A Middle Aged Adolescent (who cannot possibly be the only one)

[Nunedog]

Hey, JC! Thanks for the thought and the loyal readership.

These are the latest numbers:
Squat: 432.5 pounds for all three singles this time around, though the last one was a Mannequin Challenge.
Press: 207.5
Deadlift: 525
Bench Press: 292.5 We’re on the hunt. Everybody stay cool.

Fresh on the heels of entries about bashing around the hockey rink and then growing up comes an incident that would seem to tie them together. I prevented an assault in a supermarket parking lot the other day, blundering right into it. My timing couldn’t have been better.

As I pushed my groceries out the door and across the driveway, I saw a very elderly man struggling to maneuver an empty shopping cart. He was tall and thin, a very frail 85 at least, if not 90. His wife was also moving in slow motion. The cart got away from him and rolled - slowly - into a nearby car.
The driver rolled down his window and shouted with surprising ferocity, ‘What the Hell are you doing?’
The old man said nothing but reached for the cart, which only enraged the driver further. With teeth bared, he tore at his seat belt and started a furious scramble out of his car.

I was there before he got very far. My first thought tactically was that I had the drop on him, and as he clambered out between the door and the frame of his car, I could have barreled into his door and in an instant turned him into the Black Knight from MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, but also sans his head.
In a split second, he saw me coming and hesitated.
I crossed in front of the old man and to the car door. ‘Sir, you are not going to intimidate him,’ I said in no uncertain terms. ‘You are not going to go after him.’

He couldn’t open the door very far, so he slowly stood up and squeezed out from behind it. I kept one hand or another up, palm forward, at the level of his collarbones for the duration of the encounter. That’s a ‘fence,’ to use the bouncers’ term. It’s a benign looking gesture, which would appear to say ‘Stop,’ but it protects me and possibly makes him wonder about that palm heel and his chin coming into conflict.

So, hooray for me. Really, I don’t think it was as simple as that. I might have solved only one of two problems.

While I’m here, though, what the Hell: let’s indulge the 17-year-old hockey players among us. How often in our normal, boring suburban lives do we get to play the hero? Certainly everybody who knocks themselves out lifting weights like we do has daydreamed about bringing their awesomeness to bear in a situation like this. It was cool.

(Unfortunately,) we have to be a little grown up. It wasn’t a physical encounter. The bad guy was my age at least, grey bearded, and about 30 pounds lighter than me. The dynamics in play were purely psychological. When he screamed about that shopping cart, the old man’s lack of response, or sheer fright, must have come off as indifference. This upped the ante for the aggressor, who had to leap out of his car and scream even more to establish dominance.
At least I hope that’s all he was doing. For a second, it sure didn’t look that way. Whatever the case, it’s inexcusable to tear after a defenseless old man. It’s sick; it’s predatory, which brings up an important martial arts principle: in a self defense encounter, when a predator realizes the tables have turned, that plunge in their psychological state can be more debilitating than any physical blows. That’s what kept this guy’s back pinned against his car. I never touched him.

The battle of wills did drag on. This poor elderly couple, who had largely frozen in place along with all the parking lot cart attendants here and there, took FOREVER to hang their canes on the cart handle and start tottering toward the door. The first thing the old man did was thank me, which prompted a ‘You could at least apologize,’ from the driver.
He did, and they started across the driveway. The driver wanted to go after them.
‘We’re staying here,’ I informed him.
‘That’s a brand new car,’ the guy said. ‘I just picked it up last week.’
‘I hear you. It’s OK to be mad, but you can’t bow up to a guy like that.’
At ‘bow up,’ that ancient term, his eyes came to me suddenly, and that’s when he snapped out of his anger. Score one for the Eighties yet again.

‘That guy shouldn’t be driving,’ he said.
‘Probably not,’ I thought, but I didn’t say it. This is where I think I let the bad guy down in a way, where I didn’t solve the second problem, his problem, whatever it was. I should have engaged him and shot the breeze a bit: ‘Yeah, man. What do they say? The minute you drive a new car off the lot, you lose what, 10,000 bucks in value?’
A cop or a bouncer, somebody who wades into crises everyday, would know how to de-escalate things, let him save face, or for a little bit make the encounter about something other than pure anger.

The old folks made it inside. The Predator opened his door and got back in his car. I went on my way but saw that he pulled out and drove off.

If this guy had the 30-pound advantage and came out swinging, I doubt I would’ve been so broad minded, then or now. What’s the value in such an easy victory? To see beyond it, I suppose, to consider fairness and compassion toward both sides.
“Blessed are the Peacemakers.’ The Bible says those guys are pretty hot stuff.
I see what they might be driving at. Physical strength is a foundation for moral clarity.

Heavy-Light-Medium
Week of: 3/6/17 3 sets of 5 reps week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x5) Tom 375 JC : 157.5
2. Press (3x5) Tom 167.5 JC: 82.5
3. Deadlift (1x5) 465 second session JC 227.5

4. 3 sets heavy pull ups REP SCHEME 8-4-6 (4 at 50)
5. 3 sets of partial presses [Tom] holes 8-11-14; . . . 147.5, 157.5, 167.5
JC: 3 sets of 6 lying triceps extensions
6. barbell curls: 3 sets (4 at 117.5)
7. abs: banded pull downs

TUESDAY - Conditioning
12 sled quick marches 30-second rests 120

WEDNESDAY
1. Squat (80% of Monday’s weight) x5, 2 sets Tom: 300 JC: 125
2. Bench Press (3x5) Tom: 247.5 JC: 110
3. Power Cleans 3x3 Tom: 225, to 262.5, 230 JC: 112.5, 115, 112.5
4. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 535
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Squats: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x5)
Tom: 337.5 JC: 140
2. Press: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x5)
Tom: 150 JC: 72.5
3. Romanian Deadlifts - off rack - 3 sets of 5
Tom 372.5 JC 170, 172.5x2

4. 8 rope climbs
5. 3 sets of partial bench presses holes (L-5-8-11) . . . . 237.5, 257.5, 305
JC: close grip bench - T-Bar, 25’s
6. 3 sets 12 dumbbell curls
7. abs: T-bar sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
row 6000 meters

[Nunedog]

I’m on to something with these partial presses.

