The last attempt to grow out of novice adaptation

[dynamo]

Sat 7th August 2010
BW@morning 119 kg (262 lbs)

Squat - 95 kg (209 lbs) x 5/5/5
Bench - 80 kg (176 lbs) x 5/5/5
Power clean - 80 kg (176 lbs) x 3/3/3/3/3

Felt tight especially on hips and groins when started the warm-up. Careful warming up opened the tight areas. Nothing special on squats, solid sets, tried to work on knee sliding issue but not really sure if it got better or not. Bench and power cleans are now on PR sets across level so those were as hard as one can imagine. I don't still have access on microloads and most probably I try to go with sets of six with the same weight on the next bench session.

Loved to lift after two day break and long sleep last night. Circumstances really have a huge affect on performance.

[dynamo]

Mon 9th August 2010
Squat - 97,5 kg (215 lbs) x 5/5/5
Press - 57,5 kg (127 lbs) x 5/5/5
Deadlift - 145 kg (320 lbs) x 5

Squat OK, presses got easier set by set, deadlift was light as supposed after reset.

Tue 10th August 2010
BW@morning 119,5 kg (263 lbs)
Second hockey session of the season, one hour feels rather long after the summer without conditioning

[dynamo]

Wed 11th August 2010

Squat - 80 kg (176 lbs) x 5/5
Bench - 82,5 kg (182 lbs) x 3/4/3/3
Power clean - 82,5 kg (182 lbs) x 3/2

Felt a bit fatigued from the beginning and decided to take light day on squats. 2,5 kg steps are too big for bench, needed to add extra set for getting volume up. Anyway, biggest weight I have pressed for reps and biggest I have cleaned at all. Ran out of gas on the second clean set, on better circumstances sets are doable. Recorded first clean set and found small things to work on but in general those were very nice lifts.

Thu 12th August 2010

7AM hockey session only 10 hours after finishing the lifting on last night, crazy stuff. I am not sure how long I can take this amount of load. Need to eat more.

[dynamo]

Sat 14th August 2010
Squat - 100 kg (220 lbs) x 5/5/5
Press - 60 kg (132 lbs) x 5/5/4 (5 rep PR)
Deadlift - 150 kg (331 lbs) x 1/5 (1xdouble overhand grip, 5xleft hand supine grip)

Squats OK, pressing was surprisingly strong, pulled deadlifts without belt and getting into starting position felt better. Warm-ups felt so strong that tried first to pull with double overhand grip, it didn't work out and pulled the work set with the normal one hand supine grip.

Sun 15th August 2010
BW@morning 119 kg (262 lbs)

[dynamo]

Mon 16th August 2010

Squat - 102,5 kg (226 lbs) x 5/5/5
Bench - 82,5 kg (182 lbs) x 4/4/4
Power clean - 82,5 kg (182 lbs) x 3/2/2/1/1/1

Squats start to be taxing, bench was quite like I expected. Ran short of time with cleans and did first set normally, then two doubles on two minute clock and 3 singles on one minute clock.

[Mr.City]

Nice job on the cleans.

[dynamo]

Busy week and needed to skip Tue hockey and Wed lifting

Thu 19th August 2010
morning hockey

Sat 21st August 2010
Squat - 105 kg (231 lbs) x 5/5/5
Press - 60 kg (132 lbs) x 5/5/5 (sets across PR)
Deadlift - 152,5 kg (336 lbs) x 5 (right hand supine grip)

All lifts solid today, recorded first work set of squats but haven't yet looked into it.

Thanks Mr. City for the support, without cleans I'd suck in all lifts...

[slowjoe]

Busy week and needed to skip Tue hockey and Wed lifting

Thu 19th August 2010
morning hockey

Sat 21st August 2010
Squat - 105 kg (231 lbs) x 5/5/5
Press - 60 kg (132 lbs) x 5/5/5 (sets across PR)
Deadlift - 152,5 kg (336 lbs) x 5 (right hand supine grip)

All lifts solid today, recorded first work set of squats but haven't yet looked into it.

Thanks Mr. City for the support, without cleans I'd suck in all lifts...

Uh, NO!

Deadlift and press aren't bad either. Clean does look impressive though.

[dynamo]

Mon 23rd August 2010
BW@morning 120 kg (265 lbs)

Squat - 107,5 kg (237 lbs) x 3/3
Bench - 82,5 kg (182 lbs) x 5/5/4 (5 rep PR)
Power clean - 82,5 kg (182 lbs) x 3/3/3/3/2

Feeling at the beginning of session was that it's not going to be awesome today. Didn't get myself switched on in the squat warm-ups and completing the work sets stayed faraway. Cutting the squat might had helped with other lifts as bench felt very good, only absence of safety bars and spotter prevented to complete the last set. I had to check twice between the sets that I do have correct load on the bar. Cleans were fun, one wouldn't know from the first two sets that the weight is the heaviest I've cleaned ever for any reps. The last rep of fifth set came up to the mid-chest but timing didn't work and rack didn't happen. I have temptation to increase 1 kg to the next clean session, but probably I'll gauge how am I on that session and decide after that.

[dynamo]

Tue 24th August 2010
70 minutes of hockey

Slowjoe's comment about sucking or not made me dig out my 1st edition of PPST1 and the famous strength standard chart. I have read from the board that the wide-spread misuse of the chart made it disappear from the 2nd ed. I understand that there are lots of parameters which can affect on the 1 RM ability and on individual's balance between different lifts but I'd like to see where I stand in the grand scheme of things.

One problem is that I haven't tested out my 1RM values so I need to apply the chart from different point of view. One application would be to look at the "Novice" column and see where my current work sets stand compared to that. I use BW class 275 lbs as the reference.

Press - work sets 132 lbs - novice 131 lbs - intermediate 164 lbs
Squat - work sets 232 lbs - novice 261 lbs - intermediate 319 lbs
Bench - work sets 182 lbs - novice 196 lbs - intermediate 239 lbs
Deadlift - work sets 336 lbs - novice 326 lbs - intermediate 373 lbs
Power Clean - work sets 182 lbs - novice 188 lbs - intermediate 230 lbs

In this comparison deadlift seems to be the strongest. I'd guess that I could pull 373 lbs since my best set of 5 was pulled with 353 lbs. Press is the second lift where work sets exceed the novice limit but I have doubts that I yet could press 164 lbs. Power clean and bench press operate with similar numbers and power clean work sets will get to the novice level soon. I again guess that I'll power clean the intermediate value before benching it because I feel that I have more room to grow with cleans than with bench. Squat comes last in this comparison but I still have linear progression going on with squat as bench seem to be soon milked out.

If this comparison makes any sense, I'd say that my lifts are well balanced and I do not suck in any of them. Deadlift leads a bit and bench lags behind. The reason for both would be the extra long set of arms. Still it doesn't explain why press is relatively stronger compared to bench. The same set of arms is used when pressing overhead as well. It could be that I have some flaw in the benching form. Maybe time to re-read the bench chapter of SS.