Lots of deadlifting lets you know just what muscles are truly involved in the motion. 🙂

• 5/3/1 – Deadlift (training max 265#)

• Warmup

• 1x5x105
• 1x5x135
• 1x3x160

Work

• 1x5x175
• 1x5x200
• 1x7x230

Asst. #1 – Deadlift

• 5x10x95

Asst. #2 – Hanging leg raises

• 5x5xbw

Jump rope – 1 Tabita set.

Commentary

The nice thing about tracking in a spreadsheet is it’s easy to enter data and run some statistics. Today’s deadlift workset volume was 3485. The perspective? My last deadlift workout on the Practical Programming Novice program (last week), had a work set volume of 120 and a total (including warmups) volume of 2970. So my volume of deadlifting today was WAY higher than I’ve ever done… and that’s just the workset. Add in the warmup, then the 5 sets of deadlifting as assistance work and wow… that’s a lot of deadlifting. Yes, you become very aware of just what muscles are involved in deadlifting. 🙂

Note that my warmup didn’t start like other routines, with an empty bar. There’s no point in that with the deadlift given I need the bar off the ground to get started. Note as well that I did only 7 reps on the last work set. I felt I could have done more, certainly 8 and maybe 9, but I remembered how things went on Monday’s Press workout… just how humbling the assistance sets can be. I knew this deadlift routine was going to be massively more volume than before, so I felt better to be conservative and not push myself too hard.

On the hanging leg raises, Wendler wants you to do them with straight legs so your feet end up over the bar, like this. I can’t do that, not without a LOT of cheating and that’d just defeat the purpose, even if I could do it with the cheating. So instead, I’m doing it with bent knees, rolling my body up to get my knees to touch my shoulders, like this. But even then, I could only get up so far. If my head/arms were at 12 o’clock, my legs down at 6, and my eyes looking forward to 3, then my knees generally only got to the 2 o’clock point *sigh*. Well, that’s why I’m in the gym… to acknowledge my weaknesses and to get stronger, right? 🙂  Put the ego in the back seat and just do it… that’s the only way to get better. I’m trying to be strict, but I fear I may not overcome my sticking point that way… if the top portion is weak, it needs to be worked, and on bodyweight exercises how else can you do it? So… I’m going to add a slight kip, not so much that momentum moves me through it, but just enough to try to overcome the sticking point so my muscles have to get active and involved… plus if it puts me over the line, then even if my muscles don’t get the concentric benefit as much due to the kip, at least a larger range of motion will get the eccentric. I’ll stick with 5×5 on these until I can do them no sweat…. build up the strength.

On the rope jumping, suddenly I was more coordinated today! I didn’t make it all the way to the end without a stumble, but I probably stumbled about 50% less than I have been. That’s great! I’m just working to take it slow and easy to get the coordination down (get about 25-ish hops per 20 second period)… that slow is smooth, smooth is fast thing, right?

I realize that I really do like deadlifting. But that said… after all this volume today? I suspect I’m going to be mighty sore tomorrow. 🙂

To play on Dickens, it was the best of workouts, it was the worst of workouts. 🙂

I’m going to try another way of notating my workout, because WordPress.com’s editor (still) has bugs that have made editing a pain.

• 5/3/1 – Press (training max: 110#)

• Warmup

• 2x5x45
• 1x5x45
• 1x5x55
• 1x3x65
• Work

• 1x5x70
• 1x5x85
• 1x5x100
• Asst. #1 – Press

• 5x10x45
• Asst. #2 – Chin-ups

• set 1 – almost got 1 chin, 3 negatives.
• sets 2-5 – 3 negatives
• Metcon – Jump rope

• 1 Tabata set – 20 sec jump, 10 sec rest, 8x. First 5 sets were “double hop”, last 3 were single hop (faster).