I haven’t benched the Big Three-Oh yet, so it’s a little early to pen my memoirs, but my presses, both standing and bench, are on the move again, after a stall of almost three months.
This should make an important fact very plain: progress on the ‘main event’ presses depends entirely on the specific strengths developed in the assistance exercises.

(Here’s the fine print: That’s especially true for intermediate lifters with enough experience to have wrung out all the possible benefits from the lifts themselves. In my case, the presses topped out long ago. My squats are rolling along on their own, but the deadlifts are definitely helped by the Romanian deads, power cleans, and heavy shrugs.)

The partial presses deserve a look, in case my experience can be helpful to some other poor soul.

We have to agree on an important premise first. Think of strength training in neurological terms, which is to say the recruiting of varying numbers of motor units. To use a classic example, imagine a dime in the palm of your hand. To curl it would not require much of your bicep at all. Only a few bundles of muscle fiber, a few motor units, could do the job. If we put a 50 pound dumbbell in your hand, then a lot more bundles would have to kick on. We’d be able to see the strain. Your bicep would look like a lock of hair, as thick as a pony tail, with all those fibers pulling in tandem.

All of them? Not really. Some strands in the pony tail are just along for the ride, but the greater the majority of them we can get in on the contraction, the more powerful the force we generate. Heavier weights are the only way to stimulate this greater recruitment. Folks who fool around with lighter weights can exhaust themselves with all kinds of set-and-rep schemes, but they’re simply not using large enough percentages of their available motor units to realize their muscles’ potential.

Partial standing presses and partial bench presses, with each rep done from a dead stop on pins in a rack, are very effective at recruiting high amounts of motor units.
(How do I know that? I don’t. I can’t prove it neurologically - but these lifts are very effective at recruiting every bit of ‘oomph’ you can muster.)
They also force an athlete to position him- or herself correctly under the bar for each rep, which trains the surrounding, supporting muscles all the more thoroughly.

I do three sets of five partial presses twice a week: the standing presses on Mondays and the bench presses on Fridays. Each set is at a different height; I go from the lowest to highest settings.
At the bottom of the press, the first position is just off my collarbones by a half-inch. In the bench I’m off my chest a half-inch. These are essentially full presses, but the point of not having any contact with my body is so that I can position myself beneath the bar.
The next stop is just below the sticking point, the place where my upper arms would be parallel to the deck and creating the longest and least efficient lever arms. In the standing press, this puts the bar at about my eyebrows. In the bench, you have to eyeball this and figure out where the pins go in the rack.
The last stop is just above that sticking point. That puts the bar just barely above my head in the press. In the bench, unlike the press, you can load some pretty heavy weight in this position.

It’ll take a few sessions, but soon you’ll work up to weights that can be both brutal and feasible. These reps are exactly like deadlifts; you get yourself into position relative to a stationary bar, and then go. You pop the first rep up to the top and then come back down. Let go of the bar, take a breath, grab it, get in place, and go again - and so on. This means you’re not using the stretch reflex you get from lowering the bar. Instead, you’re like a rocket on the launchpad each time, blasting the engines for a second before liftoff.
That’s where the enhanced motor unit recruitment is taking place. The engines are firing, but the bar’s not moving until Mission Control, the central nervous system, figures out how much throttle you’re going to need.
In the middle and top positions, not only are you not using any stretch reflex, you don’t have any momentum from the bar’s coming up from below.

After each rep, you’re pretty glad to put the bar back down and regroup. In the press, I’ll step away, shake out my arms, take a breath, and then go back. I’ll grab the bar, squeeze my arse and my shoulder blades, lock my knees, and push my hips forward in order to engage the weight once more.
In the bench, it takes a few breaths to gather my courage. I pull the shoulder blades together, arch the torso, plant the rear end, and go.
Strangely enough, my pecs feel significantly more involved in the partial-dead-stop benches than in conventional bench presses. I haven’t the slightest idea whether they are stabilizing things more - along with the shoulder-blade muscles and whoever is arching my back - or if they’re doing more of the lifting than usual, but my pecs are smoked after partial benches.

While this varies with bone lengths and body types, and even an athlete’s development over time, the pectorals’ contribution to the bench press does not seem to be the most direct, trainable leverage in the world. A great many people intuit that they’re not getting the full effect of their pecs in the bench, which is why they head to the dumbbell rack for sets of flies. This is true of bodybuilders and strength athletes.

A week or two ago, when I had my shirt off one night, my wife gave me a whack in the chest and said, ‘You have pec muscles now.’ This is a woman who has spent more than 25 years overlooking my flaws. She went on: ‘With all this working out, you’ve had bulges here and there, but you’ve always been flat across the front. Now it’s different.’
These smoked and consequently more beastly pecs - along with the fact that my conventional lifts are once more on the move - would suggest that I am recruiting and training more motor units than before. Last week, I did 235 for five benches from dead stops in the bottom position. I got way more bang for my buck - way more recruitment - with those than I would have with a conventional set of 5 with 235, lowering the bar for touch-and-go reps.

Finally, also a little more beastly is a strand of tricep muscle that runs down each medial side, closest to my torso. I’m pretty sure these guys light up in the standing partials. I can’t let the benches get all the glory.

I hit a 265-pound power clean Wednesday.

Heavy-Light-Medium
Week of: 3/13/17 3 sets of 3 reps week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x3) Tom 407.5 JC : 177.5
2. Press (3x3) Tom 185 JC: 85
3. Deadlift: (1x3) Tom 495 second session JC power cleans 3x3

4. 3 sets heavy pull ups 8-4-6 REP SCHEME 4 with 53
5. 3 sets of partial presses [Tom] holes 8-11-14; . . . 150, 160, 170
JC: 3 sets of 6 lying triceps extensions
6. barbell curls: 4 with 117.5
7. abs: banded pull downs

TUESDAY - Conditioning
12 sled pulls; quick marches 125 pounds 30 second rests

WEDNESDAY
1. Squat (80% of Monday’s weight) x5, 2 sets Tom: 300 JC: 125
2. Bench Press (3x3) Tom: 262.5 JC: 120
3. Power Cleans 3x3 Tom: 225, to 267.5, 230 JC: (1x3) deadlifts 250
4. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 535
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Squats: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x3)
Tom: 367.5 JC: 160
2. Press: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x3)
Tom: 167.5 JC: 77.5
3. Romanian deadlifts (off rack) 3 sets of 5 -
Tom: 372.5, 375, 372.5 JC: 172.5

4. 4 sets of rows
5. 3 sets of partial bench presses holes 18-15-12; . . . . 240, 260, 310 (L-5-8-11)
JC: close grip bench with T-Bar: 25’s
6. 3 sets 12 dumbbell curls
7. abs: T-bar sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
sled 2 miles

[Nunedog]

Below is an abbreviated week’s template. I have to travel, so in recent days I’ve been scheming about finding a gym and dropping a guest fee. (Monday, after a dinner we’re attending? Tuesday, I could possibly fall out of bed early.)
My wife would kill me if I even mentioned the idea. Really, I’ve known the prospect was hopeless all along, but I made peace with my fate while seeing the Dropkick Murphys at DC’s Shamrock Festival last Saturday night.

