steve, starting from scratch

[sgtroyer]

10/26

Racks full, started with press.

OHP: 75x4,4,4,3 I guess either I need to reset or accept that I'm doing 4 reps instead of 5.

SQ: 185x0, 180x1, 175x4. Whelp, that was a mess. Failed coming out of the hole on the first rep. And apparently that screwed up my confidence, my technique, or my strength, because everything after that was just a mess. Eventually I gave in to the obvious and decided to stop. I'll try again in a few days.

[sgtroyer]

I've still been training, but got out of the habit of logging. Certainly, in part, because my progress has been pretty spotty and I haven't been getting in as many workouts as I should. I've done a couple of resets here and there, particularly press and bench press, which were both pretty stuck. Hopefully maybe making progress again, albeit slowly. I know what I really need to do is gain some weight (still at ~144), but I'm having trouble doing that.

10/29

SQ: 180x5x3
BP: 100x5,4 decided it was time to reset, and was in a hurry, so stopped.
DL: 215x4 form felt *very* sketchy, stopped.

did a few assisted pull ups, don't remember why

11/5

SQ: 175x5x3 7-day break, so I dropped the weight a little
OHP: 65x5,5,6
DL: 205x5

11/9

SQ: 175x5x3
BP: 90x5x3

Chin ups: 6,5,5

11/13

SQ: 175x5x3 I don't remember why I kept not increasing the weight. Fear?
BP: 95x5x3 accidentally did bench press instead of ohp. I guess I just like it better.
DL: 215x5 videoed this. not terrible, but still not happy with setting my back. I get it good and straight, but then relax it a little as I begin to pull. Going to reset a little and work on it.

11/16

SQ: 180x5x3 videoed these and the depth was actually a little too deep. which might be why I was having trouble progressing. So I relaxed a little on the depth. Hopefully not too much.
OHP: 70x5,5,6

Chin ups: 7,6,5

11/19

SQ: 185x5x3 I was intimidated by 185 after abjectly failing it a few weeks ago, but it was fine. Relaxing on the depth helped, I'm sure.
BP: 100x5x3 YES! Finally.
DL: 195x5

Chin ups: 8,5,4 (didn't quite wait long enough between sets, was in a hurry)

For this most recent workout two people came over to me after my final squat set because they were concerned about my form. The guy asked didn't that hurt my back, and why was I bending over so far, I needed to stay more vertical. I tried to explain that with the bar lower on my back you necessarily bend further or you can't stay balanced. He said, well, you need to keep the bar higher then, because you're going to hurt your back. I said, as long as my lower back is straight, I should be fine, and from what they saw, was it straight? They both said no, when you bend over that far it's curved, and also you need to look up, not down like you were, that's making it curved too. I sort of said, well, thanks, I'll think about it.

I've heard plenty about other people having this sort of experience, I'm sort of surprised it took this long to happen to me. It's certainly possible that they're right about my back being curved, I'm going to shoot a video from behind next time so that I can get a look, and maybe I'll post it here too. At least if I do that, and they come talk to me again (yo, dude, you're still doing it, here let me show you), I can at least tell them that from the video my back looked fine, and I promise I'm going to be okay. I have zero interest in educating them about the starting strength method. I just want to be left to lift in peace like I usually do.