Lunges… they can be humbling!

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 25, week 2

• Work Set – Deadlift (working max: 400#)
  • 160 x 5
  • 205 x 5
  • 245 x 3
  • 285 x 3
  • 325 x 3
  • 365 x 5
• Lunges
  • 20 (each) x 10 x 3

Oh, what a fun session!

Deadlifts went fine. I lifted mixed-grip the entire time because I wanted to focus on some technique. I want to work on flexing my triceps as I lift to ensure straight arm. I wouldn’t be surprised if the inevitable “curling” that happens with the supine hand contributes to that elbow-area soreness. Apart from that, the lifts went fine.

I am trying to not look at my main lift now as “warmup” vs. “work” sets. It’s just working up, period. It changes the mental approach a little bit because now I’m just working up. No approaching the sets too differently, rest periods too differently. Just lift. And I am doing this not only as a mental thing, but also to help reduce rest times between sets — let’s shorten it, so maybe like 3-4 minutes between heavy sets instead of 5. Every minute adds up.

Then… lunges.

I opted to start doing them because of some issues around my knee and lower-quad area. Doing walking lunges as a part of my general warmup I know have been helpful to me, so let’s try doing them proper and full. All my issues right now are with quads, and if this can help bring them up, great.

Oh my.

I held a 20# dumbbell in each hand, not to really add much weight but more to help me have just enough weight to keep my body in alignment. I did these standing, step forward, then push back up to the original position. I counted reps per “both legs”, so right, left, 1 rep, right, left, 2 reps, etc.. On that third set I started to fade. It was killing me! Again, only a minute rest between sets, and it was just hurting. My quads were pumped to the max and on fire. After the 3rd set, a few seconds after stopping, my quads were engorged and hurting. Good hurt, but so bothersome I couldn’t do anything more! I said that was enough lunging, tried to move to Good Mornings, but couldn’t because I couldn’t really stand! Ab work was out too because you need some hip stabilization, and that wasn’t going to happen. 🙂

So next time, save the lunges towards the end of the session.

But man…. while I hate lunges, I’m going to keep at it for a while and see how they fare for me.

I don’t know where my head was at…. but it wasn’t in the gym.

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 25, week 2

• Work Set – Bench Press (working max: 230#)
  • 45 x 5 x 2 sets (warmup)
  • 95 x 5
  • 115 x 5
  • 140 x 3
  • 165 x 3 (work)
  • 185 x 3
  • 210 x 5
• Assistance – Face Pulls (superset with bench press warm-up sets)
  • 30 x 15 x 5 sets
• Assistance – Close-grip Bench Press
  • 120 x 10 x 5
• Assistance – T-Bar rows (superset with the close-grips)
  • 90 x 10 x 5
• Seated Cable Rows
  • 90 x 10 x 3
• Rope-handle pressdowns with 20# for a bunch of reps, then EZ-bar curls with an empty bar for ?? reps
• Foam Rolling

I have no idea where my head was at today. It just wasn’t there. I felt asleep early on the couch, woke up just enough to migrate to the bed, then slept hard until the alarm woke me up. What? 9 hours of sleep? And even then I wanted more. Not sure what’s up, but there we go. And in the gym, I was awake and functioning, but just not “there”. I just went through the motions… all the benching felt weird, wobbly, but I just pressed on (pun intended). *shrug* These days happen.

I am trying a new organization of exercises, trying to help my shoulders and arms. I’m being stricter about my face pulls, which should help my shoulders warm-up.

And the t-bar rows… never done those before. But the gym has a “bicycle handle bar” that goes on the end of the bar. Put that on, throw 2 45# plates on, put the other end of the bar in a corner, and there you go — t-bar rows. First time I moved it, I was surprised at how little range of motion I got before the plates hit my chest. I was skeptical. But after adjusting my positioning a bit, then ensuring to really squeeze at the top and work strictly through this, I gotta say I’m sold. I haven’t felt my back worked like that in a long time, so that was cool. I’ll keep with these for a while. I don’t know tho if I want to up the weight a bit and stay in the 6-10 rep range, or keep the weight where it is and go for like 10-15 reps. I’m kinda leaning towards more reps (maybe 8-12).

Anyways, that’s that. My head was floating in the ether somewhere, but the effort seemed good.

On.