Luckily, this template is a viable option. I’ve written about this before: the idea is that if on Wednesday and Friday I can climb high enough in the lifts to trigger a decent amount of neurological recruitment, the week can serve as a ‘placeholder’ of sorts. It won’t be a full week’s training benefit, but it’ll prevent any detraining, and maybe I can steal a little progress.
The next rotation calls for heavy singles, so I’ll put them off to Monday the 27th. This week, I’ll work up to 90 or 95 percent of those weights, just to let the central nervous system know what’s in store. However, the exercises I will hit at full tilt will be the partial presses, which have become so critical.

The last two gyms I’ve dropped into have been depressing places, gigantic facilities with of course only one squat rack, but more strangely, complete silence. Everyone had ear buds in. (I don’t own a set.) This was tragically antisocial. The further I proceeded, the more dystopian it became. Confined to the machines, hollow-eyed and withered older folks wondered where I was headed. Young dudes with tank-tops and tribal band tattoos faced only the mirrors as they worked their arms. It was only the comparative beginners who tried things like bench presses or deadlifts.
One young 150-pounder loaded 225 onto a bar and toughed out three or four deadlifts. I gave him a nod of encouragement.
He took out an ear bud and looked at me.
‘Nice job,’ I said. ‘Stick with it.’
His internal Mailer Daemon had a delivery failure, an internal error unauthorized. I kid you not: he said nothing, put his ear bud back in, and left.
Video screens were on every wall around the room. The place was pretty BLADE RUNNER.

In Hell, you’re allowed to lift weights, but it has to be on machines. That’s the thought you’d have after a glance at the older folks. The young dudes with the swollen arms considered themselves beyond the bench press or squat. They had stopped progressing; either that was their fault or the exercises’ as far as they knew, but the upshot was that they no longer had goals. Nobody had any emotional investment in what they were doing.
Consider the sadness of a ritual repeated without reward several days per week. That means there are no victories, major or minor, no challenges to meet or lust for all the more badly when you fall short. Working out is a duty. Training is a joy.
For the record, as I picture the guys doing french curls in the mirror, I consider the intellectual challenge of reading STARTING STRENGTH or any other training manual an important part of this quest for manliness we’re on.

The Dropkick Murphys, by contrast, exist to remind us of all that’s meant by words like confidence, defiance, or exuberance. They kicked off their first tune pretty much by surprise, from behind a drop-style curtain that was snatched away in an explosion of light and sound, revealing them at full stride in the very first seconds. Just that entrance was worth the price of admission.

The Shamrock Festival, on the Redskins’ old RFK Stadium grounds, had all the makings of a rowdy St. Patrick’s Day gathering: tons of beer and food, clothing vendors, multiple stages, and great acts. The only catch was that it was friggin’ cold. Even when the sun was at its brightest, the temperature was below freezing.
It was cold enough to keep the crowd pretty low key. You’d expect to see that sloshed and pleased-with-themselves brand of drunkenness people get from beer, and there was some of that early on, but folks realized that making it to 8:45 p.m., when the Murphys came on, was going to take some stamina.
At sundown, the truly drunk and the sweet young things, who, usually to their credit, never dress sensibly, called it a night. House of Pain, the rap duo, came onstage. They sounded pretty good but then proceeded to shatter the illusion by complaining about how cold it was. ‘Man, two days ago, I was sitting by my pool in L.A.,’ declared the . . . leader? (the white guy) whose gangster name I cannot bring myself to remember. Later, he picked up a guitar and pointed out, ‘These strings feel like razor blades.’
Come on now, I thought. You’re singing about how ‘real’ it gets, and between songs you’re whining and talking about your swimming pool? We’ve all been out here a Hell of a lot longer than you have.
For the record, I consider the intellectual challenge of checking the weather forecast and pulling on some long underwear an important part of hitting a Shamrock Fest.

The Dropkick Murphys hit their set hard, indifferent to the cold, directing their considerable energy toward the audience, and having a damned good time doing so. Singer Al Barr was leaning out over the audience, high-fiving folks and getting them to shout lyrics into his microphone. Ken Casey, the bassist and leader, is the type you’d instantly recognize as the wildest guy at any party. Between songs, he was cracking jokes: ‘This next song I wrote for some people who’ve been with me all along. This is kind of emotional - because they’re here tonight! The song is called, ‘First Class Loser.’’
Casey, it should be pointed out, stays out on stage after the shows end, and hops down to ground level to sign autographs and pose for pictures.
Mainly, a Murphys show is a seismic event, with the mosh pit, the overpowering sound, and the fired up fans. Stop a concert-goer and ask for their thoughts, and you’ll hear, ‘Those guys are great!’
Well, yeah, but they make you great, too. You get swept up in the kind of passion you don’t feel everyday and howl like the wild man you’re supposed to be. That’s not only the oldest trick in show business; it’s a direct link to its primitive origin.

This is why I came and withstood the cold, for a hit of authenticity. Hell, if the Murphys can stay tight under difficult conditions, I decided, then I should be a professional, too, and not fall down dead over an interruption in my schedule. I have a technical solution.
I can’t be a self involved wuss. I’ll be back at it soon enough - beside my pool in L.A.

