Since the squats didn’t kill me, I reckon they made me stronger.

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 15, week 2

• 3 reps – Squat (working max: 280#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x115
  • 1x5x140
  • 1x3x170
  • 1x3x200 (work)
  • 1x3x225
  • 1x6x255 (rep PR)
• Asst. #1 – Squat
  • 1 x 6 x 225
  • 1 x 8 x 185
  • 1 x 6 x 185
  • 1 x 10 x 135
  • 1 x 8 x 135
• Asst. #2A – Pulldown Abs
  • 5 x 15 x 120
• Asst. #2B – Other stuff….
  • Figured my glutes and hams need some additional work… more below

Today felt really strong, really good. Yeah… I still cannot say squats are my favorite movement, but I certainly don’t hate them so much any more — and I don’t fear them so much either. I just got under the bar and moved that fucking weight. My technique is improving, and while I still waver, I’m happy at my progress. Heck… while 255 cetainly isn’t the most I’ve squatted, I never have done 255 for 6 reps. And I’ll tell you, that 5th rep was hard and normally I would have stopped, but I knew I needed 6 to make a PR and I pushed… I yelled… I’m glad the gym was empty. 🙂 What’s the worst? I drop the bar on the rack… oh well. But it didn’t happen, and while it wasn’t the prettiest squat, I was determined to get it and did. I felt good.

I don’t know if it’s fixing my diet to eat more/better… or that I’m back on 3x week and getting a better training effect via the supercompensation curve. But whatever. That was good.

Even the assistance squats were killing me and tough. Good. But I pressed on as hard as I could.

That said, I called an audible. I don’t think doing the chins every single workout is going to be right for me. I think it’ll overtax me and I’m already pushing pretty hard here. Instead, I think I need to just do the chins on my bench press and press days, and instead pick up something else to fix my squat and deadlift issues. The chins “every day” was fine during 2x workout, but I had doubts if it was right for the 3x workouts.

See, I notice my squat problem is I get down to parallel, I can get out of the hole, but then about 1/2-way-ish up I stall. I’ve found some arm drive (i.e. just press the bar up like I’m trying to do a behind-the-neck military press) does help a lot to get over that hump. But what does that tell me is my weak point? There’s an old EliteFTS article that gives a very simple look at determining weak points and how to deal with it. According to that, my weak point is hips/glues, and to fix it I need to “Develop accelerative strength, prolong rate of force production”. Hrm…. I need to read up on that. I’ve been reading all this Dave Tate and Louie Simmons “Westside” stuff and so my brain is thinking about “dynamic day” or using bands, but I really don’t want to go full Westside; I like 5/3/1 and would like to stay with it, so what can I do to overcome it?

So today, I ended up doing some hyperextensions and leg curls to finish things out… just rep out until I couldn’t move the weight (or my body, in the case of the hypers). But I’m not sure if I’ll use precisely those. I’m sure the ideal movement would be glute-ham raises, but such a bench is lacking at my gym, and doing them from the floor apparently isn’t quite the same. So… I dunno. Going to read and research.

Updated: Hrm. Pull-throughs might work. Sure, GHR’s seem to be the best, but need special equipment. So looking at the short-list of other recommended exercises for glutes and hams vs. what equipment I have… it’s either good mornings or pull-throughs. I think I might give pull-throughs a try.