and a lot of the weights/exercises were still up to my discretion. I greatly prefer Josh Bryant’s way of laying it all out in a spread sheet, giving every weight and every set, and then wanting feedback on every exercise every week. He also was much more professional. We’ll see on what happens on Saturday when I destroy some weights on the platform.
Good luck at the meet this weekend. LOL @ what you said about AB’s program write-ups. I’ve read that elsewhere and I have a friend who bought a 12-week plan from another big-name guy (who I won’t mention by name) that has to work with the same kind of jumbled-up planning.
I think I totaled basically the same thing as last year. Last year I was really happy with my performance, this year I was really disappointed, I definitely have gotten a lot stronger I just couldn’t put a good meet together this time around.
Squat:
365(355)-Easy
407(397)-Easy
435-Wasn’t strong enough to get it out of the hole, my form was good.
The reason for the numbers in parentheses is they were apparently using the wrong collars at the beginning so it was 10 lbs lighter. I didn’t find this out until after I put in my third attempt. I think I am still being credited with 407 even though I didn’t actually squat it, I wasn’t happy about this debacle.
Bench
297-Easy, racked it without waiting for the command, three reds.
308-Easy, I would have gone for more like 315-320 but I didn’t want to risk bombing so I went for a lower number.
335-Nope, I psyched myself out too much and for some reason was waiting for a start command so I held it for like five seconds before benching it and my head was all screwed up.
Deadlift
497-Good, heavier than it should have been.
523-No good, this really sucked. I locked it out after grinding it forever, I actually had to breath in at the top while it was still on the way up because I was out of air. Three reds, I re-bent my knees by about an inch.
523-No chance.
Moving forward, I really want to put some simplicity back into my training so I am going back to 5/3/1 and I am going to stick to it for at least a year. I’m tired of looking for magic programs that don’t exist. I’ve finally come to the realization that there is no program that is going to make all of my lifts jump 50 lbs in 12 weeks and I’m tired of thinking about my training so much and trying to make it so complicated. I’m doing the program as outlined in this article to start-
I will change assistance as time goes on, but 5/3/1 will remain.
I’m planning on continuing my diet and will probably get down to around 210. I’m going not going to go much over 220 this year, I’m going to stay even lighter and leaner and try not to have any massive fluctuations.
I probably shouldn’t have gone to the gym the day after the gym because my body felt like shit but I didn’t want to take any more time off because I’m weak and I suck. I alternated some of the exercises, I didn’t run between them or anything, I just casually walked back and forth until I completed all of the sets. This workout took 45 minutes, it was great.
Overhead Press
1x5 110
1x5 130
1x6 145 -Didn’t push it too hard.
Man, sorry about the meet performance. Just put it in the past and move forward. Any ideas on when you’ll compete in a meet again or are you just going to cruise for a while?
[quote]novaeer wrote:
Man, sorry about the meet performance. Just put it in the past and move forward. Any ideas on when you’ll compete in a meet again or are you just going to cruise for a while?[/quote]
It’s going to be a while, maybe a year? I am going through the hiring process for a few different police departments right now so there is a possibility I could be going to the academy August-December should I be hired, then after that I would obviously be starting a new job. I don’t know how this all would affect my training but I will continue to train hard no matter what. There is a possibility that while in the academy I would only be able to lift on the weekends, but we’ll see.
You’re signing on to the po-po? Lol. My brother-in-law is a state trooper over in West Virginia and during his time in the academy I don’t think he had as much time for lifting, but he was still able to get in a decent amount.
[quote]novaeer wrote:
You’re signing on to the po-po? Lol. My brother-in-law is a state trooper over in West Virginia and during his time in the academy I don’t think he had as much time for lifting, but he was still able to get in a decent amount.[/quote]
I hear people go out and drink a lot at night during the Nebraska state academy so I should have time to get lifting in if I have access to a gym, if I get the job. I don’t know what the food situation would be either, it’s a big we’ll see.
