Today was different – unlike anything before.

Sleep hasn’t been great lately, so I’m getting run down – not recovering well from anything. Working on it, but in the meantime, I just felt blah going into the gym this morning.

I’ve been recently thinking that I need to wave back on my squats. I’ve been pushing pretty hard, and you just can’t do that forever. I figured if I was going to try some basebuilding for the next some weeks, do that here too. I didn’t at first, but with the toll things are taking, sure.

I figure my true 1RM right now is 365, given how 335 moves, how my other sets go, calculations, etc.. So that means a training max of about 325. Then a basebuilding squat model 1 works up to 75% for a single, then 5×5 @ 60% moving things as fast as possible – C.A.T..

I mis-remembered and only worked up to 70% (oops). But no biggie. I then did my work sets. I felt like 195 was too low ,but when you’re trying to move that weight as fast as possible, that’s actually a good amount of work. Thing is, afterwards I didn’t feel dead. In fact, I felt really good — or as Paul Carter likes to say “feeling lathered up”. And that I did, so I did something I’ve never done before: fatigue singles. It’s detailed in Paul’s “Basebuilding” eBook. I’ve never done it before because I just haven’t had a time where I’ve felt like it – the feeling has just never come over me before. But after I finished the work sets, I was actually feeling pretty good. So I did some fatigue singles per percentages. That felt great! I got some strain in, and I could see how I felt doing heavier singles in a fatigued state.

Granted, one isn’t to do the over-warmup then fatigue — not as a plan, really. But this just happened. I wasn’t feeling great. I opted to ONLY squat today so as to not dig my fatigue/recovery hole any deeper. And then after work sets I felt so good, sure why not.

All in all, pretty glad I did this. I feel worked, but not worn. I’ll probably stay here for a while — at least for the remaining 3-4 weeks I plan on doing for Basebuilding.

Oh – for some reason I forgot to bring my belt (yeah, that’s where my head isn’t at!). The gym has a few belts, mostly the tapered silly kind. But there’s one that’s old but passable as a proper belt. It’s double-pronged (ugh), but the hardest part was it was too small for me. I had to really suck in to get to the first hole! I only used the belt on the fatigue singles, but geez. That’ll learn me to not forget my belt.

• Squat
  • bar x 5
  • 135 x 5
  • 165 x 4
  • 195 x 3
  • 205 x 2
  • 225 x 1
  • 195 x 5
  • 195 x 5
  • 195 x 5
  • 195 x 5
  • 195 x 5
  • 225 x 1
  • 265 x 1
  • 295 x 1