Strong Squat

Today was a very good squat day, which is quite refreshing considering I've been feeling frustrated lately.

Got LEGS? 

Had my coffee today, and warmed up relatively quickly. Something felt really good today as far as form goes - I'm still sort of trying to figure out the best way to squat with this higher bar position, and I think today was a fig step towards figuring it out. I think one of the biggest things for me is torso angle. Before i switched to a higher bar, I was dropping my chest a lot. THEN, when I made the switch, I was keeping my chest almost TOO upright, which was causing me to shift my weight forward a little bit. Today, I did a really nice job of finding a comfortable angle for my torso, so that I didn't feel too rigid or like I was shifting my weight forward, but my hips and chest were still rising together on every rep.

ANYWAYS, work sets looked like this

215 x 5
245 x 3
270 x 8

I was really happy with that last rep - out. Considering that my previous 5 rm was 275, that's a really great number of reps for that weight. Here's the video below:

After this were speed deadlifts at 245, which moved very nicely actually. Hopefully next month I'll be RIPPING them, and then I'll take the weight up once more. 8 sets of 2, on the minute, from a deficit. ALSO, as i mentioned before, I'm thinking of playing with the deficit a little bit as well, doing something like this: cycle 1, no deficit, cycle 2, 2 - 3 inches, cycle 3, deeper than cycle 2 by a few inches. We will see.

My 5 x 10 squats at 165 went really well today too, and I ended up repping out the final set for 20. Considering that, at the start of this school year, I was doing 20 rep squats (with a belt) at this weight, It's pretty insane that I could rep it out for 20, no belt, AFTER everything I had already done today. My strength and my work capacity are so much greater than they have ever been before,

Finally, I did 2 quick sets of heavy cable crunches, one set of 30 and one set of 20.

Overall, it was really a great day. Most importantly, it helped show me once again that I need to get over the desire to see progress EVERY single workout, because that is simply not how strength works. Last week, that 5 x 10 was miserable, and today it was cake. On saturday (just two days ago), squatting 275 for 2 was hard, and today I hit 270 for 8. I need to not feel like I have to prove to myself every single workout that I'm getting stronger. Instead, I need to always go into the workout WITHOUT expectations, work as hard as I can based on how I'm feeling that day, and trust that I will progress.

Why? Cause Jim Wendler fucking says so. 

So, lessons? No expectations. Just work my ass off every day. And today is proof that I WILL get better.