Commentary

As you can see, I changed programs. Today marks my first day of following the Wendler 5/3/1 program, with the “Boring But Big” set of assistance work. That means I’m going to be doing 2 exercises per workout, tho one of those exercises will be done in two different ways. Again, I opted for this route because it’s simpler, it’s a good way to start out, it’ll give me more reps with the core exercises to help with my CNS conditioning. I also am striving for minimal rest between sets. Not only does that help me get out of the gym faster, but I’m trying to bump up my conditioning to help with some fat burn. Thus, rest between sets will vary. During the 5/3/1 warmups, just do what I need to change plates. During 5/3/1 work, at least 2 minutes but more if needed. During the assistance #1, try to keep weight light and the rest about 30-60 seconds.

And we’ll see where it goes.

How was this the best workout? I didn’t have to squat. 😉  Yeah, I burned out on squatting, so it felt good to not have to do it. I won’t do my first squat workout until next Monday, and I will actually look forward to that workout. But for now, the change is good and welcomed. I don’t feel totally exhausted and like my entire body is drained. It was nice to just get in, focus, and get out. I really liked it.

How was it worst? Well, to be fair it really wasn’t bad… just that while I didn’t totally kill myself, I did totally kill parts of myself. 🙂  Wendler says for warmups to just do 1x5x40%, 1x5x50%, 1x3x60%. I opted to add in 2×5 of empty bar because that gives me more form practice, plus I really felt it helped to wake me up and get me in the groove… especially with squats. I may not do that with deadlift, but everything else I will. Things felt kinda easy, but boy… when you hit that last set of the work sets and have to push out as many reps as you can — you can see I got 10 — that gets you. Especially true when I’m not resting 5 minutes between sets.

I just did something. In my spreadsheet, it does a 1RM calculation using this formula: =(C29)/(1.0278-(0.0278*D29))  where C29 is my current max weight and D29 is the number of reps you did at that weight. If I plug in my working max of 110@5 reps it calculates my 1RM at 124#. If I plug in what I just did as 95@10 reps, 1RM calculates at 127#. All theoretical, but interesting.

Then I moved into doing press for assistance work. Wendler says to start out way light, like 30%-40%. In general I want to do 30% so I can keep the rest periods low, but since the bar is 45# I had to go with 40%. Oh man…. that first set is easy but you think yeah, this might be hard by the last set/rep. By the 3rd set I was starting to lose form just to ensure I could get the 10 reps out. I then had to move from 30 seconds of rest to 60 seconds so I could finish out 10 reps per set. Damn! Yeah, 45# is fine as a workload here, tho I’ll probably space it to 60 seconds rest and pace myself a little more.

Chinups. I tried doing one, pure dead-hang, no swing, no kip, nothing. I was almost there but not quite. Oh well, I’ll keep working on it. So, I opted to just do 5 sets of 3 reps of pure negatives. That was intense. Towards the end I was literally dropping, struggling to hold myself up so the negative could last for a full 5 second count.  I also am trying to hold myself up at first. That is, as soon as my leg leaves the bench, don’t start immediately dropping but hold up there, even for a moment. As I went on and was getting more tired, I could tell that yes, my weak point is right at the top of the movement, those last few inches. I might try a “flexed arm hang” as another exercise in this to help focus on the part of the motion. But I think what that will be instead will be just ensuring that once my leg leaves the bench, that I hold for a count of 1 (at least) so there’s no sudden drop of a few inches, and slowly go down from there. Just focus on that area. I will get there!

Then jump rope. I felt good the first couple sets doing double-hops, but I kept getting tangled up. Ugh. So the last few sets I did as just a pure single hop… the rope speed went up, and I was a lot more successful at jumping and not getting tangled. Of course the trade-off was this was MUCH more intense, much more difficult, much more exhausting. It hurt. 🙂  But that’s what I want. It’s going to hurt on squat days (maybe deadlift days too), but I’ll just keep going — that’s how the body will adapt and grow stronger.

So, I like. It’s only one day but if this is any indication it’s going to be welcome and fun. I won’t totally kill my body, but I will totally kill part of it. We’ll see where this goes!