A very annoying, but productive, day of training today. Just your typical rampant BS of dealing with a commercial gym, but I was not in a good frame of mind to deal with it today. Overall, it was kind of opposite day. Lately, squats have been killer, presses pretty good, and pulls great. Today pulls were killer, presses same, and squats were great. No idea why.
Squat
45x5x2, 135x5, 225x3, 315x2, 375x1, 420x5x5
Notes: Squats were surprisingly solid today. I was still feeling quite beat up from my 20 hour day of traveling, loading, handing off, and coaching on Saturday. Shoulders, legs, and back were all still quite fatigued, so thought I might even not be able to complete 5x5 today. Pleasantly surprised. Especially since I had to use the rack I dislike at the gym.
Long story short: there are two racks at the gym: one is ok, the other pretty horrible. 5 inches between bar placement options, and due to the way it's constructed, you can't stand up with the bar, you have to stand up and back at the same time, which throws you off balance with heavy weights. I just missed getting the ok one today, because this old guy who's a regular afternoon gym rat got in before me. He used it for 45 minutes to do seated-on-a-stability-ball barbell presses with 65lbs for about 10 sets, with 3 minutes of sitting there doing nothing between sets. He spends 2-3 hours at the gym most afternoons, generally annoying people but not so annoying that they complain. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if he fell off a cliff.
Press
45x5, 95x5, 125x3, 155x2, 185x1, 207x5x3
Notes: Hard, but not so hard that there was any question if I'd get them. Also I bumped into a guy I went to summer camp in the 90's and then college with. He is doing PT in the gym, and saw me and came over. Haven't seen him since 2005 probably. We were never really close but were always friendly and kind of interesting to see an old acquaintance. We're the same age: He's a lawyer with three kids in the suburbs. I'm single and live in the city. Paths diverge quite a bit after college.
Deadlift
225x4, 365x2, 455x1, 520x5
Notes: I made the reps but there was nothing good about these. Maybe it was the squats and presses sapping my juice by this point. Maybe it was because I had to carry the bumper plates (a pair each of 45s and 25s) all the way across the gym, about 80 yards I'd guess, since last time I pulled off the floor, there was a litany of complaints about the noise from the retail store below. So I had to pull in a different place and carry the plates there and back. Maybe that tired me out. Maybe i didn't rest enough before the work set. Maybe it was all of the above.
Bottom line: these were ugly. I didn't get SQUOZE and there was some turtle rage. I also didn't pull the bar in and it got off my legs quite a bit. I'm still somewhat pleased to have pulled 520x5 after squatting 420x5x5 on the same day, but I'm going to need to tighten up my form A LOT to achieve that 650 pull I want to get this year.
Video of the ugliness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2gZ3ymMU1U
Afterwards: Chipotle. Of course.