Not a good day.

Based upon Paul Carter’s LRB-365 and Base Building

• Incline Press
  • 45 x 5
  • 45 x 5
  • 110 x 5
  • 130 x 4
  • 150 x 3
  • 180 x 2
  • 200 x 1
  • 155 x 12
  • 155 x 5
• DB Bench Press
  • 60e x 10
  • 60e x 10
  • 60e x 8
• BB Upright Row
  • 60 x 15
  • 60 x 15
  • 60 x 15
• 20 minutes elliptical

Not one of my better days.

First, while I normally do inclines on the dedicated incline bench, today I opted to use one of the portable benches and put it inside the half-rack. Reason is, next week I’m going to try to establish more proper every day maxes on incline bench and squat. I’ll discuss this more below. So I wanted to get myself in the rack and get one run through that to find positioning and so on. I also opted to wear my belt today just to see how it went.

I’m not sure what happened, or rather, why it happened.

When I did the 200, I got that weird lose-off-vision-dizzy feeling again. It was actually kinda scary today, more so than usual. I haven’t experienced this feeling in a LONG time, but it really hit me hard today during the 200 set. Why? I don’t know. Maybe the belt constriction? Maybe I just got my breath wrong? The way the bench and pegs were, it was great because I didn’t have to do a half-press to get started, it was almost perfectly positioned, but yet it was maybe just a hair too far away and having to “shrug up” to unrack was too much? I just don’t know… but it was enough to cause that dizzy/loss problem and it wasn’t good. I did manage to crank out the 1 rep, but still…. unsettling.

I don’t know what it was then, but that was “it” for me. The rep sets were crappy, and I just felt like today needed to become a “jack shit” day. I realized I’ve been running this program for 12 weeks straight. Between that, poor sleep as of late, work/life stress… well, I think my body is run down enough because I am not feeling it. I think it’s time for a deload. But I was planning on that anyways.

I didn’t feel like totally cashing it in tho. I did a few other sets of things, then that was that.

Here’s the longer-term.

I’ve been working Paul’s program here, which is based off his “mass building” template in his “Basebuilding” eBook. I’m fine with continuing this, but I just picked numbers and have been working those same numbers for a while, just to get me back into the groove. I want to find my max on the incline press and squat, then reprogram the template using his percentages and those numbers. I think most everything else is pretty close, or close enough, so I don’t need to do much adjustment, but I do want to do some because when I made some rough guesses and ran the numbers, I’m way off and would rather see how running things more closely to his prescribed program will go.

So this week? I just keep going as normal. If the rest of the week turns into the same sort of “jack shit” then it does. I’m OK with this.

Next week Monday I test my incline press to find my new max. I may or may not do assistance work afterwards, just depends. Wednesday I will test squat. Friday will be off.

Then I take a full week off. My focus will be on rest, getting as much sleep as possible. This will dovetail with some other life things just nicely.

Then I will come back with new numbers, doing this same program tho. I’ll stick with it for at least 6 weeks. After those 6, I’ll see. I may take a week off then do another 6. Just have to see how things go. But I am looking then at transitioning to trying Paul’s basebuilding templates, then after that for about 9-10 weeks doing his Strong-15 short cycle for a little strength peak. After that? Probably back to mass building. We’ll see tho. It’s mostly experimenting and learning at this point.