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 25, week 1

• Work Set – Squat (working max: 310#)
  • 45 x 5 x 2 sets (warmup)
  • 125 x 5
  • 155 x 5
  • 190 x 3
  • 220 x 3 (work)
  • 250 x 3
  • 285 x 4 (rep PR?)
• Assistance – Leg Press
  • 135 x 12
  • 225 x 12
  • 315 x 10
  • 315 x 10
  • 135 x 15
• Assistance – Leg Curls (really emphasize the negative)
  • 45 x 12
  • 45 x 12
  • 45 x 10
• Assistance – Crunches
  • 15 x bw
  • 15 x bw
  • 10 x bw
• Foam Rolling

Wow. Today I just felt “on”. I didn’t go in expect that, giving myself permission to “jack shit” it today. I had a VERY long day yesterday, got home much later than expected, didn’t get enough sleep, and just didn’t feel solid. But something kicked in alright. Maybe it’s the new “preworkout” (25g whey isolate in water, 400 mg caffeine). Maybe it’s the dedication to being “tight”…. but I don’t know about that, because I felt so sloppy today.

But I’m just hell bent on depth, especially on the heaviest set. Again, I’m overcoming mental barriers here: fear of going down and not getting back up. That if I go too deep, I won’t get out of the hole. Whatever. What’s the worst? I’ll dump it. So? Yeah it’ll suck both in ego and the physical pain of dumping it over my head (due to the fixed half-rack), but whatever. In fact, the weights won’t be so heavy at this point that I should have a problem — these should be challenging weights, but not at the edge of my capability, so certainly after the first rep I should know if it’ll happen or not, right?

I told myself: you’re doing 4 reps. Just that plain. No wiggle room, no doing 5, no doing 3, 6 was right out. 4. And I nailed 4 pretty good. I was focused on depth, on being tight. I also took my time. It might have been a few seconds of “resetting” myself at the top before I went again, but fine. And I got the 4 and was damn happy of it.

I do think that’s a rep PR, as I look back over my logs. Where 230# was a big roadblock for me at one time, this 270-280-290 was as well, because I got up into that weight and knew my form was horrible — I was not hitting depth, I was sloppy as hell. But now, I’m hitting these weights, I know I’m getting depth, and I’m nailing reps. 285 for 4 is pretty good. I actually am thinking that I could legit attempt 315 for a single before the end of the year. That would rock to hit 3 wheels — big big big milestone in my book. I’m motivated.

Oddly, I wonder if leg pressing might be a blessing in disguise for me. I know weak-ass quads is part of my problem, due to where I’m having failure. I also wonder how much my adductors are playing in here. And the deep leg presses are killing my quads and adductors (and being nice to my shoulders and elbows). I almost didn’t do them today — with the lack of rest and such, I felt I didn’t want to push myself beyond recovery, but I felt so good after the 285×4 I couldn’t resist.

We’ll see what benefits things bring.

Revisions, revisions.

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 25, week 1

• Work Set – Press (working max: 165#)
  • 45 x 5 x 2 sets (warmup)
  • 65 x 5
  • 85 x 5
  • 100 x 3
  • 110 x 5 (work)
  • 125 x 5
  • 140 x 6
• Assistance – Close grip pulldowns (superset with press warmup sets)
  • 70 x 12 x 5 sets
• Assistance – Press
  • 100 x 10
  • 100 x 10
  • 100 x 6
  • 100 x 6
  • 100 x 6
• Assistance – Pronated grip lat pulldowns (superset with asst. pressing)
  • 100 x 10 x 5 sets
• Shrugs
  • 135 x 10 x 3 sets
• Rope-handle pressdowns
  • 40 x 12 x 3 sets
• Rotating DB curls (superset with pressdowns)
  • 20 x 12 x 3 sets
• Foam Rolling

Due to my elbow/arm issues, I’m trying to take a different approach. I want to change things up to put less stress on my elbows, but also give some more direct work to my forearms and biceps because I think their direct neglect is part of the equation too.

So a lot of the program changed, and you’ll see it reflected over the next week. My choices were directly influenced by that issue.

I tried going light on the back work, but it was too light. The close-grips will likely remain very light and high rep, since they’re mostly there to warm things up. But the main pulldowns should have been heavier. Also, the rotating db curls I’m doing in an effort to really work the biceps and forearms, but either the weight was too light or I’m rotating at a wrong clip. I tried to keep the rotation even, but found that when I started in a pronated position and remained there until about halfway, then just quickly supinated the hand, that felt more effective. So I’ll probably change up technique and increase weight a bit and see. I am hoping this will have some more direct affect on those muscles vs. hammer curls, else… I’ll just go back to hammers since they are a good stand-by.

