I believe I’ve broken through my barrier.

“Week 3”

• 5/3/1 – Squat (working max: 250#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x100
  • 1x5x125
  • 1x3x150
  • 1x5x190 (work)
  • 1x3x215
  • 1x5x240 (PR)
• Asst. #1 – Leg Press
  • 5 x 10 x 275
• Asst. #2 – Leg Curls
  • 5 x 10 x 80
• GPP – Elliptical
  • Tabata style (20 sec. 150-ish strides per min., 10 sec. 100-ish strides per min)
  • 2 minutes slow (warmup)
  • 1 Tabata set
  • 2 minutes slow (cooldown)
• DeFranco Agile 8

Setting a squat PR today of 1x5x240 may not seem like a huge PR, but it is. For far too long I’ve been hovering with this 230# issue. Worked up to it doing the SS/PPNP program but form was horrible so I reset. Shortly after resetting I switched to the Wendler 5/3/1 program, which is much slower progress. Then during this I opted to hang around that level for a while while I changed around my GPP. But finally, everything is coming together and I’ve officially blown through that 230 barrier and setbacks and did 240 today. Felt pretty good too! Onwards.

On leg presses, I did some reading up on the range of motion one should use. There doesn’t seem to be any hard limits here, but the big point stressed is to keep your (lower) back in contact with the backrest. So today I played around with backrest settings to find what worked best for me (all the way down, lowest setting). Repositioned my feet slightly to be closer to my squat stance, and then the range of motion isn’t all the way touching the bottom stops/guards, but almost. It’s more that I’m getting my legs and thighs into the same position as the bottom of the squat, then pressing out explosively, again working to replicate my squat. The whole time, keeping focus on my lower back to ensure nothing curls up. If I’m not careful, in the lower position I can get a curl, but it’s slight. So I just have to keep things focused to keep the arch in my back. Good things. I reckon next cycle I’ll go to 315 and that’ll probably hold me for a little while.

On leg curls, today I just opted to up the weight 5# to 80 because of the lack of additional stress from switching to leg press. That worked. I’ll stick with this during next week’s deload and then go to 85 the week after.

I’ve been thinking about the elliptical stuff. I think the incline setting of “10” is good. I might up the resistance level just slightly to more closely replicate the real life resistance I’d feel running up a hill. “12” is a close setting but not quite. Maybe 14. But once I find myself in the right groove, I decided the way to increase the work is to just increase the workload. Instead of doing 8 “reps”, I’ll work my way up to say 15. I think that may do more for me than just making the resistance higher.

All in all, feeling good. Looking forward to next week’s deload.