Today was awesome.

“Week 1”

• 5 reps – Bench Press (working max: 205#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x85
  • 1x5x105
  • 1x3x125
  • 1x5x135 (work)
  • 1x5x155
  • 1x12x175
• Asst. #1 – Bench Press
  • 5 x 10 x 110
• Asst. #2 – 1 arm dumbbell row
  • 5 x 10 x 45
• Metcon – jump rope
  • 1 Tabata set – all single hop

Today was awesome. I have been having sleep issues and am actively working to fix them. Given I’ve had a couple nights of good rest, I think that’s playing in here, so I’ll take it.

As mentioned previously, I need to stop caring about “how much work to do”. That is, going back to prior workouts, seeing how I moved a particular weight to ensure that in this workout I do at least that and hopefully more. It really shouldn’t matter. Here’s the weight, just move it. I’ll move it however much I move it, and I can view progress later instead of pre-framing my head around a certain target. The only target should be to move the damn thing as much as possible, attack it, power through it, and strive to be awesome. 🙂

And so I did. A different mental outlook for this workout and sure enough… geez… 12 reps of 175? Last cycle I did 1x11x170 then 1x8x180. So 1x12x175? Yeah, I’d say that’s an improvement. Only reason I stopped at 12 was I knew I still had the 5 assistance sets to do and I didn’t want to tap myself out! I felt like I could have done a lot more.

So with that, the assistance work was strong and good. I’m working to have a slightly wider grip (index fingers on the hash rings instead of ring finger), and ensuring my elbows come in a little bit more. My shoulder seems happier, and who knows if this made enough of a leverage switch to account for the “strength boost”. The 110 was good, but I should go 115 next session.

Rows, another mental shift of not moving the weight or lifting it up, but thinking about pulling the elbow back. Focus on the tip of the elbow and moving it through space. That really helps to make the shoulder work. 45 is good, but I figure I’ll bump to 50 before too long.

And on rope… before I did the proper set I did some more work with the “running in place” stuff. I’d start with no rope, just moving my legs/feet in the air, getting my body aware of the motion, and figuring out what the pace of the rope should be. I did better, getting 4-8 skips before I’d tangle my feet up — same thing, sweeping my leg back with the rope and the foot gets caught. But that’s a slight improvement, so I’ll just keep at it. Meantime, I really jacked up the tempo of the regular work.

I need to bring up the tempo, because it was too slow to be any sort of intense-enough conditioning. See, I’ve beenn fluxing in my eating. At first I was trying to eat rather strict, lots of protein, minimizing carbs, and that wasn’t working too well. Then I spent too much time reading powerlifting stuff and a lot of them have the basic approach of eating like a bulldozer and just shoveling food. There’s a method to all that madness and it’s good, but the side-effect is… it’s making me fat. I’m not enjoying it. But this is just part of it… gotta experiment, swing one way, then the other, and find where things lie. And so, I’m refining again.

My goal right now is to take in about 35-ish grams of protein 6x a day. That’ll get me about 210g and that’s a reasonable number. I’m also not going to totally turn myself off to carbs but be a little more smart about when I ingest them. For instance, I work out in the morning so first thing upon rising, have some protein and some carbs so I can fuel the workout. When I return from the workout, more protein and carbs. Then throughout the rest of the day, try to stay off the carbs in terms of “heavier” stuff like pasta or rice or whatever, but do have lots of veggies and other such things. This is basically where I was in terms of diet some time ago, but I got a little to caught in the powerlifting stuff and need to swing back. It’s not so much that I’m trying to lose fat (tho that’d be nice), but more that I don’t need to be eating so much that I gain fat. Yes not shoveling could mean strength gains are slower, but heck, it’s not like Wendler 5/3/1 at this stage of the game for me is some fast-gaining program. So I think it’ll work.

Frankly, I have also thought about trying to just lose the fat, like trying to drop 20# and specifically target that endeavor for a while. I’m not sure tho, because I’m not at a point where I want to risk the strength gains. But, we’ll see. The bottom line seems to be finding the line where my body gets just what it needs, and no more.

Oh, another note. My “working max” went up 10# from last cycle. Generally the program approach is 5# on bench. The thing is, when I plugged a 5# jump into my spreadsheet, the math worked out such that none of my actual lift amounts changed! It was just an odd thing about the math and rounding off to 5# plates. So jumping up 10# in the working max allowed all the warmup/work lifts to go up 5#. So, there we go. I only went up 10# this cycle due to the math, which actually works out to a 5# jump. Odd how that was, but there we go.