But a secondary issue is I’m trying to really turn my assistance work into bodybuilding work. I want to see about packing on some more muscle mass. So I’m shortening the rest periods. You can see how during the assistance pressing my reps went way down, due to only taking about a minute rest in between. This is another change in my focus. We’ll see how things go.

Not feeling it.

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 25, week 1

• Work Set – Bench Press (working max: 230#)
  • 45 x 5 x 2 sets (warmup)
  • 95 x 5
  • 115 x 5
  • 140 x 3
  • 150 x 5 (work)
  • 175 x 5
  • 200 x 6
• Assistance – Face Pulls (superset with the 5 warm-up bench sets)
  • 30 x 15 x 11 5
• Assistance – Close-grip bench press
  • 120 x 10
  • 120 x 10
  • 120 x 10
  • 120 x 10
  • 120 x 8
• Assistance – Lat pulldowns (superset with the close-grips)
  • 110 x 10 x 3 sets — supine grip
  • 110 x 10 x 2 sets — pronated grip
• Assistance – Seated Cable Rows
  • 100 x 10 x 3 sets
• Foam Rolling

I’ve got some heavy personal stuff weighing on my head and heart. So today I just wasn’t into it.

If anything tho, I did some playing around with things to try to help figure out my shoulder and elbow issues. I just did very light face pulls and only superset with my warmup sets; basically, treat it all as one big warm-up for my shoulder area. Nothing during my work sets, to minimize any impact there.

I tried close-grips because why not. I kinda want to do them, but it was also a check to see about something. My pain seems to hit most when I have a pronated grip and my arm (elbow) comes to almost-full flexion. Maybe something with the “compression” pressure of the forearm and biceps coming together, pressure of them squeezed together coupled with kinda “leveraging” the elbow apart, y’know? I noticed pressing was painful, and the pull-ups are doing this… so I’m experimenting.

The close-grips were good for my shoulders of course, but certainly seemed to play more into my elbows. Doing supine-grip pulldowns helped my elbows, but funny was that it didn’t work well because of too my skin friction from my arms being too close to my upper body (too much skin rubbing). 🙂 So I did the last 2 sets pronated and yeah, I could feel the forearm pain.

Could it be that these muscles are also weak and getting pushed to the limit? I really dont’ know, but with my recent grip failure issues, I do wonder.

Anyways, I am going to keep playing around with this. I may not be doing “ideal” exercises, but if it helps to keep me progressing in some way while not contributing to problems, then great. I’ll just keep playing around here.

Oh… one other thing. All assistance work was striving for “heavy” reps with only about 1 minute of rest between sets. Yeah, trying to get a little more bodybuilder here, wanting to see about building more muscle mass with my assistance work.

Oh, my elbows

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 25, week 1

• Work Set – Squat (working max: 310#)
  • 45 x 5 x 2 sets (warmup)
  • 125 x 5
  • 155 x 5
  • 190 x 3
  • 205 x 5 (work)
  • 235 x 5
  • 265 x 5
• Assistance – Leg Press
  • Empty x 15
  • 135 x 12
  • 225 x 10
  • 315 x 10
  • 135 x 15
• Assistance – Leg Curl
  • 40 x 12 x 3
• Assistance – Crunches
  • BW x 12 x 3 sets
• Foam Rolling

As I start my next “6 week cycle” (2 back-to-back cycles with no deload in between), my plan was to keep things mostly the same as last cycle. The main difference was going to be determining the source of my elbow pain. It’s something with the elbow and muscles around it, like the brachioradialis and brachialis. I am thinking it’s just inflammation, but I don’t know for sure at this point. But I know what seems to cause it to hurt, so I was going to change up my pressing days to have different back work in hopes of at least learning a little more about what my body is trying to tell me. We would see.

But today? It sucked. From how you have to grab the bar while squatting, it just put the same sorts of pressure on the arm and elbow. I wanted to do more squatting, but I figured I better err on the side of caution and try something that didn’t put so much pressure there. So, leg press. I really don’t WANT to leg press, but here we are. I think it’ll be good for me tho, so I’ll roll with it.

So on squats, I intentionally went for prescribed reps only. I actually felt kinda crappy mentally today and just wasn’t into things, but the squatting itself was good. I was great on depth on that last set, cranked out the 5 and felt like I could have done 1-2 more, but you know… leave it in the tank. Then I hit the leg press.

