Deload week. Nothing to write home about.

“Week 4”

• Deload – Bench Press (working max: 215#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x85
  • 1x5x110
  • 1x5x130
• Asst. #1 – Bench Press
  • 5 x 10 x 125
• Asst. #2 – 1-Arm Dumbbell Rows
  • 5 x 10 x 55
• GPP – Elliptical
  • Tabata style (20 sec. 150-ish strides per min., 10 sec. 100-ish strides per min)
  • 2 minutes slow (warmup)
  • 1 Tabata set
  • 2 minutes slow (cooldown)
• DeFranco Agile 8 – just foam rolling

It’s deload week. Nothing exciting to say. Go in, lift, leave.

I think I’ve officially dropped doing Agile 8, but I sure love foam rolling. Makes a difference, especially on my back.

Only other thing I can think to mention is my body is adapting to the GPP work, which is good. I’m not sure I need to adjust the settings on the machine… maybe a slight up in resistence. But I do think the main thing I need at this point is MORE work. So instead of 8 reps, let’s bump it to 9, then 10, and so on. I’ll probably go 9 or 10 next cycle and see how things fare.

Time to deload.

“Week 4”

• Deload – Deadlift (working max: 305#)
  • 2x5x125
  • 2x5x155
  • 2x5x185

• Deload – Press (working max: 145#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x60
  • 1x5x75
  • 1x5x90
• Asst. #1 – Press
  • 5 x 10 x 70
• Asst. #2 – Supinated Close-grip Pulldowns
  • 5 x 10 x 130
• GPP – Elliptical
  • Tabata style (20 sec. 150-ish strides per min., 10 sec. 100-ish strides per min)
  • 2 minutes slow (warmup)
  • 1 Tabata set
  • 2 minutes slow (cooldown)
• Grip
  • 3x10xT, 2 sec. hold between reps
  • 3x3x1, 2 sec. hold between reps, 10 sec. hold on the last rep

In previous cycles, I handled deload along the normal schedule. After I got the 2nd edition of Wendler’s 5/3/1 book, that made me take another look at scheduling the “3 days per week” cycle. Yes, it was not a typo, you are supposed to double-up on the deload week to make it last just a week, not a week and a half. So press and deadlift end up getting merged onto the same day during deload week. But I figured as well, that would make quite a long workout with all the assistance work for both days, so I opted to modify and do what assistance I thought mattered most. In this case, I kept in the assistance pressing and the lat pulldowns. I don’t NEED the Good Morning work as much as I need the press work, and the pulldowns let me control impact to my shoulder better than the hanging leg-hip raises. So there we go.

Nothing really to write home about. It’s deload week. Take it easy. I did my work. I did not rest-pause things (again, deload). I did spend a little more time on the elliptical… probably had 4 minutes of cooldown instead. Had earbuds in listening to music and “I like this song, want to hear it to the end, just keep going”. 🙂

I believe I’ve broken through my barrier.

“Week 3”

• 5/3/1 – Squat (working max: 250#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x100
  • 1x5x125
  • 1x3x150
  • 1x5x190 (work)
  • 1x3x215
  • 1x5x240 (PR)
• Asst. #1 – Leg Press
  • 5 x 10 x 275
• Asst. #2 – Leg Curls
  • 5 x 10 x 80
• GPP – Elliptical
  • Tabata style (20 sec. 150-ish strides per min., 10 sec. 100-ish strides per min)
  • 2 minutes slow (warmup)
  • 1 Tabata set
  • 2 minutes slow (cooldown)
• DeFranco Agile 8

Setting a squat PR today of 1x5x240 may not seem like a huge PR, but it is. For far too long I’ve been hovering with this 230# issue. Worked up to it doing the SS/PPNP program but form was horrible so I reset. Shortly after resetting I switched to the Wendler 5/3/1 program, which is much slower progress. Then during this I opted to hang around that level for a while while I changed around my GPP. But finally, everything is coming together and I’ve officially blown through that 230 barrier and setbacks and did 240 today. Felt pretty good too! Onwards.

