This was a pretty good day. Set more rep PR’s.

It’s also testimony that even if you don’t feel like going, you go. This is the difference between motivation and discipline. I still don’t find myself as disciplined as I want to be, but I am better than I was before — and here’s a place it manifests. I’m feeling run down, I know I could use a break, but I go. The lifts all felt heavy, each one sowed a seed of doubt if I could hit the weight of the next set — but I know I can, so I set the doubt aside, and I set a PR.

Just keep going.

It’s not about “feeling like it”. It’s about wanting results and doing what it takes to achieve them, even if you don’t feel like it — you do feel like achieving your goals, don’t you?

I worked up to 420. Looked at my history and saw that 5 reps would make an all time rep PR – so that was my goal. Hitting it was heavy but actually went quite well — I felt like I could have done at least 2 more reps, but I hit my goal so I shut it down.

Then I saw that if I did 440 for 2, that’d also be a rep PR at that weight. So I did that. I thought about continuing with the Jokers, but no — I said this week was just 1 Joker set for a single, or a double if things were really humming.

All in all, went well. Looking at trends (hooray for graphs and stats in RepCount!), everything continues to go up and progress well. I’m happy.

Belt squats are finding a groove. Let the belt hang pretty much straight down, heels shoulder width apart, toes pointed slightly out — basically be comfortably positioned. Curl the toes up to ensure weight is back on the heels. Squat deeper than parallel, and go. It’s feeling good, so I’m just going to stay here and keep upping the weight to see where it gets me. Still not 100% sure if it’s truly benefiting me, but now that I’m finding a groove with the movement I want to keep going to see where it takes me.

Everything else was what it was, just assistance work.

That all said, thinking ahead:

Next week is deload. I’m going to take it easy. I might work up to a bit of work but nothing big. I’ll cut assistance work back, but I also want to experiment. Mostly the lower body days I want to experiment. I want to see about going with either front squats or pause squats instead of leg presses, tho I would then keep leg presses towards higher reps and ditch leg extensions. I also want something different for my hamstrings. I’d like to ditch the leg curls and see if the reverse hyper is going to work for me. I have some weird lower-back/leg issues that cause me some serious discomfort at times – last time I tried the reverse hyper it wasn’t good. BUT, I’d like to see if 1-leg might be workable, so I’m going to do some experimenting next week to see. If it works, I’ll go that route and see where it takes me. If it all fails, I’ll probably do something like stiff-leg deadlifts.

So it’s looking like this, at least for the 6 weeks after deload:

• Traditional 5/3/1, with that weekly progress and PR sets (not AMRAP, but PR)
• 6-week cycle
• Squat supplemental may be front squats or pause squats, probably 3×3 or 3×5 depending
• Deadlift supplemental depends: if I can do reverse hypers the belt squats are supplemental and reverse hypers accessory; if I can’t, then probably stiff-legs for supplemental and belt squats for accessory
• Bench supplemental will likely remain more benching tho not the 5×5 FSL approach – I’m thinking more “hypertrophy” type, probably picking something out of Beyond 5/3/1. TBD
• Press supplemental, same.
• Accessory work will remain mostly the same tho maybe some light variations. For example, change my pulldown grip; regular DB rows instead of Krocs, cable or DB upright rows instead of BB, etc. Mostly the same, just variations.

5/3/1 (3rd cycle, anchor, 3/5/1, PR, Jokers, FSL; modified for knee rehab)

• Deadlift
  • 185 x 5
  • 225 x 5
  • 265 x 3
  • 335 x 5
  • 380 x 3
  • 420 x 5 (rep PR!)
  • 440 x 2 (Joker, & rep PR!)
• Band Pullaparts (superset with deadlift warmups and work)
  • Not tracked
• Belt Squats
  • 135 x 12
  • 135 x 12
  • 135 x 12
• Seated Leg Curls
  • 125 x 12
  • 125 x 10
  • 125 x 9
• Upright rows
  • 125 x 12
  • 125 x 12
  • 125 x 10
• 1-arm supinating cable curls
  • 35 x 12e
  • 35 x 12e
  • 35 x 12e