3 Week - squats

Gym was very good today. Squats went down like this: 

bar x 5

85 x 5

125 x 5

165 x 3 

Work Sets

195 x 3

225 x 3

250 x 12

This is how the 12th rep felt in my soul. 

So I hit my goal - 250 for 12 with no belt. I had some small problems. On some of the earlier reps, my knees were swooping in a bit right as I started coming out of the bottom. And on some later reps, my chest was coming forward a bit, and I was sort of Good-morning-ing the weight up to finish reps. This first problem I think just came from me rushing the reps. Getting under 90% of my working 1-rep and knowing I have to do it for 10-12 reps is mentally hard. So, I end up trying to rip through the set... which results in sloppy reps, which today manifested as my knees coming in. I've had this problem before - about a months ago, doing 240 for reps, it was my lower back that was really soft through some of the later reps. So next week, I'm going to try and really focus on doing every rep as a single, and not rushing. The set will take longer and it will hurt more, but in the end it will mean better form and therefore better weights when I go REALLY heavy, less chance of injury, and possibly even more reps in that specific set because I won't be wasting energy through lack of tightness and extraneous movements. I just need to man up, focus up, and fuck it up next week when I do 260 for reps with the belt. 

The second problem (my chest coming forward) definitely also has to do with rushing, but I also think it has to do with my bar position being a little too low, even for a low-bar back squat. Today I was fooling around with a slightly higher bar position, and it feels good - I think me having the bar too low has been part of the reason for things like the bar rolling, me not being able to take as deep of a breath as I'd like under heavy weight, and my chest coming forward. Putting it higher will help me fix these problems... but it also means that when I'm sloppy and my chest DOES drop, it's gonna be REALLY hard to get that weight up. Which is sort of what happened on the later reps today - toward the end of the set, the bar came down my back a little bit, and then those last few reps were UNLOAD LEGS and then GOODMORNING instead of perfect squats. I need to get comfortable with the higher bar, and really focus on keeping my mechanics perfect on every rep. 

Fuck you baby, you're so much better at squatting than I am. I hope Lugo eats you. 

HOWEVER... all that being said, 12 reps at 250 unbelted is pretty awesome, even if the reps were a bit sloppy. Now I know what I need to fix for the next few workouts, so hopefully I will fuck up my heavy reps on thursday and my reps at 260 on monday. 

Speed deads were good today too - 230 for 10 x 2. They are tiring, but moving pretty fast. I think 245 next week will probably be VERY slow, but after a couple cycles these heavy weights should help move my deadlift up quite a bit I hope. 

Then, 5 x 10 squats at 155 with 18 reps on the last set. These are just becoming masochistic... they hurt so bad. I'm thinking, for my sanity, I might need to start waving the intensity of these sets soon. So Week 1, try and get a few extra reps on the 5th set, week 2 go all out, and then week 3 take it easy and just try to match week 1's reps. What I'm doing now is working really well, so I really want to hang on as long as I can, but the weight's gonna get very heavy very fast, and doing that all-out final set is pretty hard after ALREADY doing an all out set in the workout, and then doing a bunch of sets of 10 as well. 

Once again, the battle is almost all mental rather than physical. The hardest part of lifting is just knowing you can give more. Knowing it's up to you to push yourself to your real potential. 

Finally, I ended with weighted sit-ups. 10 free, 10 x 20 lb dumbbell, and then 3 x 10 x 35 lb dumbbell. These weren't too hard, but they also weren't very fun after everything I had already done today. But I got through it. 

Overall it was a very tough but very good day. Also, things to come: Heavy Power-Clean and Jerk this saturday, and then the saturday after, Mock Powerlifting Meet. 

Fuck Yeah