Still trying to lift more at the shore

[Agilic]

Thanks! Yeah, I just meant for upper body lifts only....I'm trying to be conservative with the squats and see if it helps due to my recovery issues. I have been thinking about picking up a dip attachment and adding them in at some point, but I figured the volume of upper body stuff I'm currently doing (both bench and press V and I weekly + chins twice) should be enough to keep me progressing for a while. I figure than once I run out this next cycle of bench/press while being more aggressive with volume day then it may be a good time to introduce dips after that.

I still wanna get this 4x template hammered out for good and get some momentum going....another factor is getting thrown in now in that I just played an hour of pickup basketball to get ready for the league that starts in 3 or 4 weeks. I'm thinking that if my squats feel like crap tomorrow I may need to adjust and stack all my real lower body to Sunday, which would make my template look like this:

Weds: bench I + press V + chins + basketball league
Thurs: med squat + SGDL
Sat: press I + bench V
Sun: heavy squat + DL + chins


Funny thing about my game is, I can not touch a ball for a year and still shoot 3's like their automatic, but can't make a damn layup that requires any degree of difficulty when I'm rusty.

[Agilic]

Woke up sore as crap, predictably, since I haven't played ball in almost a year. Felt much better during and now after lifting. It was kind of funny - a coworker I hadn't seen in a couple years as soon as I took off my sweatshirt was like "holy crap, you've been working out?" When I said yeah, a little bit, he asked if I was taking steroids. I found it funny because I'm not big or strong at all, and basically have gone from incredibly skinny fat to slightly less skinny fat. People are easily impressed I guess.

Squat (M)
225x3x5
Knew I would struggle on 15 hour turn around from bball, and these were hard! Had to grind against the 15th a little bit. Definitely was closer to a heavy day than medium day effort wise.

SGDL
135, 185, 225, 240x5
Having trouble locking out the last rep fully due to grip giving out, need to order some straps I suppose. Still trying to get used to pulling in my 3" belt without tons of pinching at the bottom. Do y'all find higher or lower works better?


I think swapping my medium and heavy squats is a win, win, win - as I didn't really notice a difference pulling fresh vs. pulling after max squats. Now I think I'll be fresher for heavy squats anyway without having to recover from deads in 3 days. Plus, all my heaviest work will be Sunday with 2 days of full recovery afterward.

[davetooch]

haha yeah baby! get those gainzzzz!

[Agilic]

Press (I)
120x4
More regression. Note to self: next time you take a light week, try it with lower body only. Thinking I'm just gonna reload the bench, press, and squat and try to get some momentum going on this intermediate program.

Bench (V)
155x3x8
I'll probably start my intensity bench Weds at 170, see if I can get it for 8, and go up from there.

[Agilic]

Should have noted yesterday that I woke up Saturday morning with a bit of neck/upper back pain on the left side. Must have slept funny, it felt real stiff and shortened my Neck ROM, hurt to turn, look down etc. Felt okay benching and pressing though. Fast forward to today:

Squat
230x5
It felt harder than expected, but okay, until a few seconds after racking it when I felt a decent strain down in my lumbar on the right side (opposite side of yesterday's pain). I took some 800mg Advil but it's still pretty painful especially when I try to twist or take a deep breath. Find it strange I didn't feel it at all during the squats.

Deadlift
135x5
Kept going back and forth about whether to try my deadlifts and see if I could do them relatively pain free. First warmup set actually didn't feel bad at all but I finally talked myself out of putting 300+ lb of work on my lumbar and scrapped it there.

Chins
8x4
Felt fine, but picking up my son hurts every time. Hoping this thing clears up over the next 2 days and I'm okay to bench and press on Weds. May have to start back with squats conservatively on Thurs.

[davetooch]

damn man thats a tough call. I wasn't sure what to do in my situation so i took a week off to fully recover. Seeing as your just getting of your light week relatively soon, a full week off probably wouldn't be good, but your health and wellness would always be my main concern first.

[Agilic]

Good news: back felt fine Mon, Tues, and today for upper body stuffs. Left side of neck/upper back still a little stiff but not really painful.

Bad news: I'm not planning on worrying about my strength levels too much over the next ~6 months. Mentally, I've just become numb with my own frustration over lack of gains. I know that my lack of sleep is part of the equation, but I hate using it as an excuse for not being able to progress past the levels that I am at, because I know everyone has obstacles and get a hell of a lot stronger than I'm able to. It will get a bit better end of June when my wife's school year ends.

That said, I'm going to do something that I'm 90% sure is the wrong thing to do, and I'm going to do it anyway: continue to cut. I've already cut carbs down on my 3 non lifting days since I've started this programming, and am down about 4-5 lbs. Gaining weight helped my strength levels a little, but really not all that much. Part of this is out of curiosity (I've probably never been below 20% BF in my entire life), and part of it I'm rationalizing by basketball season starting in 3 weeks (we zone every team except 1 and I play on the perimeter, the 1 team we don't zone I man up the best player in the league not on our team and he is skinny and perimeter oriented).

I figure after basketball season ends, it's going to be pool and beach season, so dedicating solely to getting strong may wait until September.

Bench (I)
170x8
8th was a grind. If I'm cutting, would it be better to keep intensity day to 3's and 1's? Plan right now is to keep increasing the weight AMRAP.

Press (V)
107.5x2x5, x4. 105x2x5
A weight I've done 5x5 probably 15 times successfully. Not even sure where to start my intensity day reset. Crazy to think not long ago I did 120x5 and 127.5x2x2.

Chins
3x6
Not seeing any progress on these even with 2x/wk chinning and body weight loss.

[Agilic]

Lumbar and upper back/neck both seem to be 100%.

Squat
225x3x5
Basically wanted to re-establish a baseline and try to get back in the groove. Tried to strike the proper balance between eye gaze and forward lean. 3rd set was the best technique wise. Reps were somewhat hard but no grinders. Plan from here is to keep Thursday squat at 225 but for 2x5 to make it a medium type day while adding weight to Sunday's squat.

SGDL
135x5, 185x5, 225x5, 245x4,x1
Had to rest about 45s before last rep to let my grip rest. Keep forgetting to order straps. Not sure if I'm going too heavy on these after reading some things around the forum....if I feel like recovery becomes an issue especially when basketball starts this is the first thing I'll scale back on.

[foothills_g]

Sounds like a plan! I think sports rule. They are definitely in my top ten Awesome Things About Being Alive. Being super-strong is awesome too, but not as awesome as playing/competing (IMHO, of course). I hope you have a killer basketball season.

"The Book" has some content about in-season training, but I wish it had more. The best section is in regard to the prototypical HS Football player in the beginning of the "Intermediate" section. Good anecdotes, but not flushed out very well. If you are on a 2-day, lower volume H-L or H-M routine you're probably doing the right thing. If you find the right balance I don't see why you shouldn't continue to make gains.

Unsolicited advice for sure, but as far as "cutting" goes I wouldn't focus too hard on it. If you play hard and lift hard it will happen. Eat smarter but not necessarily less -- you'll still need lots of calories, maybe more.

[Agilic]

Good points, and coincidentally kind of what I've been doing. Still lots of food, protein, etc. just less of the "bad" stuff that I would previously eat as justification for extra cals, carbs, etc. Not that I was ever eating much junk, but I also cut out some of my regular carbs (bread, potato) just on my 3 nonlifting days which is where most of the weight loss has come from.

The goal is definitely to keep training hard and making whatever gains are possible (like you said, tinkering until I get this intermediate programming thingy correct), but I'm just not gonna beat myself up too bad if it doesn't happen right now.