On leg presses, I did some reading up on the range of motion one should use. There doesn’t seem to be any hard limits here, but the big point stressed is to keep your (lower) back in contact with the backrest. So today I played around with backrest settings to find what worked best for me (all the way down, lowest setting). Repositioned my feet slightly to be closer to my squat stance, and then the range of motion isn’t all the way touching the bottom stops/guards, but almost. It’s more that I’m getting my legs and thighs into the same position as the bottom of the squat, then pressing out explosively, again working to replicate my squat. The whole time, keeping focus on my lower back to ensure nothing curls up. If I’m not careful, in the lower position I can get a curl, but it’s slight. So I just have to keep things focused to keep the arch in my back. Good things. I reckon next cycle I’ll go to 315 and that’ll probably hold me for a little while.

On leg curls, today I just opted to up the weight 5# to 80 because of the lack of additional stress from switching to leg press. That worked. I’ll stick with this during next week’s deload and then go to 85 the week after.

I’ve been thinking about the elliptical stuff. I think the incline setting of “10” is good. I might up the resistance level just slightly to more closely replicate the real life resistance I’d feel running up a hill. “12” is a close setting but not quite. Maybe 14. But once I find myself in the right groove, I decided the way to increase the work is to just increase the workload. Instead of doing 8 “reps”, I’ll work my way up to say 15. I think that may do more for me than just making the resistance higher.

All in all, feeling good. Looking forward to next week’s deload.

Today was weird, but good.

“Week 3”

• 5/3/1 – Bench Press (working max: 215#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x85
  • 1x5x110
  • 1x3x130
  • 1x5x165 (work)
  • 1x3x185
  • 1x6x205 (PR)
• Asst. #1 – Bench Press
  • 5 x 10 x 125
• Asst. #2 – 1-Arm Dumbbell Rows
  • 5 x 10 x 55
• GPP – Elliptical
  • Tabata style (20 sec. 150-ish strides per min., 10 sec. 100-ish strides per min)
  • 2 minutes slow (warmup)
  • 1 Tabata set
  • 2 minutes slow (cooldown)
• DeFranco Agile 8 – just foam rolling

Today was weird.

My lower back is rather sore from deadlifting 2 days ago. You know how it goes… day after you’re sore, 2 days later you’re REALLY sore. Then last night before bed I couldn’t pop something in my lumbar region and that just made it worse. Finally got it to adjust this morning, but it still hurt. Then while doing my PR set on bench press, I was really tightening up. I’ve been working on putting my whole body into the bench press, keeping my feet really planted, pushing through my heels, whole body tight, whole body pushing, but keep the butt on the bench, keep an arch, etc.. And while I still have a LONG way to go on getting the technique, I did make progress because boy I had an arch today — almost too much arch. My lower back was screaming at me. I only cranked out 6 reps because my back was screaming, it surprised me and threw off my focus, and that was that. Between sets for the rest of the workout I kept doing lower back stretching exercises.

But I don’t feel bad about it. While it hurt, it showed that to some degree there was improvement in my technique. Whereas before things were collapsing down there, today they weren’t, which was awesome. Again, lots of work still to improve, but a step forward is a step forward. And as for 6 reps with 205? Well, last cycle I did 6 with 200. So no regression, I’ve gotten stronger. I can’t be unhappy about the progress.

Everything else just jammed along. I had to use another elliptical machine today and the resistance didn’t feel the same. It should be, in theory, but didn’t feel it. So I bumped it to “13”, and I’ll stick with that number on the machine I regularly use and see how it goes. I don’t really want to up this too much too fast.

A pretty decent day, I must say.

Set a personal record, and looking forward to the next 2 cycles as I’ll get to break nice milestones!

