Deep Water Intermediate
Day 3 of Week 5 (Today)
Power Clean
140 lbs x 15
140 lbs x 15
140 lbs x 16
140 lbs x 14
140 lbs x 12
140 lbs x 12
140 lbs x 8
140 lbs x 8
Clean Pull
185 lbs x 10
185 lbs x 10
185 lbs x 10
60 second plank - 20 sit ups - 3 sets no rest
Very impressive loads and working capacity! 
I do think that you should work on depth though and at least hit parallel.
I donāt see myself making any massive changes to the way I squat since my legs have gotten bigger and stronger this way. Although, I personally would like to go a tad bit deeper when I crank out reps quickly.
If you are not competing or planning to compete in powerlifting then depth isnāt really that important. The only question is whether better depth will have a better overall training effect. If you squat deeper you may have to drop the weights a little but the overall training effect may increase. You just do you mate and keep working hard. The rest is just details.
Exactly the only other exception is if youāre dumb like me and set goals of squatting to PL depth despite having no desire to compete.
I wouldnāt consider that dumb, it is your goal and as long as you own it and work hard then all power to you.
Mostly tongue in cheek but yea, setting goals, seemingly arbitrary or otherwise, then pursuing them is always a worthwhile activity.
Iāll try experimenting and see whatās best for me. Right now, I found that if I squeeze my glutes before descending I am able to go deeper. If I find that I can be efficient with it then I might as well use it if Iāll get more glute. activitation.
Sorting Out Things
First, I do not need to be twiddling my thumbs over my squat form so I practiced today. Iām totally fine keeping my most of my reps looking like this. I get more glute activation and it feels solid.
Just threw 315 on and started squatting. Couldāve done more but that wasnāt the point of doing this. Gonna write some squat cues in the notes of my phone and move along with training.
As far as the DW benching day goes. 200 lbs and 185 lbs for bench felt super heavy today. Iām assuming it was either the squats or from going too heavy on bench for the past couple of weeks. I didnāt finish the session, just figured my body needed a lil break.
With that being said I will be posting the next training scheme I will be running.
After DW I will be returning to 5/3/1. Admittedly, I am very indecisive on which to run at the moment. This is because I am trying to figure out which one would be harder since I would prefer to do the hardest template but, I cannot tell. (Kinda silly to be thinking like this lol).
Regardless the goal is to get used to doing 20 rep squats. Itāll be good preparation for Super Squats ( even tho those are breathing squats).
Random Thoughts:
Idk about anyone else but I have a strong desire to find out how far I can take my body with lifting. For example, fill out my entire body with muscle mass until I canāt add anymore and lift what a peak version of me should (squat,bench,deadlift,ohp).
I want to know my limits, could I ever reach a point in my life where Iām squatting 1000 lbs casually for Deep Water sets? I want to find out.
Do you mean for 10x10? Iām going to say no, haha, but decide to pursue it anyways and youāll get so far, man.
Greetings jshaving, how is your kid? You doing alright?
He is good. This will be his first Christmas where heās not passed out or nursing the entire time, so thatās cool. Still too young to understand whatās going on and everything, but itās just fun to have those moments with him.
Things are good. Enjoying my break. Some family came to town for the holidays and thatās always fun. Iām really looking forward to next semesterās classes - should have the opportunity to do some fun reading and research.
I watched a video of a podcast last night where they brought in a 10 y.o. Make-A-Wish girl who only has a month or so to live and my heart just broke seeing her. Started crying a little bit. So after that it just reminded me how amazing my life is and how incredibly thankful I am that my son, siblings, and all other children in my life are healthy and well. And that no matter what I go through, my life is still 100x better than most of the people in the world.
Went down a weird path there but I just mean to say that my life, in the grand scheme of things, is going great and Iām happy.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas!!
Salutations Le Punisher (@T3hPwnisher ) tips hat . When did you decide it was time to shave off body fat/felt you had enough muscle mass to look good after a cut?
Iām not thinking of cutting anytime soon but my idea is to reach an elite level of strength before cutting.
Up until very recently (like, months ago), gaining and losing was pretty organic for me. When the lifestyle could sustain it, I gained. When it couldnāt, I lost. The few times I underwent an intentional fat loss phase were either to make a weight class for a competition OR after a few ācome to Jesusā moments. The first one was after I had gained to 217lbs in my very early 20s off of a Dave Tate inspired junk food diet. I hit age 24 and just started feeling awful from it, so I cut down to 188lbs and ended up doing my first meet. After that, I bounced around from 190-202 until I pushed the weight up to 210+ to make that 275lb keg pressā¦and thatās when I got the high LDL reading the dropped 30+lbs.
Itās never been appearance driven. My personal opinion is that āmanlyā or āmasculineā is big and heavy first, then lean is ok. But if I had to pick Iād rather look like this
Than this
I really got stupidly lean for 2 reasons: 1 was for the sake of my health, and the second was just to take on another challenge in the absence of competition during COVID. And, of course, those are 2 opposing reasons: when you turn things into a competition they are no longer healthy. I ended up crashing my hormones because Iām ātoo goodā at not eating, haha.
I appreciate the write up Pwn. I suppose I will just have cross that bridge when I get there. But, for sure I want to look huge and bulky. I guess Ben pollack probably has my preferred physique.
I would like to look lean but with huge and dense muscles.
In that regard, I will say that anyone can get lean. The other part, not so much.
