Monday, June 10, 2019
Heavy Squat: 275x5, 255x5x4
Close Grip Bench (M. Pressing): 177.5x5x4
Deadlift (M. Pull): 275x5x4
BW: 294.1#
Waist: 49"
I'm off work today in prep of going camping Tuesday-Friday (coming home Friday), so morning workout today. Overall I found today to be a mixed bag. 275 squat felt really heavy. Much more so than the 270 I did last Tuesday. But, it went up every rep, so going to move up next week. The 255 back-off sets were ok. Felt a bit easier than Saturday's 245 medium squats, but not as easy as last week's 250 back-offs.
Close grip bench was harder than I was expecting, even after the last warmup at 155, but they weren't excessively challenging. Overall these were good.
Deadlift was my surprise lift of the day. It felt great. Bar stayed against my leg, reps moved relatively quickly with only a couple breaths at the bottom, and the weight moved up smoothly. If you've looked at my NLP log and this one, two of my big issues are bar staying against the leg and being very winded after the first 3 reps to the point that I switched to triples towards the end of NLP. These didn't have any of those signs. Only ~85% of my heavy deadlift, but at the volume, I was still having issues. So again, today volume deads were a pleasant surprise.
294.1 is my lowest recorded weight since I started in October. I think I may have seen about this in a mid-week weighing, but I screwed it up by Monday and weighed more. This was pretty exciting. Waist still measures about 49", which is fine. I think this week was good for getting me to a new baseline to work down from. I was pretty solid on my diet (I'd say averaged 2200-2300/day, but need to check to verify). Looking forward to getting into the 280's. I was about 285 when I started NLP 9 years ago, and I made it to about 268 then. I'm already lifting at the same level or higher as what I ended there, and just getting down there. Hopefully the road to 250 still has plenty of PRs. Once there, I'll have to decide how to progress down further (mainly - 2-3lbs a week still, or slow up to 1ish/wk).
As mentioned, going camping tomorrow and will be back on Friday. As of now I am missing my light day which isn't a huge loss except for presses. If we get home in time, I may give them a go on Friday to keep them moving along. Down side to that is Saturday will be heavy bench, and I don't want to impact that either. Worst case scenario here I miss the lift this week and drop back to 135 next week and am back where I should be 2 weeks from then. Diet-wise, I should be good while camping. I'm not tracking everything, but we're having 3 meals instead of 4-5, and the meals we're having are in line with what I might at normally. So, I should be ok coming in to next Monday's weigh in.
I also need to record a few sets again soon. I've been out of habit and enjoying just lifting, but I think my squat may be devolving into a low-bar-loaded high bar squat to some extent. I also want to make sure in the effort I've been giving to keep the bar against my legs, that I'm not compromising on back extension.