Punch the clock workout today.
Safety Bar Squat - belt
70x5x2, 160x3, 220x3, 260x3, 290x3, 315x3, 340x3x2, 300x5
Notes: Feeling a little tweaky in general but not hard or slow and easy on the elbows.
340x3 SB Squat on IG
Bench Press
275x5, 295x5, 315x5, 325x5 @7.5 - post op PR!, 295x5 - last rep paused, 275x5 - paused
Notes: Didn't know what to expect here. My elbows feel better after a few days of no low bar squats and some advil, and I also had an extra day of rest between press and bench compared to usual. But bench has just been feeling so weak. Getting 325x5 was a great surprise, and getting it @7.5 was even better. I did 315x5 about two months ago, but it was basically an all out max. I still have a ways to go to get my bench back up to its old strength, which makes sense considering I couldn't train it for 4 months after my injury and then it was the last lift I could start training again after surgery, but this was a really good step in that direction of re-achieving and then surpassing my old PRs.
Chins
BWx5,6,6,6,6,6, 5 = 40
Last edited by Michael Wolf; 11-23-2016 at 04:43 PM. Reason: date correction
Congrats on the rehab bench PR, Wolf!
I might've. It is such a haze of testosterone induced fugue state, it's hard to recall.
Thanks John. I'd love to hit 365x5 before too long and put the shoulder injury weakness to bed once and for all. That may be a bit ambitious to do anytime soon, but based on how strong this 325x5 set was and what I could do before I got hurt, maybe it'll happen before long.
Was supposed to do this yesterday, but after 6 week period where I had 2 total days off and then family time which was predictably stressful around some very high strung people, I just needed a day to chill a bit. Got home at 1pm, ate, planned to go to the gym at 4 and just didn't. It's OK, I needed the day. So went today to get it in.
Squat - high bar only, SBDs, Belt
345x3, 385x3, 415x3, 445x3, 465x3 @7
Notes: My instagram post (link below) really says it all, but once again for the record: my old 1RM after training high bar exclusively for 3+ years was 385. I did low bar exclusively for 3+ years, then starting working light, way sub-max high bar squats in just for some boredom alleviation/variety once per week for less than a year of actual training time. And today, on the 'heavy' day of a deload week - so still fairly light overall - I did 465x3 high bar with a few reps in the tank. The "low bar doesn't carry over to high bar, but high bar carries over to low bar" defies analysis and I'm just another example of the many I've coached who show it to be incorrect.
445x3 and 465x3 high bar squats on IG
Press
220x2 @7.5 - belt
230x2x2 @8.5 - belt +wraps
185x5 dead stop - belt
Notes: 230 felt pretty good but didn't want any reps to be slow grinds so stopped at 2. Think I could've gotten 4, but definitely had a third rep on both sets. Press finally coming around.
Deadlift - belt
365x5 - DOH
455x5 @5.5 - hook
505x3 @ 6.5 - alt
Notes: These didn't feel great, my back is still a little tweaky on pulls, and my erectors felt fatigued today for some reason, after not feeling that way the rest of the week. But they moved well and looked fine. So, eh, who knows. Back to the grind again Monday.
Last edited by Michael Wolf; 11-26-2016 at 02:23 PM.
Glad to see that you are setting some new PR's. Have you considered building periodic deloads into the schedule? I know you sometimes have them because your body dictates so, but curious if you have a plan around them in the programming? I follow your log but can't recall if you have addressed this before..
I did have them but haven't reinstituted them during this comeback phase, as things have been so up and down WRT the weights I could lift, especially while on a cut. I've (temporarily) suspended the cut, have gained some weight back, and am hitting weights that are at or close to what I could do before now so on the one hand, it might make sense to be more structured about things now. But I've also gotten so used to doing things this way - having a plan but being flexible by feel - and it's still working so I don't see a compelling reason to change at the moment. Other than the elbow tendinitis - which isn't a result of not having a deload period - everything is going very well. This past week I still definitely did work, but overall tonnage and intensity were down. I did that a few weeks ago as well, and came back strong.
I didn't have my best stuff today but I managed to grind out both squat and press 5x5 PRs out of sheer willpower and some laughs from Ryan and Hayden. Both are 5x5 numbers I'm sure I could have done before I got hurt, but I hadn't been doing max 5x5s for a while by then, accumulating volume over more workouts in other ways - so these are still PRs since I never did them before. But they also don't yet represent more than I could have done before, so I have to keep that in mind as well. I'm not quite back to 100% in terms of 1RM strength in the squat or the press yet, but I'm really damn close, and will be there and then surpass soon. The plan is to go for a PR squat double, if it's there, a week from Friday in Wichita Falls, getting in some submaximal work at various %s/RPEs in the 10 days in between.
Squat - SBDs, belt
455x5x5 - PR, RPEs 7-8
Notes: This was hard primarily because I had, on both sides, super tightness/hypertonicity in my erectors today that was just screaming at me during the sets. Not pain, nothing hurt in the conventional or injury sense, just super hyperactive and uncomfortable and got worse as each set went on. But I plowed through and made a solid plate milestone 5x5 without dipping into RPE death reps, and with 6-8 mins rest between every set - didn't need anything excessive there. Back took ~20 mins to calm down after the last set.
455x5x5 all sets simultaneously, from different angles, on IG
Press - belt, wraps
210x5 @7.5
220x5x3 @9, 9, 9.5
210x5 @8
185x11
Notes: After that squat 5x5 PR and needing 20 mins for my back to calm down, I wasn't planning to PR my press 5x5, too. I thought I probably was ready to do so in general, based on the way my 205x5x4 + 225x5 workout went two weeks ago; but I also thought the squat probably took too much out of me to do both in the same day. So planned on 210x5x5, but not a PR. But I popped another caffeine pill and did the first 210x5 and it went way faster than I expected, so did the next three sets at 220 before backing off to 210 for the last set. I didn't do sets across, but 215x5x5 + 185x10 backoff is my heaviest ever 5x5, and today the average weight of the 25 reps was 216, and I got one extra rep at 185 on the back off. So counting this as a 5x5 PR as well. Boom.
I have done 185x11 before, IIRC, but it was a few months after that particular workout that was my heaviest ever 5x5. I've also done what is arguably a harder press volume workout on 10/12/15, my last real press volume work before my injury, of:
205x5 @7.5 (no wraps), 225x5 @9.25, 215x5x2 @8.5, 9; 205x5 @8, 195x5 @8 (no wraps). But in terms of tonnage lifted/average weight per rep purely over 5x5, this was it.
5x5 press PR + back-off set on IG
Wanted to snatch but my non-surgical shoulder wasn't having it so I didn't push it and just stopped.
Did Chins instead:
BWx6x6 - easy