Glute activation for the win!

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 26, week 1

• Work Set – Deadlift (working max: 410#)
  • 165 x 5
  • 210 x 5
  • 250 x 3
  • 270 x 5
  • 310 x 6
  • 355 x 6
  • 270 x 8
  • 270 x 6
  • 270 x 4
• Standing Calf Raises
  • Don’t remember x 10 x 3
• Foam Rolling

Have family obligations today, so it was in the gym and back out. Just work up, then do some “first-set-last-set”, and that was that. Well, I threw in some standing calf raises too… I’m going to start doing them because it’s evident the ratio of upper leg to lower leg is widening, and I need to bring up my calves before I start looking too funny. Might help with some foot issues I’ve been having too. I haven’t figured out exactly what I’ll do, but there’s both standing and seated machines at the gym, so I will probably do one on squat day and the other on deadlift day. Right now, just doing them light for not much, so I can get stretched and get my calves used to things so they won’t cramp up.

Anyways, the deadlifting went fine. Really working on glute activation. One thing that’s helping? I fixed my stance. I realized I had slowly widened my stance (I pull conventional). Nothing near sumo of course, but certainly wide enough that if you looked at me straight on you’d say my legs were at an angle. This then forced my arms to hang at an angle instead of straight down. This affected my pull. Narrow the stance, and my arms now go straight down. Makes a difference. It feels weird to me because I usually stand with a wider stance, so going this narrow feels unbalanced and like I’ll fall over at any moment, but it works better for pulling I can tell.

Grip is failing me… that’s why I started losing reps on the f-s-l-s at the end… grip was the weak point. I was working hard on “clenching” the bar (my latest cue to focus on), but of course, it’s just going to take time to bring things up. But I wasn’t going to go mixed grip; I want to stick with double-over as much as possible to bring the grip back up.