Some days you’re happy to just PR and move on.

I’m really happy with the change in deadlift form. It doesn’t feel as strange to me any more (i.e. not as much “leg pressing” going on — but more on that shortly). I am really liking how that “step 3” where I push the chest out really gets my whole body tight and pre-loaded for the pull. I don’t think I’d be pulling as much — or as safely — if I didn’t have this. It really makes things solid.

That said, I did find as the weights went up today that I would think and cue myself hard with “pushing the floor away from myself”. While I may not move as much leg, there’s still a drive there, there’s still a push there.

That was especially helpful because yes, the 430# was pushing. 🙂 I’m happy with that rep PR. It’s a good PR in and of itself, and it’s solid and continual progress. Yes progress is slowing, but the graphed trend line continues upwards.

I opted to drop hypers and just superset the leg curls and crunches to get out of the gym. I felt good with the work done, so just a little polish and off I went.

As I think ahead to the next programming routine, I found something interesting. The spreadsheet I use to keep track of everything? A few of the sheets are based around some spreadsheets I found ages ago. One sheet has a nice matrix for figuring out the 5/3/1 sessions. I’ve used this for all my 5/3/1 work since I started. Well, with what I’m about to go into, instead of taking 90% of the 1RM for a training max, I am to take 85%. So I went to modify the spreadsheet to facilitate that calculation and I noticed — it was calculating 1RM differently. It was different than how RepCount does it; it’s even different from the 1RM esimator formula that Wendler himself gives. I forget the names, but there are a few diffent formulas for 1RM calculation. Here’s the thing. The one used by the spreadsheet? It calculated low. In general, that’s actually fine. One of Wendler’s principles is to “start too light” and this certainly worked out that way. However, with all the approaches in “Forever 5/3/1”, I think it’s more important to have things calculated closer to the way Wendler is drawing up numbers and percentages. Especially since it’s not a long road, but now with Wendler’s notions of “leader and anchor” templates and how it may just be 3-ish cycles before you’d recalc for another program well, I think it’s more important to have “more correct” calculations — whereas if it was just picking a template and going until you had to reset, then continuing to go again, being “too light” really wouldn’t matter so much.

I could be wrong, but I changed the formulas and I’ll see how it goes. Besides, in the future nothing stops me from using 85% and being “too light” to start with anyways.

• Deadlift
  • 185 x 5
  • 225 x 5
  • 270 x 3
  • 340 x 5
  • 385 x 3
  • 430 x 4 (4 rep PR)
  • 385 x 4
  • 340 x 4
• Leg Curls
  • 55 x 12
  • 55 x 12
  • 55 x 12
• Crunches (superset with the curls)
  • 25 x 15
  • 25 x 15
  • 25 x 12