To deadlift again.

I really miss deadlifting, and I’d reason it’s a subtle reason I’m happy to be going back to 5/3/1. Today was pretty light, but it was good. Since I’ve been away for so long, my form is rusty and I really felt it today. I felt very “forward”, with my weight forward, almost more on the balls of my feet than the mid-foot. I had to work to find my groove again. Things improved towards the end, but it’ll probably be another week or two before I feel really dialed back in. Still, that things felt VERY light today was good because I could focus more on getting back into it. I worked up to 10 reps and just capped it — leave it in the tank (tho this was more than 1-2 in the tank; but hey, start very light right?)

Fronts were fine.

Good mornings… I think I hate them because I’m just not sure I’m doing it all right. I just don’t feel anything, other than I’m going to fall over. 😉 That said, my lower back was blown up from the deadlifts and fronts, so I dropped the weight a bit and really tried to work on form. I found towards the end I was doing better at keeping my torso in a good position (I was “slouching”, if you will). That seemed to help. So like just about everything today, too light, but focus on form improvement. So hey, not a bad thing.

As for the hip thrusts, or maybe it’s glute bridges. Whatever — I’m not putting a barbell on my hips, I’m not exploding upwards. I’m trying to find a way to get some hip extension work for my hamstrings, since I have no glute-ham-raise equipment. And I’m sorry, but every time I read about “activing the glutes”, I get some image of “Wonder Twin Powers… activate!” in my head, and the image just goes south from there. 🙂 So I did these, and sure, if I focused on the muscle I could actually feel it more in my glutes, which was pretty cool. And I really do want to keep some sort of bodyweight and unilateral movement around (a Paul Carter holdover). Today was 2-feet on the ground, but I saw this:

and it’s what I’m going to work my way up to. I’ll probably do the normal 2-feet on the ground glute bridges type movement next week as well, just to ensure I’m getting it right with the muscle focus, but I’ll work towards doing the 1-legged raised ones and see how it goes. Who knows — this might wind up being a failure and I find something else to do. But I’m trying it. Hell, I might even go back to long-stride lunges or split squats.

Anyways, today was good.

5/3/1 Simplest Strength Template

• Deadlift
  • 135 x 5
  • 160 x 5
  • 190 x 3
  • 210 x 5
  • 240 x 5
  • 270 x 10
• Front Squat
  • 110 x 10
  • 130 x 10
  • 155 x 10
• Good Morning
  • 95 x 10
  • 95 x 10
  • 95 x 10
• Hip Thrust (really, glute bridges)
  • BW x 20
  • BW x 20
  • BW x 20
• Crunches
  • BW x 10
  • BW x 10
  • BW x 15