REDUCED LOAD - Travel week
3/20/17
TUESDAY
Conditioning
12 quick marches 125 pounds 30 second rests


WEDNESDAY
1. Squat: work up to single rep (90-95%): Tom 407.5 JC 185
2. Bench Press: work up to single rep (90-95%) Tom 275 JC 125
3. Deadlift: work up to single rep (90-95%): Tom 500 JC 255


4. 3 sets of pull ups 8-6-4; 4 at 53 pounds
5. partial standing presses: [holes 8-11-14] 152.5, 162.5, 172.5
6. hollow rockers


FRIDAY
1. Squats: [80% of original Monday 3x5] x5, 2 sets Tom: 300 JC: 125
2. Press: work up to single rep (90-95%) Tom: 190 JC: 90
3. Romanian deadlifts (off rack) 3 sets of 5 -
Tom: 372.5, 375x2 JC: 172.5, 175, 172.5

4. 3 sets: barbell curls
5. 3 sets of partial bench presses [holes L-5-8-11] . . . . 242.5, 262.5, 310
JC: partial benches on 4-6-8
6. abs: T-bar sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile

[Nunedog]

I’m jumping the gun, because no doubt our esteemed leader, Mark Rippetoe, is gathering his thoughts for his own article on the subject.
I’ll say it first, however: the Texas Method is getting a bad rap.
Jordan Feigenbaum recently remarked,
“It’s like a Texas Method cemetery on the forum these days. A large number of people report “literally dying” after a hard volume day. It should be stated again, Texas Method as written is a young man’s program. You’ve been warned.”

This is from his recent article, ‘Into the Great Wide Open: The Texas Method and 5/3/1.’
(The Texas Method and 5/3/1 | Jordan Feigenbaum)
It’s a very good critique of both programs. The 5/3/1 he dismisses outright, which is absolutely spot on, and his final word on the Texas Method is:
“Overall, for a young man with abundant recovery resources, the squat frequency from Texas Method is good, the upper body frequency and slot allotment may be low, and the deadlift frequency is not optimal. For an older person with compromised recovery, the squat frequency is not manageable at the prescribed intensity, the upper body programming may be appropriate, and the deadlift programming is probably suboptimal when considering its volume and intensity.”

Based on my experience, I agree. Still, with so many laments on the Forum and the fact that people would even consider Wendler’s 5/3/1 in the first place, it would seem that not many people grasp the logic behind intermediate programming. Two things must exasperate Rip. People are not reading PPST3, where he introduces the intermediate phase for some 10 pages before examining the Texas Method for some 30 more. Beyond that, other intermediate templates go for nearly 30 pages further.

Secondly, it would seem that Rip is up to his ears in people who truly do not do the program. They don’t stick with the constant increases in the linear progression; they don’t eat the right amount, rest enough, or get into the gym consistently, so when he hears that people have arrived at the Texas Method somehow but can’t hack the volume day, his first suspicion isn’t directed at the program.

At age 50, I did the Texas Method, after my linear progression, at the full bore 5x5 level and got about three good months out of it. After that, I dropped my volume and squeaked out some more progress, but a lot less efficiently. Eventually, I moved to a 5-3-1 rotation - not Wendler’s, but Andy Baker’s - mixed with an HLM across each week. This reflects more trial and error than pure genius, but I think I see what people are not getting about setting up intermediate programs.

Intermediates have to figure out three things:
1. their rest interval
2. the most suitable volume of training
3. how to allocate exercises, including the assistance lifts

1. If you’re a novice lifter cracking along on the linear progression, which means you’re increasing the weight by a few pounds at every workout, this means your rest interval is pretty short - about 48 hours or less. The reason that it’s so short is that your capacity for total tonnage (your sets x reps x load) is actually pretty low compared to your ultimate potential and subsequently your body’s ability to recover from that stress.
However, by the time you’ve reached the end of your linear progression - and the reason you do reach its end - is that you’re now producing enough tonnage that you have to rest longer. You’re getting closer to your limits.
If you’re a young dude, you might be squatting up near 400 pounds and benching near 300, for example. With the presses and deadlifts having climbed as well, you’re lifting decent weight, but it wears you out.
You’re probably looking at a three or four day rest interval. Half a week’s rest interval will allow you to get two major strength sessions in. Thus the Texas Method; it’s simply meant to be the best of both worlds. You hit volume work to drive adaptation on Mondays and then expand the reach of your maximums, your intensity, on Fridays.

Here’s the thing: that half-week rest interval will last for a while, depending on your age, how hard you train, your sleep and nutrition, yeah, yeah, yeah - BUT REALLY it’s based on where your capacity for total tonnage stands against your body’s ultimate potential. The closer you get to the limits the good Lord gave you, the greater the toll your workouts are going to take - and the longer your rest intervals will have to be.
In my case, I was rolling along on the Texas Method not because I was a big, hairy stud but because I wasn’t that close to my potential. The 5-by-5 worked; it worked like crazy, but as I got stronger and handled bigger weights, I couldn’t recover in half a week’s time. I do HLM now, which means my heaviest action comes every Monday, and I take a full week to recover.

Knowing your rest interval is the single most important aspect of strength training. No routine, no clever scheme of sets and reps from Juggernaut, the Cube, Delta Force, or anybody else can alter the duration of your rest interval, and the greatest way to drive yourself insane is to try to follow a routine that’s out of sync with it.
That’s what steroids are for, by the way, to enhance the speed of recovery, as well as its amplitude.

2. Your volume is going to have to stay pretty high if you want to get stronger. . . .

I have to leave it there for now because it’s been a busy week. The volume section is actually pretty easy, and I’ve written before about exercise allocation, particularly with deadlift and pressing work.
I have to do justice to Jordan Feigenbaum, whose truly final words on the Texas Method in that piece are to look for a ‘modified Texas Method program,’ among a number of other possibilities.

Folks should be turning to Feigenbaum, Andy Baker, or any of the other STARTING STRENGTH coaches for help in designing an intermediate program. I am opening my big, fat mouth on the topic only because I don’t think anyone has approached the topic from the standpoint of an athlete’s recovery interval before, and I thought it might be a way for ordinary mortals to think about their performance and see into how the big guns design the programs.

