I hope your folks are okay down south. We only got a tiny 1/4" of rain from the storm.
Workout wise you are moving some nice weight with your worksets on the bench now. How did I not notice that? Cool
8/30/23 - Wednesday
Pin BP I @ 3'
45x5x3
95x5
135x3
185x1
215x1
240x1
265x1
237.5x2x3
BP I @ 5'
250x3x4
OP V @ 2'
45x5x2
95x3
135x1
150x2x12
Music — Buddy Guy, Mary Had A Little Lamb; Gary Clark Jr., Grinder; George Thorogood vs Amos Milburn, One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer; The Who (Live At Leeds), I Can't Explain; Scorpions, Blackout; Nazareth, Hair Of The Dog.
Notes — Mentally distracted about Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall about 55 miles west of Mom and Sister, which was better than yesterday afternoon's forecast, which would have put them in the eyewall all morning. Power's out and trees are down, but all is OK so far.
- Pin BP - Intensity single w/ backoff doubles across. Apparently I need to mark my rack holes for this lift, since it took me a few minutes to set the safeties right. The heavy single went well. As did the backoff doubles.
- BP - Intensity Triples across. The first regular BP after the pins is tough because I am anticipating the contact with the safeties and when it doesn't happen, things get a bit wonky for a second. Second set was solid. Third set, third rep slowed considerably, but locked out (see distraction disclaimer above). Fourth set went fine.
- OP - Volume doubles across. All good.
I hope your folks are okay down south. We only got a tiny 1/4" of rain from the storm.
Workout wise you are moving some nice weight with your worksets on the bench now. How did I not notice that? Cool
Thanks Fred. Last I heard, about 3 hours ago, is that the power was still out and tons of limbs and branches down on the property, but nothing unmanageable. Mom just upgraded her generator this year, so that's keeping everything cold, which is huge.
re: bench - moving right along, much faster than the split program that I had been running, which got me a new PR every fourth week. This one is moving along with PRs every week in most of the lifts. I just can't be too greedy about it. And honestly, I hadn't really been paying attention, but after you mentioned it I noticed that today's 250x3x4 is just shy of my 1RM of 255 that I set back in December. Those are full ROM bench presses, so the pin bench presses don't count.
8/31/23 - Thursday
HDL I @ 8'
135x4
185x2
225x1
275x1
325x1
315x1
365x5
325x5
Pause SQ V @ 5'
45x5x2
135x5
185x3
225x1
275x1
305x1
330x4x2
Music — Biohazard & Onyx, Judgment Night; Rammstein, Engel; Faderhead, The Harsh Rejector; Front 242, Welcome To Paradise (V1.0); MCL, New York; Nine Inch Nails, Sanctified; Revolting Cocks vs Rod Stewart, Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?; Lords Of Acid, I Sit On Acid.
Notes —
- HDL - Intensity set w/ 89% backoff. Main workset went well, although there was some bar drift away from my left leg on the last two reps. I focused on getting that under control during the backoff set, which I did. All good.
- Pause SQ - Volume sets across w/ 2-count pause. I dropped two sets—so really, not much Volume— from this today for a few different reasons, including making sure that I've recovered my lower back from last week's shenanigans. I need to put that behind me. And that first set felt anything but light, to the point that had I gone with the programmed four sets today, I doubt I would have finished them, which defeats the purpose of the light session. So for these I have two options, 1) drop weight, or 2) drop sets. Since I need to keep the intensity higher (right around 90%), dropping the weight doesn't quite work. So dropping sets it will have to be. Today's second set went better than the first, although it felt like I started to divebomb on the last rep, although I kept it tight and drove up to lockout. All good.
Enjoy your long weekend, everyone, however you can get it.
9/4/23 - Monday
Pin OP
175x0
175x1
197.5x1 (three attempts)
OP I @ 2'
45x5x3
95x3x2
135x3
155x1
175x1x5
BP V @ 5'
45x5x2
95x5
135x3
175x1
205x1
235x4x4
Music — Anthrax vs Rush, Anthem; Metallica vs Motorhead, Stone Dead Forever; Soulfly vs Helmet, In The Meantime; Testament vs Judas Priest, Rapid Fire; Trivium vs Iron Maiden, Iron Maiden; Joker's Republic vs NOFX, The Separation Of Church And Skate.
Notes — A great weekend with framily, full of live music, beverage, and games. We dropped them off at the airport this morning, decompressed for a bit, and now I'm back at it.
- Pin OP - Intensity single. Since I'm only doing these 1x/week, I'm still working out the start position. That 175x1 warmup didn't go up since I still didn't get my shoulders under the bar before shrugging it up, so it pushed out and away from me as it started to leave the safeties. A quick reset and it cruised up. Honestly, not worth a mention, but it happened and will get me focused on it next week. Even with that focus, the first attempt at 197.5 barely got off the safeties. I tried two more times, but those were welded to the safeties. I was over mid-foot and shoulders, but this just wasn't going to go today. No doubt it's a recovery issue from the long weekend. Nothing to worry about, I'll do it next week.
