Week 3, and it’s rolling pretty well.

I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning (melatonin, perhaps) but off I went. Brain didn’t wanna, but body felt really good.

Again, I’m trying to keep my volume conservative — that I only rate a 1 if things were off the charts good; but if it felt “as expected”, leave it be. Today did feel really awesome, but I still rated it a 1 because again, I am striving to see if I can do more with less.

The squat warm-ups were hard, even 135. But when I hit 290, things rolled quite well. I felt good. I noticed I wasn’t as tight as I could be, in my upper body. But I think it’s because I’m taking a different approach to the descent. It really solidified a few weeks ago watching Kevin Oak squat 832 @ 242 for a new ATWR. If you watch it, his descent is just like… I’m going down. He’s tight, then it’s like a controlled drop of the bar, not like a squat descent. It’s hard to describe, but just watch how that descent looks different from a lot of other squat descents. I’ve found myself taking this mental approach to the descent, and it’s been good. The bar path feels better, the body feels better. There’s really not a lot of movement, nor even extraneous muscle tension — just “control drop” the bar and manage that, then hit depth and come out. Again, hard to describe, but it is different and feels good.

But it’s still difficult for me to judge where I am. I mean, when starting this cycle I was to program it with 285 as a 5RM. But today here I am hitting 290 for 5 with at least a couple left in the tank. I would thimk that, if 285 was the 5RM that last week (when I did 285) I should have gotten 3-4 (if I stop 2/fail) but I got 5. Then today, 290 and hitting 5 for more sets and still some in the tank. Am I stronger? Did I start too light? Is my body just remembering how to squat and it’s neural adaptations? I really don’t know. But there’s never harm in starting light. I look forward to how the next cycle will be set and how it will go as I think that will be more indicative.

Fronts went well. Same weight and sets, but an additional rep per set, which is great especially after the main work went up too. And here I find that the same approach of “controlled drop” really helps at keeping the torso upright.

Triples on the deadlift. While all the squat work got 3 minutes between sets, the deadlifts and everything else got 1-2 minutes of rest. Just boom boom boom, no big deal.

Feeling good.

RP Powerlifting, Strength Cycle, week 3

• Squat (low bar)
  • bar x 10
  • 135 x 5
  • 225 x 5
  • 265 x 3
  • 290 x 5
  • 290 x 5
  • 290 x 5
  • 290 x 4
• Front Squat
  • 170 x 8
  • 170 x 8
  • 170 x 8
• Competition Deadlift
  • 135 x 3
  • 225 x 3
  • 275 x 3
  • 275 x 3
  • 275 x 3
• Stair Calves
  • 65 x 10
  • 65 x 10
  • 65 x 10
• Reaching Situps
  • 20 x 12
  • 20 x 12
  • 20 x 12