Not bad.

Deload week. As I’m doing something different for my squats, I figured to stay in the flavor here. Stay light, keep the added warmups, work up to a single at what should be more or less EDM for this cycle.

All went pretty well. I videoed most of the sets and was very happy at hitting depth on everything. But I noticed a big problem, which you can see in the top set:

Watch the bar path.

I was noticing my upper back was losing tightness, especially as I got into the hole. My analysis of everything is that I’m very focused on my lower body right now: the stiffness in the knees, managing descent, hitting depth, getting up out of the hole, etc., and while I start with upper tightness, the lack of focus and I lose it. Oh, and I also noticed that working for 360º pressure into the belt does change my torso angle slightly (can’t arch the back as much) so that changes things a bit too.

So I started to change to get under the bar, get tight, but then KEEP it tight… readjust as needed. Unrack, take a moment to steady and retighten anything. Step back, settle, retighten. Basically, focus on remembering that upper back. Started to get it, but you can see it threw things off because thinking too much. Still, it was good to see this. For sure, the loss of tightness is part of the problem because it causes me to fall forward. So yeah, more to work on.

That said, the approach I’m doing with the increased warmups, less volume, more singles, I am enjoying it. My body is happier, things move better, and having just singles helps me put more into it. I realized that when I do > 3 reps, it’s too much for my brain right now. I want to a rep, pour everything into it, and analyze it to figure out what’s broken so I can fix it. When I do too many reps, it’s too much data. Just 1-2 reps is good because I can get just enough data, then apply it, see what affect there is, and so on. I even had the thought that maybe right now would be good to squat 2x/week so I could have more time under the bar to work on technique. Not going to change that up right now tho, but point is, so far so good.

I’ve got more things to work on, and so far happy with how things are coming back.

Anyways, all I did was squat. I was going to do a couple light sets of leg presses, but the leg presses were being taken up by the group classes and personal training, so meh. I just hit the bike for 10 minutes and called it.

5th cycle, leader-2; was 5/3/1-based, now trying to fix my squat

• Squat (superset with band pullaparts)
  • bar x 10
  • 135 x 8
  • 165 x 5
  • 190 x 4
  • 215 x 3
  • 230 x 3
  • 265 x 2
  • 300 x 1
  • 330 x 1