Heavy-Light-Medium
Week of: 3/27/17 3 sets of 1 rep week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x1) Tom 435 JC : 197.5
2. Press (3x1) Tom 200 - 205+ JC: 92.5
3. Deadlift: Tom (1x1) 530 second session
JC power cleans: 112.5, 115, 112.5

4. 3 sets heavy pull ups; 4 with 53
5. 3 sets of partial presses [Tom] holes 8-11-14 . . . 155, 165, 175
JC: [holes 3-6-8] 67.5, 77.5, 87.5
6. barbell curls: 117.5 for 4
7. abs: banded pull downs

TUESDAY - Conditioning
sled pull 12 quick marches 125 pounds; 30 second rests
WEDNESDAY
1. Squat (80% of the original (3x5) Monday’s weight) x5, 2 sets Tom: 300 JC: 125
2. Bench Press (3x1) Tom: 285+ JC: 132.5
3. Power Cleans 3x3 Tom: 225, to 267.5, 225
JC DEADLIFT single 265
4. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 535
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Squats: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x5, 3x3, 3x1)
Tom: 392.5 JC: 175
2. Press: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x5, 3x3, 3x1)
Tom: 180+ (best - 20 lbs.) JC: 85
3. Romanian deadlifts (off rack) 3 sets of 5 -
Tom: 375 JC 172.5, 175x2

4. 5r muscle ups
5. 3 sets of 5 partial bench presses; holes (L-5-8-11) 245, 265, 315
JC: [holes L-4-6-8] 95, 120, 137.5
6. 3 sets 12 dumbbell curls
7. abs: T-bar sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
row 6000 meters

[Nunedog]

Here are some new numbers for the ticker:
Squat - 435 for three working singles
Press - 210
Deadlift - 530
I’m weighing 206 nowadays.

We will now continue our lecture from last class, on volume, an important consideration in

Stand by. Another number is coming in . . . .

We interrupt this blog post for an important news bulletin: this morning, for the first time ever, I bench pressed 300 pounds, a dream since I was 15 years old and a quest since I started lifting again in earnest three years ago.

It was one of those rare moments of flow. I woke up knowing today could be the day, or that my next shot would be in three weeks’ time. I worried through every warm up and paced around between sets, but when it came time for the 300, I realized that I was absently strapping on one of my wristbands. My mind had been elsewhere.
I strapped on the other one. No drama, I marveled. I’m not even nervous.
I tightened my belt, sat down, took a few breaths, lay back, and drilled it. It was level, a bit of a grind, but better than the 295 just beforehand.

Many thanks for the knowledge, Rip.

[Nunedog]

Last week, I wrote that the Texas Method has been under fire on this Forum; my contention remains that it should not be broadly dismissed. Various experts in the STARTING STRENGTH community have offered critiques and adaptations of it, which is as it should be. My view is a slightly larger picture, that a great many people don’t understand the theory behind intermediate level programming.

This is where you should be hitting ‘Click’ and Goodbye, to go read this for yourself in Rip’s PPST3. I just thought I’d take a stab at presenting it from my own layman’s point of view.
Last week, I said:
“Intermediates have to figure out three things:
1. their rest interval
2. the most suitable volume of training
3. how to allocate exercises, including the assistance lifts”
I covered part one, on knowing your rest interval, so here go 2. and 3.

2. (and 3.) As a matter of fact, I can probably cover volume and allocating exercises at the same time. I’ll go exercise by exercise. Here’s why: squats, presses, and deadlifts represent three different physiological processes, or to be more precise, three different levels of exercise effectiveness and impact upon the body.
This is what the programming guys are driving at, if they haven’t said so in so many words.

SQUATS are the very best exercise mankind has created, a touchstone of civilization no less significant than our soaring cathedrals, language and mathematics, or space flight. Within its movement, it provides the most immediate and thorough engagement of all the muscles and motor units involved. There are no questionable linkages between motion and muscles, (unlike the press and the bench press) and a good, hard session of squat training does not cause undue fatigue to the central nervous system, (as is the case with deadlifts).

For an athlete to keep getting stronger, the volume in the squats will have to stay pretty high. A novice at the end of their linear progression has proven capable of some pretty major volume, three days a week of three sets. However, as that total tonnage grew closer to their body’s threshold for that sort of thing, it started to take longer to recover.
A new intermediate still has quite the capacity for awesomeness during the course of a week, even if their training must bookend a larger rest interval. Also, since their rate of improvement will decrease, so they’re going to have to push their strength along in a new manner.
The squat volume stays high to drive the adaptation. It might not be nine sets a week, (from three days of 3 sets of 5) but it will be six. The athlete also has to hit some new maximums, the better to train the recruiting of the highest numbers of motor units possible and advance their limits.

The Texas Method is simply intended to make these two objectives feasible in the course of a week. It tips the balance of volume work to Mondays, with five sets of five. On Fridays, that limit set, a 5-rep max (or a 3- or 1RM, as time goes by) is the sixth money set.
To make this feasible approach all the more feasible, since the swing between high volume and high intensity is an adjustment for the ex-novice, Rip drops the starting weight from where they left off in the linear progression.

This will last for some duration, and you will get stronger the entire time it does. The program lasted three months for me, in which I increased my strength by 8%. In the time since, I’ve gained another 6%, although that’s taken more than a year.
Feigenbaum warns in his recent article that the Texas Method is ‘a young man’s program.’ I believe him. I picture an eager and ambitious college football player who enters school at 6’2” 180 and graduates at 280. After a linear progression, and even as he eats perfectly and follows the program religiously, a Texas Method run for him can’t last more than six months. He is going to get so strong in that amount of time that his rest interval will change again, and he’ll be on a split routine or HLM - still getting stronger, but with a week’s turnaround between epic feats.

When I topped out on the Texas Method, I didn’t know anything about the changing rest interval. I couldn’t hit the intensity day maxes, so I figured - like everybody else does - that those five sets of five were too much. I dropped my volume but only eked out a little more progress and wasted a fair bit of time. It wasn’t until I started the HLM, with its six money sets a week, that I started getting stronger again.

When the experts add upper body training volume to a template, they don’t add more PRESSES or BENCH PRESSES to the schedule. They add dips, lying triceps extensions, dumbbell work, or as in my case, partial presses.
The aims behind assistance exercises in general, according to Rippetoe, are to train part of a movement, serve as a variation of the basic exercise, or strengthen a portion of the muscle mass in a way that a given moment does not.
These objectives are especially important because the press and the bench press do not fully train the muscles involved in each.