“Week 3”

• 5/3/1 – Deadlift (working max: 305#)
  • 1x5x125 (warmup)
  • 1x5x155
  • 1x3x185
  • 1x5x230 (work)
  • 1x3x265
  • 1x8x295 (PR)
• Asst. #1 – Good Mornings
  • 5 x 10 x 70
• Asst. #2 – Hanging LegHip Raise
  • 5 x 5 x WT
• GPP – Elliptical
  • Tabata style (20 sec. 150-ish strides per min., 10 sec. 100-ish strides per min)
  • 2 min slow (warmup)
  • 1 Tabata set
  • 2 min slow (cooldown)
• DeFranco Agile 8 – foam rolled
• Grip
  • 3x10xT, 2 sec. hold between reps
  • 3x3x1, 2 sec. hold between reps, 10 second hold on the last rep

1x8x295 is a nice personal record. What I really like about it tho is how I’m set up for the next 2 cycles, not just for the PR’s but how they are some cool milestones. Next cycle I’ll do 305, which breaks the 300# barrier, and the cycle after I’ll do 315, which will be 3 45# plates per side, another cool milestone. And then it’s on to 325, and so on.

I wasn’t sure how to assess today’s PR, but I realized that last cycle I did 1x8x285, so, same reps, more weight, that’s an acceptable improvement. I’m stoked.

On good mornings, I want to focus more on moving like a hinge, and keeping a belly full of air as I move — Valsalva. I don’t get as much a range of motion, but everything works better.

On the leg raises, due to my continuing weird shoulder issues I told myself I’d rather get 5×5 awesome reps than 5×7 or 8 reps where I am exhausted, pushing myself too hard, lose tension in my shoulder area, and make things worse. And so, I did that. The right shoulder still got that odd twinge. It’s not a bone thing, it’s like this odd ache in the medial deltoid muscle. I’d have a doctor look at it, but I don’t know what to tell them….

Gripper work is progressing nicely too. I didn’t need much help on the left hand save for the last rep of the last set so I could do the 10 second hold with a fully-closed gripper. This is all good progress. I’ll probably bump to 3×4 or 3×5 next cycle.

All in all, a great way to start off the week.

Not the greatest, but a PR nonetheless.

“Week 3”

• “5/3/1” – Press (working max: 145#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x60
  • 1x5x75
  • 1x3x90
  • 1x5x110 (work)
  • 1x3x125
  • 1x4x140 (PR)
• Asst. #1 – Press
  • 4 x 10 x 70
  • 1 x 11/6/4 x 70 (rest-pause set)
• Asst. #2 – Supinated Close-grip Pulldowns
  • 4 x 10 x 130
  • 1 x 8/4/3 x WT (rest-pause set)
• GPP – Elliptical
  • Tabata style (20 sec. 150-ish strides per min., 10 sec. 100-ish strides per min)
  • 2 min. slow (warmup)
  • 1 tabata set
  • 2 min. slow (cooldown)
• DeFranco Agile 8 – just foam rolling

Today was alright. Not my best, but alright.

My left shoulder still hurts. I woke up at 2:30 AM. Could my lowered calorie intake be in play? My rest times between sets were lower. Could be any number of things. I don’t know. I don’t write this as an excuse, just a record of what was up right now so 6 months from now I can look back and perhaps analyze better.

I wanted to get 5 reps on that PR set, but only got 4 and that 4th saw me leaning back and pushing like hell. Not what I wanted, but it’s still a PR.

One thing I’m wondering about. I’ve noticed with everything that as the weights get heavier, my body is being forced to lift a certain way. For example, if you deadlift an empty bar, you can probably have horrible form and move the bar all over the place. But when you deadlift 300#, the bar is going to have a tendency to do what it wants to do with gravity and other forces of nature instead of you being able to move it all over the place. The heavy weights are forcing a particular way to do things. As I’m pressing these heavier weights, my body is changing how it wants to lift. For instance, with say 95# I can just push it around and no problems. But put that 130+ on there and my body starts to feel it differently. I want to tense up and if I don’t things are harder. I want to push differently in terms of things like the Valsalva maneuver. So perhaps as well, I’m going through a bit of transition now that the weights are actually getting heavier and I just need to roll with it. Since it only happens on the heaviest of weights, I can’t get a lot of “under the bar” time with it, but I need to pay attention and work on it as it comes. We’ll see. Just an observation and thought.

Assistance pressing was fine, but I lowered the rests to maybe 90 seconds at most between sets. I don’t know why, but today I just didn’t want to rest much… get in, press, get out. *shrug* I did NOT do chins between these sets. My left shoulder still isn’t happy and I didn’t feel like making it worse. Even during the pulldowns it wasn’t happy. I worked to keep tension in my shoulder so I wasn’t “pulling it out of socket” at the top of the movement (the “hang”), but that also kept tension in my arms, and so with all this tension it worked me a bit harder and the pulldowns were a little tougher today. No matter. I’d rather not be abusing my shoulder.

