End the deload week with Press.

It went quite well. One thing I’ve recently added is wearing my belt when I press. In the past I did this and it wasn’t helping. But now with my new setup, I’m actually finding it working well. In fact, today I found that it helped me build up internal pressure more and I was able to stave off the dizzies much easier during my setup ritual. All worked quite nice.

Again, video for those curious.

On video, I suspect I won’t do it again for a while. Some of the form questions I had were answered and no longer a mystery to me. I did share the videos with a trainer at my day job and received some useful feedback that I’ll start to incorporate (but mostly was “looks good”). It’s just too annoying to take the video. It takes time, it’s distracting, it requires the camera to be far enough away that it can take up space from other gym patrons. And since I have just the 1 device, I have to either record video OR listen to music — and I want my music. Not just because good music, but it drowns out the constant chatter around me. I like being in my bubble. 😉

Anyways, things were fine.

Deload is done.

Next week starts cycle 3 of this graner notion. In terms of “5/3/1 Forever” lingo, this will be an anchor cycle. I’m also trying to take some cues from the periodization stuff, so intensity is going up, so reps and volume are going to go down a bit.

Looking forward to seeing how it goes. I expect it’ll be a gut-check too, more mental hurdles to overcome as I’ll be doing 3/5/1 with PR sets and Jokers. It’s the whole “Jokers after a PR set” that gets to me. On paper tho, it seems do-able. Either way, the challenge will be good for me.

5/3/1 (Based on: Forever, BBB, 5’s PRO)

• Press
  • bar x 5
  • 70 x 5
  • 90 x 5
  • 110 x 3
  • 125 x 5
  • 145 x 3
  • 160 x 1
  • 180 x 1
  • 90 x 10
  • 90 x 10
• Bent-over Lateral Raises (superset with press warm-up sets)
  • 15e x 15
  • 15e x 15
  • 15e x 15
  • 15e x 15
• Normal-grip Pulldowns (superset with press work sets)
  • 140 x 12
  • 140 x 12
  • 140 x 12
• Barbell Rows (superset with press FSL sets)
  • 165 x 8
  • 165 x 8
• Lying Triceps Extensions
  • 70 x 12
• Bike
  • 20 minutes