Forging Fortitude: A Kaizen Quest

[Roland Conde]

I wanted to share my journey, because I felt the urge to draw strength from, and contribute tales to, the community.

My mission here is to compete in 2016 and, mayhaps, qualify for Nationals. Or, at least, try my hardest. Building strength and conviction one day at a time.

Current Stats:
Bodyweight: 185
Max Squat: 410.
Max Bench: 305.
Max Pull: 410 (Conventional), 505 (sumo).
Press: 190
Power Clean: 240

My programming and progress will probably be all over the place for some time. Life has demands, and I've had to meet them to the detriment of my training. Doing my best.

Onward.

[Roland Conde]

8/31/2015
Day one.
Volume.

Squat:
290x5, 285x5, 280x5. 5 minute rests.

Press:
150x5, 145x5, 140x5. 5 minute rests.

Pulling:
Clean 155x3, 185x2
Deadlift 225x2, 255x5
Back has been dead. Too much biking.

Chins:
8, 8, 8

Time into door: 7:07
Time onto Floor: 7:16
Time off floor: 8:52
Time out Door:9:45

Used sauna and showered.



Total time: ~2.5hr
Time on Floor:1hr 36 min.

[Roland Conde]

9/1/2015

Recovery run. Wakes me up, and chippers me up for the day.

5 minutes of walking, into a light jog. 5 minutes paced running, 3 minutes increased pace, 15 second strides followed by 90 seconds walk into slow jog. 5 minute cool down.

[Roland Conde]

Squat:
235x2x5, paused. 5 minute rest.

Bench:
260x3, 235x2x5, 230x2x5.

Clean:
185x1, 195x1, 205x1, 210x3x1, 215x1

Chins:
3x8 Bodyweight.

[Roland Conde]

Haven't updated for a bit.

Actually took from the 2nd until today to just go in and deload with nothing significant, while getting into the swing of some things in life. I will update log with specifics of each training session later this week from my notebook.


After some consideration, and discussion with some friends, I've decided to go out on an extra further limb.

I will be trying the following approach over the coming months:

1 (at least? Maybe 2 if it works very well) cycle of a Russian Squat Program. Modified to include some pressing in addition to bench, but no pulling. I will have the first cycle return me to my recent squat PR, since I over did it and clearly needed a deload after I hit it.

After, I will be going into a volume/DE style texas approach, and see where to go from there.

Onward!

[Roland Conde]

Day one RSR.

Squat:
305x6x2
5 minute rest between sets.

Don't like how hard these felt. Still beat up, apparently. Going to stuff my face all week.

Bench:
220x6x2

Exceedingly easy. 3 minute rest between sets.

No accessory work today. Don't plan to do more than maybe chins, and curls for the funz and gunz, in general.

[Roland Conde]

9/16/2015 day two.

Squat:
305x6x3
Easier than Monday.

Bench:
220x6x3

Press:
135x3x5
Just want to get some pressing in. Maybe I'll micro plate it up, see how I feel. Don't want it to interfere with bench, but don't want to stop pressing.

Chins: bodyweight 3x8.

Lost a pound since last week. Eating close to 5k calories. Meh.

[CJ Gotcher]

5K calories a day and losing weight? That's pretty gnarly. How are you tracking it?

[Roland Conde]

I try to eat mostly the same items everyday. For convenience pretty much every meal lately has been a 0.5lb beef burger with sweet potato fries. That and a salad with 1lb ground beef. Either meal adds up to about 1k calories. I eat 2 burger meals and a salad every day, with some milk here and there.

I bike to get around, and am on my feet alot, which ups my caloric needs.

[Roland Conde]

I have epically failed at keeping up with this in any way. Rather than continue to put it off, I'll start posting now, and try to fill in the gaps at some point.

A brief summary of recent training: Russian squat attempt failed terribly. I ran a basic linear progression after a deload from my russian squat attempt, playing around with back off sets and RPE, and had progress I was happy with. Hit some PRs, then backed off a bit and am playing with MLH programming and RPE stuff now.

New maxes set before backing off: Squat 445, 455 Pull (conventional). Hit a 200 Press as well. Nothing new on bench. Bodyweight for these was around 200.

Aiming to compete at the Spring Classic at SBWC in April/May.

Shifted over to a M L H template. Has been going alright so far. I'm aiming for something around an RPE 8 on medium days, something like 8.5-9 on heavy days. Doing sets of 4 for now. Today was a medium day. Bodyweight is 207.


Squats:
barx2x5
135x5
225x3
275x2
315x1
345x1 (belt)

385x3x4 - RPE 8. Felt really good!

Bench:
barx2x5
135x5
225x3
245x2
270x3x4 @ rpe 8. Felt very good. Truncated warm up to save time, may continue in this vein in the future.

Deadlift:
135x5
225x3
275x2
295x8 (no belt). RPE 8.

Some lighter pulls. Playing around with what to do on medium day with pulls.