Elliptical remains good. Incline of “10”, resistance of “12”, about 100-spm slow and 150-ish fast. Last time I was resting too much on my arms/forearms, today I made an effort not to have so much rest/support. Still had my hands on the little “heart monitor grip” area, a little downward tension, but no resting. I’ll keep at this for a little bit, then jack it up. This is a good spot to start adaptation; it works me.

On the food note… I wonder. I’ve shed a few pounds, been cutting back on caloric intake, all good. But the past couple evenings I’ve been eating a lot of “trail mix” stuff. Nuts, dried fruit, little chocolate-covered things. Not huge, but under normal circumstances I wouldn’t eat it. I wonder if my body was saying “dude, you’re about to do some big lifting, you need some fuel built up”. Dunno. I’m going to be good during the PR week here, but if I need a little, take it. Then once I hit deload week, I’ll scale back again.

Had a good mental breakthough today.

“Week 2”

• “3 reps” – Squat (working max: 250T#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x100
  • 1x5x125
  • 1x3x150
  • 1x3x175 (work)
  • 1x3x205
  • 1x7x230 (PR)
• Asst. #1 – Leg Press
  • 5 x 10 x 275
• Asst. #2 – Leg Curls
  • 5 x 10 x 75
• GPP – Elliptical
  • Tabata style (20 sec. 100-110 spm, 10 sec. 150-160 spm)
  • incline “10”, resistance “12”
  • 2 minutes slow (warmup)
  • 1 Tabata set
  • 2 minutes slow (cooldown)
• DeFranco Agile 8

Today was cool. In fact, I didn’t realize I set a new PR until I got home.

Squats are a big deal to me — a big mental problem to me. Not going to rehash it, it’s documented in other logs, but just know I have a big mental hurdle with squatting. Today’s work weight was 230. That’s a significant number for me because it’s the number where I’ve kinda stalled at for a while; not a true stall, but if you look over my log history it’s kinda loomed over me for far too long and I’ve hovered in this area for various reasons for far too long. So the number kinda has some intimidation factor for me. But then, there’s acknowledgement that this isn’t the most weight to move this cycle: this is just week 2! This is just a weight along the road now, not the weight at the end of the road. That’s something kinda cool, and motivating.

After the 205 set, I felt “gee, this is heavy… how many can I do with 230??” but I put that quickly out of my head. Just do what I do. If it’s only 1 rep, then it is. I just kept my head clear after that set and before my last set, think nothing, just be clear. As I belted up, just reminded myself of a few cues like to keep my chest up, to drive with my feet (heels) not like I’m trying to push the weight up but like I’m trying to push the floor and the whole Earth down. And just do. In a way, taking cues from my deadlifting.

When I got to rep 5, I knew I was nearing the end. Rep 6 felt like my usual “ok, time to stop”. But I said to myself that I’m going to press on. If I make it, I do; if I dump the bar, then I dump it. So what? I pressed on and the 7th rep came with some work but not a struggle. Was good, and I felt that I pushed myself a little harder mentally today. I needed that in this context. And then I saw that compared to last cycle well… last cycle my week 3 was 1x6x230. Today I did 1x7x230. So there’s a PR for ya. And frankly, it’s a little more meaningful to me because it was more a mental win than a physical one.

Next week’s squat PR should be good. 🙂 I’ll be doing 240 and I know I’ll be fine.

Leg pressing. Finding a better foot position on the platform. 275 was no problem, but I am going to hold here for a bit. You know how on the machine there’s a “upper” position for the sled, then there are stops at the bottom so the sled won’t come crashing down and flatten you? I touched those lower stops a few times today and said to myself “there, that’s the range of motion I want”. So I worked to get to almost touching — don’t want to touch, that loses tension, but I want to get just a gnat’s hair away from the lower stops. That’s the range of motion I want. So I’m going to stick at 275 for now so I can ensure I’m getting that range consistently… I was generally there, but I didn’t feel consistent enough today. So stick at 275, improve range consistency, then certainly next cycle I’ll jump to 315. Another side-effect here is that I’m moving significantly larger weights and there’s a bit of a mental boost… not the ego rub, but more that sort of mental prep and feel of it. Kinda like doing board presses, where it can help you get the feel of heavier weights, get you mentally and your CNS and such prepped for that feeling? I reckon that’ll be good to help me.

