I felt out of groove today, but I’m not sure if it was just the day or the minor change.

The minor change was my deadlift setup. Long ago my setup put my feet and the bar at “the 3rd eyelet” on my shoes. Then some time ago I moved it to the 4th as that felt “more correct” to have the bar in so closer. But today for some reason when I set the bar down after the last rep of the first set, I opted to pause and look down at my feet to see where the bar was — it was at the 2nd eyelet. So I kept working from there. The change was the bar didn’t start as close to my body, but it did go straight up instead of a little out then up (gravity recentering things once the bar broke ground). I think that’s better, but at the heavier weights it felt more like I was starting out of balance, since the bar was a little away from me.

I’ll just keep playing with it.

On hypers, I played around with foot angle. So with my new approach it has the feet pointing outwards at around 45º. For sure I feel it more in my glutes than my hams. I tried straight, and I also tried pointing my feet inwards as much as I could. The more inwards things went, the more I felt it in my hams. Whatever I did, of course both glutes and hams were working, but it was interesting to see how the foot angle did play a part.

Another play around was the leg curls. In the past I’ve tried to keep my feet loose, and then found when things got tougher my body naturally wanted to flex my foot, so I tried to shy away from that because I didn’t want things to become easier. Well, watching a video the other day, apparently flexing the foot takes the calves out of it, so I tried that today. Of course, I was stronger. So… could it be that I’ve been more dealing with my calves and they’ve been a weak point and holding things back on working my hamstrings? Could be. I’m going to keep playing with this as well.

• Deadlift
  • 170 x 5
  • 215 x 5
  • 260 x 3
  • 280 x 5
  • 325 x 5
  • 365 x 8 (8 rep PR)
  • 325 x 7
  • 280 x 10
• Hyperextensions
  • BW x 15
  • BW x 15
  • BW x 15
  • BW x 15
• Leg Curls
  • 40 x 12
  • 40 x 12
  • 40 x 12