- OP - Intensity singles across. Mis-remembered that 95lb warmup set, which I planned as 95x5, but stopped at 3. So I repeated it. Then, after the strain of the 3x attempts at the Pin Press, I was concerned that I had fried my shoulders for these singles. The first was quite rough, the second and third improved, then the fourth. The fourth stalled a few inches above my head, then started to drift down. I wasn't having any of that and managed to shrug it to lockout (not a competition white light lift, but it got done in this garage). The fifth went just fine. All good.
- BP - Volume sets across. All good, although my recovery (or lack thereof) over the weekend reared its head during the last set, with a too-grindy-for-a-light-set rep or two.
9/5/23 - Tuesday
Pause SQ I
45x10x3
135x5
185x3
225x1
275x1
325x1
365x1
Box SQ I @ 3'
355x2x2
SQ I @ 5'
370x3x3
PC V @ 3'
65x5x2
115x5
145x3
165x3x3
Music — Pailhead, Anthem; Sisters Of Mercy, More; Meat Beat Manifesto vs Depeche Mode, Everything Counts; The Creatures, Fury Eyes; The Sugar Cubes, Coldsweat; The Cramps, Human Fly; Pigface, Suck; Ministry, The Angel; Skinny Puppy, Sleeping Beast.
Notes —
- Pause SQ - Intensity Single w/ 2-count pause. Slow but steady, just as it should be.
- Box SQ - Intensity Doubles @ 14". Overall good, with the last rep of the second set a true grind off the box up to lockout.
- SQ - Intensity Triples. Repeat of last week's weight, since I didn't complete that session due to poor decision making the week prior. I focused on driving these out of the hole (like Andy Baker wrote about here), which led to pretty solid bar bounces at lockout (the plates would have rattled if they weren't Strength Co plates). I was pretty pleased with that, as that last grindy Box SQ introduced some concerns prior to these worksets. All good.
- PC - Volume Triples across. I hesitate to call this Volume at 9 total reps, but it's my light pull day and I don't want to overdo it like I did two weeks ago with the Haltings on this day. Besides, my last Clean session was this weight on 6/19/23. That 2.5 month gap between Clean worksets—not counting various Cleans during warmup reps for other lifts—really showed in my form, which was all over the place. But I was able to rack the bar each rep just fine, thanks to the other pulls from the floor that I have been doing. All good.
9/7/23 - Thursday
Pin BP I @ 3'
45x5x3
95x5
135x3
185x1
215x1
245x1
267.5x1 pins
240x2x3 pins
BP I @ 5'
252.5x3x4
OP V @ 2'
45x5x2
95x3
125x1
140x1
152.5x2x12
Music — Ultravox, Dancing With Tears In My Eyes; David Bowie, Five Years; The Clash, Armagideon Time; Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Two Tribes; The The, Armageddon Days (Are Here Again); The Fixx, Red Skies; Billy Idol, World Comin' Down.
Notes —
- Pin BP - Intensity single w/ 90% backoff doubles at 2-count pause. The heavy single went great, even with a lower pin height than I had been using (now 3.5" off the chest); it was heavy as hell, settled slowly to the pins as I focused on staying tight through the 2.5-count, then exploded up off the bar. Exactly how these are supposed to be. The same could be said for the three sets of doubles. All good.
- BP - Intensity triples across. After the prolonged tightness necessary for the Pin BPs, these were tough as hell, with the third rep of each set slowing significantly on the way up to lockout. All good.
- OP - Volume doubles across. All good.
Last edited by Bill Anders; 09-07-2023 at 07:22 PM.
9/8/23 - Friday
DL I @ 8'
135x4
225x2
275x1
315x1 h
350x1 m
390x3 s
350x3 m
Box SQ V @ 5'
45x5x2
135x5
185x3
225x1
275x1
305x1
320x4x3
Music — Carrie Underwood vs Motorhead, Ace of Spades; Dystopica vs Iron Maiden, Flight Of Icarus; Uncured vs Linkin Park, One Step Closer; Imperial Triumphant vs Rush, Jacob's Ladder; Gwar vs Kansas, Carry On My Wayward Son; Type O Negative, Unsuccessfully Coping With The Natural Beauty Of Infidelity; Metallica, The Frayed Ends Of Sanity.
Notes —
- DL - Intensity Triple w/ 90% backoff triple. Main set (strapped) went well, although there was a bit of twisting going up on reps 2 & 3 where the bar drifted away from my left leg. I got that twisting under control for the backoff triple (mixed grip) and they went up smoothly. So smooth that I immediately started thinking about adding a second backoff triple. Damn brain. But I beat that thought down and am keeping the volume appropriate. N.B.: I'm still trying to figure out where I am with the full ROM Deadlift, since I haven't been doing them since last December. Three weeks ago I was thinking 405x3, but ended up only with 405x1, which I then reset to the 90% 365x3x2, which went fine. Today's leap to 390x3 + 350x3 was still an unknown, but having kept my overall volume under control over the past two weeks, I probably could have gone that 405x3 + 365x3, with a bit of grinding during the main set. I'll work to keep my overall volume reasonable (i.e., ignoring that voice in my head to throw in another set) over the next few weeks and see about 400/360 for the next session.
- Box SQ - Volume sets across at 14". That prolonged time under tension sure makes these "Light" SQs pretty brutal. All good.
Frayed Ends of Sanity is the single most underrated Metallica song.