The machine at the gym is a 45-degree angle sled. I have no idea how much I can leg press (does it matter?), but I know I wanted to keep it strict. That is, my back stays flat on the backrest (no rounding the lower back as the weight comes down); my legs move through full range of motion — no half-reps so I can look like a big man pressing lots of 45 plates; take a stance on the foot rest akin to my squat stance, so just slightly more than shoulder-width apart, toes out about 30-degrees, and so on. Full range of motion. Oh, and I want this to be for reps. I have had thoughts about my future goals (more on this another time), and taking some more bodybuilder-like techniques in my assistance work is on my mind. So that’s things like higher reps, less rest between sets (I only did about a minute between sets), and so on.

And so, I cranked. Worked up. I probably will start at 135 next time…. oh shit! I just realized that I’m doing plate math! I’m assuming the bar! ha ha ha… 135 really is 90 (45 plate on each side). I have no idea what it really is with the sled and all.:-)

Anyways, there we go.

Did some leg curls to balance things out. Was too light, but meh… focus on the negative.

Crunches, and then no farmers walks. I must admit the leg presses trashed my quads. I foam rolled a LOT and I’m sure I’m going to feel this over the next day or two. 🙂

I’m just going to adjust my cycle to try to help my arms and elbows.

Just taking it easy.

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 24, week 4

• Work Set – Squat
  • 45 x 5 x 2 sets (warmup)
  • 95 x 5
  • 135 x 5
  • 185 x 5
  • 225 x 5
  • WT x REP

• Dips
  • BW x 5

• Work Set – Press
  • 45 x 5 x 2 sets (warmup)
  • 95 x 5 x 3
• Assistance – Seated cable rows
  • 100 x 10 x 3 sets
• Assistance – Crunches
  • WT x REP x 3 sets

I didn’t do much today. Because we’re breaking Wife in, my deload didn’t follow my normal routine. So today I just did a little squatting, a little pressing, a little rowing, some crunches and that’s it. Just put on plates, move, change plates, move again, nothing much. Very quick gym session today.

One thing I did try were dips, but after a few reps my shoulders called me a dip for doing them without any warm-up, so I just switched to pressing.

Oh well.

For the Wife

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 24, week 4

• Work Set – Deadlift (working max: whatevs)
  • 135 x 5
  • 185 x 5
  • 225 x 5
  • 275 x 5

• Work Set – Press (working max: whatevs)
  • 45 x 10 x 2 sets
  • 65 x 5
  • 85 x 5
  • 95 x 5
  • 95 x 5

• Lat pulldowns
  • 90 x 12 x 4

Today was Wife’s second day in the gym. Following our quasi-Starting Strength routine, today she did goblet squats, press, and well… I don’t know what the formal name would be for them, but it’s bodyweight rows where you are almost parallel to the ground, feet on the ground, arms hanging from a bar, and you pull yourself up. Modifying slightly due to her strength levels, and other things. But all good stuff.

And so, I did a similar routine… deadlifts, pressing, and lat pulldowns. I didn’t really worry about the weight. Just put plates on the bar and move some.

A few things on my end.

First, I’ve added “walking” lunges in my warm up. So I’ll walk across the length of the gym doing lunges. Not too shallow, not too deep, the sort of structure where when I’m down everything’s at right angles. I’m finding this is helping me get a little more limber and functionally loose in a day. My knees don’t feel so weird just during the day if I kneel down and have to get back up. Weird that I can squat so much with a bar on my back, but kneel down and get up in the course of a day and my legs and knees hate me. The lunges seem to be helping.

Second, I think my arm/elbow pain may be due to weights and compression… i.e. things that are explicitly hitting my elbow. When I was pressing today, the compression of my forearm against my biceps when in the rack position really seemed to make that arm pain flare up. A few sets of pull-ups to demo to Wife didn’t help either. I am thinking when I start proper cycle up next week, I might change my back work to some things I’ve read in Wendler’s books. That during my 5 warm-up sets I’ll superset with something uber-light for up to maybe 20 reps, like face pulls. Skip work during my 3 work sets. Then during my first assistance set (e.g. incline bench, more pressing) I’ll superset with the heavier back work, like rows or lat pulldowns. I think pullups may have to go back on the shelf until this fades… maybe, maybe not, I’ll play it by ear because I’d rather do pull-ups. I also might give up on more pressing and do dips… that might not help things, but we’ll see. I kinda like doing dips… so we’ll see.

Just going to play it by ear, so I can get my arms and elbows not being in pain.

Taking it easy… because I’ve got a training partner now (sorta).