The Olympic styled press we’re doing is a trick of leverage on both ends. In flexing the frontal components of his body, bowing, and bouncing off that tension, the lifter is boosting the bar upward to save himself the trouble of full muscular engagement in the bottom third of the lift. At the top, if the lifter knows how to drive his hips forward and bow his body once more, his shoulders will drop away from the weight almost as much as his arms drive it upward.
Tommy Kono once wrote about hanging out with his Russian counterparts. ‘How much can you strict press?’ he asked.
Plukfelder, whose Olympic Press was 330, admitted, ‘286.’ Lopatin, though, his Soviet teammate, was the one who was really getting away with murder. In the gym, his best strict press was 220, but in competition he was the lightweight world record holder with 297.

The muscles involved in the bench press are under tension all the way through, but as I’ve written before, the lift just doesn’t seem to make full use of a lot of people’s pectoral muscles. The thick-chested and short-armed among us might be shocked by this claim, but legions of bodybuilders and strength athletes with less efficient bodily levers have opted for dumbbell work or dips as superior exercises in developing their pec muscles.
If a Texas Method follower adds dips to their training, he or she is ‘strengthening a portion of their muscle mass in a way that [the bench press] does not’ (Rippetoe, above). To the extent that their pecs are involved in their benches, they’ll at least have more strength to contribute.
In my case, if I’m doing partial bench presses from different heights in a rack, I’m only strengthening those parts of my pec muscles under tension in the bench. However, partial presses from a dead stop create a way better level of motor unit recruitment than conventional reps. Per Rip’s definitions above, this would be a ‘variation of the basic exercise.’

Remember, I’m supposed to be defending the Texas Method, if not just waxing on about being an intermediate. You’re going to have to do your 5’s and rotate your lifts according to the template, but you should also add some upper body volume in the form of exercises that place the muscles under more direct tension.

(Continued below)

[Nunedog]

(from above; two posts today)

I agree with Rip: you can only do one set of DEADLIFTS a week - period. I’m talking about deadlifts as God intended, soul-searching moments of fury from which you stagger away afterwards, whether they are sets of five, three, or one.
To be honest, I don’t know what the programming big shots have in store when they’re talking about adding pulling volume. If it’s ‘back-off sets,’ or ‘moderate intensity,’ then Hell, I do that. Those aren’t real deadlifts.
Do not add deadlift sets at the Full Monty level. I did that before I was a STARTING STRENGTH follower and drove my max straight downward.

The books have a bunch of exercises, power cleans, rack pulls, stiff-legged deads, and so on, that allow you to add pulling volume while (1.) not killing your central nervous system and (2.) meeting Rip’s criteria (above) for assistance exercises. Personally, I like Romanian deads, which do a pretty good job of creating a full range of motion in pure pulling while also enforcing the isometric contraction of the lower back. The sets can be dicey stuff - but I’m only at 70% of the real McCoy.

As far as allocation goes in the Texas Method or otherwise, adding volume depends on where you you do your big deadlift set. If it’s on Fridays, you probably don’t want to tucker yourself out with Wednesday assistance work if you’ve already done some on Monday. In my case, I hit the big dead set on Monday, so I can train lesser weights on both Wednesday and Friday.

Some months ago, one of the STARTING STRENGTH coaches compiled an analysis of the novice level (was it?) blogs to determine how well the program was working. Most discouraging was the news that hardly anybody was following the bloody directions. I digress.
It would be similarly interesting to create an overview of intermediates out there - but limited to the ones who are succeeding from doing the friggin’ program in one form or another. I would expect to see the following:
-25% of intermediates, folks of just about all ages, could, would, or should be doing the Texas Method, for probably a short but wild ride.
-The other 75% would be on an HLM or a split routine. Their increased rest interval dictates that they have only one glory day a week*. Having allocated three extra sets of pulling and three sets of upper body extensor volume to the proper days, they’d be off to the races.
(* - or 1.5 glory days per week on an HLM, if presses and bench presses are done on separate days)

Heavy-Light-Medium
Week of: 4/3/17 3 sets of 5 reps week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x5) Tom 377.5 JC : 160
2. Press (3x5) Tom 170 JC: 82.5 (85?)
3. Deadlift (1x5) 470 second session JC 230

4. 3 sets heavy pull ups REP SCHEME 6-4-6 (4 at 53)
5. 3 sets of partial presses [Tom] holes 8-11-14; . . . 157.5, 167.5, 177.5
JC: [holes 3-6-8] 70, 80, 90
6. barbell curls: 3 sets (4 at 117.5)
7. abs: banded pull downs

TUESDAY - Conditioning
12 sled quick marches 30-second rests 125

WEDNESDAY
1. Squat (80% of Monday’s weight) x5, 2 sets Tom: 302.5 JC: 127.5
2. Bench Press (3x5) Tom: 250 JC: 110
3. Power Cleans 3x3 Tom: 225, to 267.5, 230 JC: 112.5, 115, 112.5
4. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 545
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Squats: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x5)
Tom: 340 JC: 145
2. Press: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x5)
Tom: 152.5 JC: 75
3. Romanian Deadlifts - off rack - 3 sets of 5
Tom 375, 377.5, 375 JC 175

4. 8 rope climbs
5. 3 sets of partial bench presses holes (L-5-8-11) . . . . 247.5, 267.5, 317.5
JC: [holes L-4-6-8] 97.5, 122.5, 140
6. 3 sets 12 dumbbell curls
7. abs: T-bar sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile

[Nunedog]

In the days I’ve been able to savor last week’s 300 pound bench press, I’ve been struck by an interesting realization: I had all the tools to do this 35 years ago. This was back in high school, with that great strength coach who set my life on course as an athlete - and pretty much as a human being.

We did heavy quarter squats, which as I recall were at a point in late winter, as track season approached. He also showed me isotonic-isometrics, done in a rack, where the athlete lifts a weight up to a set of pins at a certain height and then drives against them isometrically for a few seconds.
(You’ve seen this, in the Tommy Suggs video teaching Olympic Presses on this website.)

These are partial movements, which I’ve been giving all the credit lately for getting me to that long sought 300. Unfortunately, in 1982 I (or we) never put the clues together. We had a coherent program of quarter squats, which in my opinion worked, but we didn’t know anything about motor units, and it never occurred to us to apply the same approach to upper body training.
Damn. We were close. Still, in that musty old basement weight room, we had some flashes of greatness that have proven valuable over the years.

