This marks the 6th cycle since reset, so it makes sense that things are starting to get heavy and rep PRs aren’t going to come as easy. For sure that didn’t happen today.

Today focused on 2 cues: 1. being tight, especially in my upper back, arms, etc. 2. ensuring I break parallel. The first is pretty easy, just be tight tight tight. I notice that as I go along I start to lose that upper back tightness. Even if I take a moment at the top to breathe and tighten up, do so. It helps.

The other is because it’s getting heavy. A little trepidation, a desire to make reps, and on video I’ve seen myself cut some reps short on the top sets. It’s maybe just an inch short, but it’s still short. So, sink it deep. As a result, I only hit required reps today. I felt like a 6th would have been possible but a grinder, and that’s not what we want. I’d rather have the 5 sinking it than more and not. My prior best with 305 was 6 (set back at the end of March), and while today was less, I’m pretty sure today’s reps were of higher quality. I’ll take it.

Is this time for a reset? Not yet, as it’s just one point. But for sure we’ll see how the rest of this cycle goes and if it’s time it’s time. One thought is if I do reset I may just do the “2-3 steps back” plan, where instead of recalculating max I just drop back a couple cycles and pick up from there. TBD.

Pause squats remain a good thing tho, because I have to get down into the hole, be tight all the way around, and hold it. They are really helping me achieve better reps and being solid out of the hole. I’m very happy to be doing them and want to continue with them for a while as my primary supplemental work.

Oh, backing up. I won’t be keeping official track of it, but I am adding in more to my warm-up. Again, “5/3/1 Forever” type stuff, with some jumping jacks, mountain climbers, and some sort of jump. Today’s jump was to just squat down and explode up to try to touch the ceiling. Nothing major, but enough to get things moving. Over time as my body adjusts to this work, I’ll add either more reps or maybe 1-2 more circuits of this.

• Squats
  • bar x whatever
  • 145 x 5
  • 180 x 5
  • 215 x 3
  • 235 x 5
  • 270 x 5
  • 305 x 5
• Pause Squat
  • 235 x 5
  • 235 x 5
  • 235 x 5
• Split Squats
  • BW x 15
  • BW x 15
  • BW x 15
• Twisting Crunches
  • BW x 20
  • BW x 15
  • BW x 10