Started with 5/3/1 bench. Learning from my mistakes yesterday, I took a different approach to warming up that worked well. Essentially, when I warm up with LESS changes of weight, but do each weight for MORE sets and reps (until I feel really comfortable at that weight), I think I perform better. I'm in the habit of just doing 5 reps at a given weight, then throwing on another 25 or 45 and doing 5 more, etc. But I think I need to take a little more time/sets/reps at each warmup weight in order to be more comfortable under the heavier weights. Example: today, instead of doing bar, 75, 95, 115, 135, etc, I just did bar, 95, 135 as warmups, but I did 3 or 4 sets with the bar, then 2 sets of 8-10 at 95, and 2 sets of 3-5 at 135. I just stayed at the same weight until I really felt comfortable at that weight. I think that works better for me than just banging out sets of 5 at a bunch of different weights. ANYWAYS, good warmup today. Then I hit 160 for 5, which was not hard but I was dizzy. I was more careful under 180 and hit it for 3 that weren't crazy easy but not very hard. Then I loaded up 200 for reps and hit it for 3. That third rep was NOT easy, but I still got it, and 200 for 3 is a BIG PR. Especially considering that last month I could only get that 195 for 2. Very cool.
Next up was 5 x 10 benching. Like with squatting, I got rid of the timed rest for this for the time being, and just did it as fast as I felt able. The first set or two were a little shaky as far as form goes, but I got through 4 sets of 10 solidly, and then hit 13 reps on the last set. This is pretty cool - last summer my max reps at this weight was 14, so getting 13 after 40 other reps and 5/3/1 reps is pretty good. definitely growing stronger.
Next were kroc rows. I did them a little differently today, doing the first ten or so reps fairly strict, then only letting my form break down after they got really hard to do strict. These were MUCH better than they've been lately, I did 25 each arm and my back was TOAST by the end of them. Awesome pulls.
Then, I did some Overhead press. Did pretty much all of my reps from a dead stop, which I'm basically going to do from now on. Started with 95 lbs on the bar and worked up in singles - hit 95, 105, 115, 125, 135 and then 145 for 3 singles, which is pretty good, considering what happened friday (FUCK THAT WEIGHT). Then I worked down, doing max paused reps at 135, 125, 115, and 95.
Finally, did some pullups. I wanted to do these weighted today, so I did 5 with nothing, 5 with 10 lbs, and then 5 with 15. The weight belt wasn't that comfortable, so I tried to switch to the weight vest, which is about 30 lbs, but then it kept hitting me in the face when I kipped, so I took it off. I then decided to just finish up with a big set of pullups the way I did the kroc rows - do a bunch strict, then switch to kipped and go to failure. Did 5 strict, then did 10 kipped but at about rep 15 I started getting excruciating brain pain. The headache wasn't too bad, but my body's message is clear - doing high rep kipped pullups, I get tired and strain my neck and get headaches. SO, gonna start doing pullups for lost of sets of less reps, rather than to failure.
SO, overall, a day full of hard work and progress. The headache sucked, but now I have some new strategies to avoid it. And all my other lifts went really well today. LETS KEEP WORKING
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