In the off chance that someone is actually reading this - which means the entire entry has not been destroyed by the Symantec-Kaspersky Anti-Quarter Squat Propaganda software Rip has installed -allow me to put them into a bit of context. First of all, as a high school senior, or maybe even a junior, I quarter squatted 800 pounds. A bunch of us did. A quarter squat by our definition was a bar set on pins at nipple height. I did 700 or so to various lower depths.
We had an old style rack, with I-beams set about six inches apart. A quarter squat (and now I’m using the term broadly) workout often involved the coach standing directly in front of the lifter and rapidly shifting the pins from one height to another. You’d stand the weight up, and he’d pull the pins at the top. You’d start hitting reps down at the next set of pins while he set the first ones lower. After the first reps, he’d pull those pins and you’d go down to the next level - and so on.

This lasted for only about a week or two at a time, maybe twice in the course of the school year. We were on ‘rapid-peak’ programs; the bench would be 5x5’s and the squats three or four sets of 8 or 10 at first and increasing by 10 pounds every session. (5 in the bench) After about eight weeks, we’d hit some pyramids for maxes and then switch exercises. Benches would be replaced by rack jerks, and squats by front squats. Cleans were part of this phase as well. We’d climb up the same way and get maxes in those lifts. The quarter squats would come in between those progressions.

The reason for quarter squats was simply, ‘tendon strength,’ an explanation we accepted at face value, although the coach did make us understand that events like the shot put, discus, or javelin, with their various twisting motions and bodily transmission of force, required a certain solidity. The phrase we always used was that we were getting ‘walk-through-walls strong.’ Between quarter squats and front squats, which we always considered an upper body exercise in many respects, I was pretty well shored up for all that hitting in hockey.

Almost as important, stylistically - and we definitely didn’t appreciate this at the time - was how we loaded a bar with 800 pounds. We had an ancient, soft, thick hunk of iron whose knurls had all but faded away or been filled with generations of DNA. This was an old small-bore bar onto which we loaded some used crane gears, 85 pounds apiece with teeth that would chew into your hands when you picked them up, as well as a bunch of big, spoked track wheels or flywheels that came in at 110 pounds each. They’d rattle around and bend the bar when guys did their sets, and the scariest part of each day was unloading the bar, when guys on each end had to pull things off at the same time, so the entire rig didn’t flip over and kill us all, and one wrong move could crush someone’s foot.
I’ve always wondered what happened to those flywheels. They’re probably centerpieces in some Steampunk museum nowadays.

Quarter squatting 800 and developing a certain solidity had a spiritual component, we were also to learn. One Spring day we were out at track practice when the local university’s baseball team strolled right through our area on their way to a nearby diamond. ‘Excuse me,’ our coach said. ‘We’re on the schedule until 3:30.’
Two players, in their fresh whites and cleats, relayed this to their coach. He looked over at our band of misfits clad in mismatched sweats and squinting back at him, as well as our coach, in an old blue suit and black trench coat above white sneakers.
‘I wouldn’t stand there if I were you,’ our coach called out. ‘We’re going to be throwing there.’
The backstop and base paths were across a broad field. ‘Too bad,’ the baseball coach said to his players, but we heard him.
He had failed to notice the biggest one among us, that friend who eventually wound up with the Philadelphia Eagles. Even at the time he could hurl a discus like a Greek God.

The baseball players took the field.
Our coach nodded at the big guy, who spun and launched a discus into the sky. I don’t think any of us shouted anything. It must have been the batter or one of the players in the infield, but the guy in center quickly glanced up and had time for only the smallest leap, a step really, before the discus slashed through precisely where he had been standing. Disconcerted by the way in which the discus had driven into the ground with a meat cleaving thunk, the outfielders faced mainly in our direction and had lost interest in throwing the ball around.
It was a fantastic first shot. The big guy picked up another discus and stepped back into the circle. The baseball coach was yelling by this point, but at his guys. ‘Everybody over to the side,’ he was saying as he waved his arms. They were off the field, practically in the woods, to warm up with a little catch until 3:30.
The two coaches regarded each other across the battlefield, like generals. It was just a few moments of eye contact. Our coach had his hands in the pockets of his black trench coat and offered nothing, other than free passage.

He had told us a story some time before. In his high school years, he had been a big, clumsy kind of kid with thick glasses and therefore not welcome among the cool football players in the school weight room. [God, I’m just remembering this now: ] He might not have had a father at the time, but his mother had the foresight to get him his own weights. Probably by way of STRENGTH AND HEALTH magazine, since this was in the 60’s, he taught himself how to lift.
The strongest kid on the team could clean and press 155 pounds. On some particular occasion, our future coach watched from the crowd as this seemingly won the day, whereupon he stepped forward and loaded the bar to 160. He then clean-and-jerked it with one arm.
This left everybody gobsmacked. The one armed clean, he informed us, is a vital skill for a young man making his way in the world.

The one armed clean, with just 135, will be greeted with a few different reactions. The first is an incredulity, as if you had commenced juggling fire or swallowing swords in the center of the gym. Onlookers simply cannot quantify what they’ve witnessed and usually can’t get past the thought that you’re not supposed to use just one hand on a long bar clearly meant for two.

Its main purpose, of course, is to shut down some gym clown who’s made himself the center of attention. It works so well that it’s almost cruel: ‘A big guy like you . . . I bet you can lift that with one hand . . . No? . . . It doesn’t seem very heavy . . . . All you have to do is this, right?’
That’s when the poor idiot tries to row it or curl it himself, a plate slides off one end, and the whole thing flips over in a giant, embarrassing crash. It’s as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

Be warned, however: women are not fooled by this, for a combination of the two reasons above. They know there’s no sensible rationale for anyone to be cleaning with one hand, so your desire to show off is absolutely transparent. They’re hard wired not to be so easily provoked by such displays.
A woman might be pleased if your 135 pound one-armed clean liberates her from an overbearing clod, or if it’s just the two of you, it would be an interesting test of whether she likes you. If she gushes with approval, she liked you already and is putting on an act just as shamelessly as you are. If she smirks and shakes her head, you’re fighting an uphill battle. Good luck, lads.

I cleaned 267.5 on Wednesday, though I had to use two hands, and my wife was not there to roll her eyes.

[Nunedog]

The usual weekly windbag post is above. I'm getting too long and involved for a single entry.