Curls. They are curls. Felt uber strong with it tho, like 75 really isn’t giving me enough. I reckon with the change in workload that I probably could jump to 85, and probably will next cycle.

Elliptical continues to be good. I like the settings, and actually bumped up my “strides per minute” today over Monday, just slightly (about 10 spm in both slow and fast). That felt a lot more comfortable and natural in terms of my slow speed, and I had to ensure I kept cranking on fast to keep that rate up. I like. One thing I’ve noticed is that I’m using my arms on the machine’s support structure to hold myself up. This has the consequence of relieving a bit of the weight/resistance. I will work to minimize this, so that my hand holds are only there to help with balance, no “resting” or any such thing (this mostly is happening the last rep or two, and certainly during the cooldown). So this groove should stay, work to fix the “arm resting”, and just keep chugging here. And yes, my right knee is happier.

I didn’t do a full Agile 8, but I did foam roll the heck out of everything today. The more I do it, the more it feels good.

Can’t wait for the coming week. PR week!! 🙂

Things are getting dialed in.

“Week 2”

• “3 reps” – Bench Press (working max: 215#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x85
  • 1x5x110
  • 1x3x130
  • 1x3x150 (work)
  • 1x3x175
  • 1x7x195
• Asst. #1 – Bench Press
  • 5 x 10 x 125
• Asst. #2 – 1-Arm Dumbbell Rows
  • 5 x 10 x 55
• GPP – Elliptical
  • Tabata style (20 sec. fast (140-150 strides per minute), 10 sec. slow (90-100 strides per minute)
  • 2 minutes slow (warmup)
  • 1 Tabata set
  • 2 minutes slow (cooldown)

Today’s bench press was good. Last time I stumbled upon what felt like a “sweet spot” in terms of where to plant my feet so I can maximize full-body tension and pressing through my feet. I focused on that today and while I don’t think I have the spot nailed, it was fairly good and I was fairly solid throughout all pressing sets. It will still need refinement.

One cool thing from today? Many times I will look at the work I have to do, then look at the work I’ve done. Because I want to ensure progress, I’ll then figure what I at least have to do in order to feel like I made progress. For instance, today’s big weight was 195, so how many reps did I do before with 195? or if I hadn’t moved 195 recently, what did I do that was in the ballpark? Last cycle I did 190 for 7, so a little math says that 195×6 would be about the same. But sometimes I get too caught up in the numbers and it’s not healthy. Today, just due to lack of time, I never looked at how much work I needed to do today. I thought about it for a moment while at the gym, but then opted to not care because it doesn’t. Just move the weight and move whatever I end up moving. I pushed out 7 reps, which is actually a little bit better than before. A little stronger, a little better, and didn’t have to think or worry about it. Good thing. 🙂

I have opted to drop the reverse ez bar curls for my forearm work. I get enough on deadlift day and some on press day, so frankly I don’t need to bother here. Just dropping it entirely.

Didn’t Agile 8. Had to get moving. I’ll probably regret not at least foam rolling.

On the elliptical. I put the incline at “10” and upped the resistance to “12”. Pace was in the 90’s strides per minute for “slow” and in the 140’s for “fast”. I felt like I wanted to do slightly faster, like 95-105 slow and 150’s for fast, but I figured to just slowly up it, keep things in range, see how it does. I might increase it a bit, but for now today’s run was actually good. I felt worked, heart rate was pumping, legs were tired. I tell you, the hardest part is doing the 2 minutes of cooldown…. just feels like it takes forever. But this rate feels alright, and what with squats on Wednesday I’ll stick with this and see how my legs feel afterwards. I think I’m closing in on a groove, and will just slowly up the difficulty as my body adapts.