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 24, week 4

• Work Set – Squat (working max: 300#)
  • 45 x 5 x 2 sets (warmup)
  • 135 x 5
  • 185 x 5
  • 225 x 5

• Work Set – Bench Press (working max: 225#)
  • 45 x 5 x 2 sets (warmup)
  • 95 x 5
  • 120 x 5
  • 135 x 10
  • 185 x 5
• Assistance – Pull-ups
  • BW (band-assisted) x 8/6/5 x 3 sets

It’s deload week so I am taking it easy, and I didn’t really do much. I just wanted to get under the weights, move some, and that’s all.

But the big thing is…. Wife is joining me in the gym! She has expressed interest in building up strength. There’s lots of reasons that are her own as for why she’s doing this, but the key thing here is a desire for a strength-building-oriented program. That is, no 5# dumbbells on the Bosu ball, no 60 minutes on the treadmill. No, build some strength.

So what better way to start than Starting Strength!

We’ll do it slightly modified. She can’t go up in weights every workout like the program says… she’s not a 16-25 year old male. But we will progress, just at a different rate. We’re also not going to do power cleans, but I’ll have her do pull-ups instead. Otherwise, we’ll do a SS-style workout.

So today, started her on the basics of squatting form and doing some squats. Then the basics of bench pressing form and worked up. Tried deadlifting but that didn’t get very far. 🙂 Still, it was good for a first session. And we’ll just keep going on this program for as long as it’s applicable. After that, well… we’ll see.

And so, my workout was done in between her sets, and was just me lifting something to lift something, to show her form, to help her see what to do and so on. Not that I’m any expert here, but I’m what she has so we go from there.

It was kinda cool. Different for me… not used to having eyes upon me, but this should be cool. 🙂

3 out of 4 PR’s ain’t bad.

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 24, week 3

• Work Set – Press (working max: 160#)
  • 45 x 5 x 2 sets (warmup)
  • 65 x 5
  • 80 x 5
  • 95 x 3
  • 120 x 5 (work)
  • 140 x 3
  • 155 x 4 (rep PR)
  • 165 x 1 (Joker Set) (PR)
• Assistance – Seated Rows (superset with all pressing)
  • 85 x 10 x 7 sets
• Foam Rolling

Despite my shoulder pain — which is improving — I was not going to miss Pressing. Main reason was it’s the one movement I knew, going into the cycles, that was going to be a breakthrough PR opportunity. My prior best was 155×3. The schedule was for 155 so, get 4 and I’m on my way. But with the shoulder pain, I opted to take it as it came.

And it went better than expected.

My shoulder still hurts, but I can at least now move through a full range of motion with only minor pain. Lots of rest, food, and Advil. I figure after deload week I ought to be good.

I did do the rows during my warm-up sets, and did after the 120, but after that opted to stop to not risk aggravating things. The 140 went up easy and I knew 155 would be fine. Sure enough it was. Got 4 with just a hint of struggle on the 4th rep lockout, but I got there. Good enough, PR set, rack it.

Felt so good, I said screw it and hit 165 for 1. That’s a true PR. Left it there. Did 3×10 of the rows and called it a day.

I gotta say, this cycle surpassed my expectations. I PR’d on everything but bench, and I’m sure that would have been a PR too if not for the weird shoulder/arm injury. If I look at the pure total on squat, bench, and deadlift, I’m at 950. Yeah I know, it’s not a real total cause it’s not at a meet on the platform, but shit… for just improving my life? it’s a start. 50 away from that goal of 1000… I can taste it.

I even thought it was cool how I’m 20 away from pressing 185. That’s been a goal too because it seemed so far away that I didn’t even consider it, but now, it’s within reach. How cool. Squatting 315 doesn’t seem far away either. I broke 4 wheels on deadlift, and I should be on track to be benching over 2 wheels normally. Really folks, while it may be nothing monumental in the world of powerlifting, damn it’s the best I’ve ever done and I’m happy for how far I’ve progressed down this road.

Looking ahead, I was “this close” to a Cube switch, but I think I’ll finish out the year on 5/3/1 then consider my options. I’ll do another “6 week cycle”, which should take me through the end of the year. Overall the approach will remain the same. And eating a lot, resting a lot, and being “tight tight tight” when I lift… making a lot of difference.

After that will I Cube? I really think I should. I just need to get off my duff and contact Corey Hayes about Cube Extreme. I think that’s going to be the only way I can manage Cube (1 hour, 3x week).