Heavy-Light-Medium
Week of: 4/10/17 3 sets of 3 reps week
MONDAY
1. Squat 3x3) Tom 410 JC : 180
2. Press (3x3) Tom 187.5 JC: 85
3. Deadlift: (1x3) Tom 500 second session JC power cleans 3x3

4. 3 sets heavy pull ups 6-4-6 REP SCHEME 4 with 53
5. 3 sets of partial presses [Tom] holes 8-11-14; . . . 160, 167.5, 180
JC: [holes 3-5-7] 70, 80, 90
6. barbell curls: 4 with 117.5
7. abs: banded pull downs

TUESDAY - Conditioning
12 sled pull quick marches 125 pounds 30 second rests

WEDNESDAY
1. Squat (80% of Monday’s weight) x5, 2 sets Tom: 302.5 JC: 127.5
2. Bench Press (3x3) Tom: 265 JC: 120
3. Power Cleans 3x3 Tom: 225, to 270, 230 JC: (1x3) deadlifts 252.5
4. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 545
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Squats: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x3)
Tom: 370 JC: 162.5
2. Press: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x3)
Tom: 170 JC: 77.5
3. Romanian deadlifts (off rack) 3 sets of 5 -
Tom: 375, 377.5x2 JC: 175, 177.5, 175

4. 4 sets of rows
5. 3 sets of partial bench presses holes (L-5-8-11). . . . 250, 270, 320
JC: [holes L-4-6-8] 100, 125, 140
6. 3 sets curls
7. abs: T-bar sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
sled 2 miles

[Nunedog]

I have one shake-up to the routine to announce: Tuesday’s sled pull will no longer be an interval session. I’m going long, which still means only about a half hour, but the larger issue is that I think endurance training will afford me better results.
It always has. By contrast, I’m pretty wary of high intensity interval training, mainly because I’ve always been dreadful at it. That’s with one major exception: strength training sets are high intensity intervals, and they’re certainly working, but when it comes to CrossFit or even sled pulls, with lighter loads and shorter rest times, I’ve never observed much training benefit. My WOD times never really improved in CrossFit, and nowadays pulling the sled, I’m not sure I want them to.

A decade ago, and more, when I was endurance guy, I was pretty efficient. By that I mean that I could manage a decent speed, running or swimming, at a comfortable level of metabolic output. Whether just a few steps out the door or by my first flip turn, I would be at a cruising speed that I could maintain for the entire five or six miles on the road or two in the water.
I never went too long or too hard, and amazingly enough, this 70% throttle prepared me for the times that I had to ramp it up. I placed in some races, and knocked out a few overland expeditions and run-swim-runs with the lads from the NSWU.

I was spectacularly, mysteriously bad at CrossFit’s high intensity interval training. When I followed the Main Site’s programming, I’d log in with each day’s slowest time. This wasn’t for lack of effort; I thrashed myself mercilessly, pushing my respiratory and performance limits, but made surprisingly little progress on everything - kettle bell swings, box jumps, and so on. As a guy who squatted 460 at age 17 and later could run sub-6:30’s in 10-K races, I was flabbergasted to realize that after the greatest expenditure of effort in my athletic career, I was in my worst shape ever: I was weak, and I couldn’t go long.

People get wise to CrossFit, realizing they have to get strong to improve at the WOD’s. I tried an interesting experiment over some months on CrossFit’s signature WOD ‘Fran.’ I had come in under the four minute mark on ‘Fran’ only once in my career, a fact that had driven me utterly mad - and which I still consider an embarrassing admission.
I was lifting weights and getting stronger, and I decided to specialize (and not randomize) my interval training for ‘Fran.’ Twice a week, I’d work on thrusters, a front squat and push press combination, as well as pull ups. I’d follow a certain progression for a few weeks and then test my progress.
I went nowhere.
I lengthened intervals, increased weight, shortened rest intervals; my progressions made no progress on the final event whatsoever. The causality remains a mystery to this day. In the years before and after CrossFit, I could train for endurance and improve that; the same has gone for strength. It’s just that area seemingly in the middle that showed no training effect.

Now for another embarrassing admission: I’ve done my Tuesday sled work as intervals mainly because everyone on the STARTING STRENGTH website goes on and on about them - especially prowler pushes. I was looking for the best of both worlds: something not too taxing between lifting days, with supposedly a decent bang for the buck in terms of conditioning.
I’ve begun to wonder just how much of a bang it is for that buck. When a given weight on the sled becomes easy, I should go up, I’d figure. Then I’d stop and think, ‘I’ve been down this road before. I’ll knock myself out and not get a goddamned thing out of it, if CrossFit is any indication. All the abuse will only wreck my strength days.’

The upshot is that I’ve been putzing around on Tuesdays, huffing and puffing a little but not pushing myself in terms of weight or effort. It’s time to get back to something I know bestows physical benefit, 70% throttle for some baseline conditioning.

Heavy-Light-Medium
Week of: 4/17/17 3 sets of 1 rep week
MONDAY
1. Squat 3x1) Tom 437.5 JC : 200
2. Press (3x1) Tom 205+ JC: 92.5
3. Deadlift: Tom (1x1) 535 second session
JC power cleans: 112.5, 115, 112.5

4. 3 sets heavy pull ups; 4 with 53
5. 3 sets of partial presses [Tom] holes 8-11-14 . . . 162.5, 167.5, 182.5
JC: [holes 3-5-7] 72.5, 82.5, 92.5
6. barbell curls: 117.5 for 4
7. abs: banded pull downs

TUESDAY - Conditioning
sled pull 2 miles; 45, 25

WEDNESDAY
1. Squat (80% of the original (3x5) Monday’s weight) x5, 2 sets Tom: 302.5 JC: 127.5
2. Bench Press (3x1) Tom: 287.5+ JC: 130+
3. Power Cleans 3x3 Tom: 235, to 270, 235
JC DEADLIFT single 270
4. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 545
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Squats: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x1)
Tom: 395 JC: 180
2. Press: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x1)
Tom: 185+ (best - 20 lbs.) JC: 87.5
3. Romanian deadlifts (off rack) 3 sets of 5 -
Tom: 377.5 JC 175, 177.5x2

4. 4r, ring pull ups
5. 3 sets of 5 partial bench presses; holes (L-5-8-11) 252.5, 272.5, 297.5
JC: [holes L-4-6-8] 102.5, 127.5, 142.5
6. 3 sets 12 dumbbell curls
7. abs: T-bar sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile