Squatting, Changes & Whatnot

Today, squatting was awesome. I didn't sleep great last night, and I had a shitty breakfast this morning. But I pumped myself full of coffee and headed to the gym. Warm up went nice, though it was pretty short... my first weight for squats was 190, so I basically hit 95 for 5, 135 for 5, then got to work. I felt pretty good - my form was a little choppy from taking time off, but that was counteracted by my intense elation from a combination of the return to training and the black coffee pulsing through my veins. Hit 190, then 225 for 5, then put 250 on the bar.

Pretend 250 looks like this. 

A few reps were a little sloppy (again, rusty form), but even so I managed to get 12 reps. I'm pretty happy with that - first of all, it was my first day back, and secondly last month I only got 10 at 255, so 12 at 250 is pretty nice. It was a hard 12, but still felt great.

Next up were speed deads, which I did from a deep deficit - off a 45 lb bumper, so about 4 inches (I'll talk about why at the end). These moved nicely, it was a little weird to feel out the deeper deficit, but I got the hang of it pretty quick, and I think they will feel even better next week.

Then, did 5 x 10 squats, this time at 175. I can hardly believe they are this heavy now, but they are still moving really nicely. My pain tolerance is a little low cause of the rest, but even so the pain wasn't TERRIBLE, and I managed 12 reps on the final set. I need to keep pushing these, however, because they are gonna get exponentially harder at 185 and 195. The goal is to make it to 205 for a 5 x 10 at the end of the summer. It would be incredible if I could manage that. If I am able to continue to progress to that point, then I will probably switch it to a 5 x 8, in order to keep the volume very high while still pushing the weight up.

PLATZ

Finally, did some sets of ghd situps with weight. Nothing special. I'm gonna keep working on ways to work my core at Crossfit, I'm sad my cable crunches are gone for a few months.

SO, amazing first day back. really happy with my performance today, and looking forward to many many workouts to come.

SLIGHT TWEAKS TO STUFF - firstly, I decided I'm not going to weigh myself until the end of these  4 cycles. I'm going to instead focus on appearance and performance - If I look good and my numbers are going up, then that's enough for now. I'll try and make some serious strength gains while improving my leanness and size, see how I feel about both at the end of this cycle, and THEN weigh myself and get an idea of where I want to go from there. Secondly, I'm going to cut out dumbell shoulder presses on tuesdays, and instead just do regular barbell overhead pressing, with light weight for sets to failure. Just cause I want to and I think it might be more useful to me, and Crossfit doesn't have a great set of dumbells. Thirdly, I'm going to wave the deficits for my speed deads - the first three weeks will be from the floor, the second three weeks from a 25 lb bumper (about 2.5 inches) and the third three weeks, from a 45 (about 4 inches). I think that this will help even out my deadlift progress over the three cycles, rather than having the first cycle be too hard, me make a bunch of progress in the second, and then the third be too easy.

So that's all for this day. I'm excited AND nervous for tomorrow - I haven't benched in a while, and I have to adjust to different equipment. But hopefully I'll still fuck shit up like I did today.

I LOVE SQUATTING. 

Preparing

Today, I feel like I haven't lifted in a century. It's starting to drive me a little crazy. Even though I lifted last week, the workouts weren't too serious, and taking yesterday AND today off is making me very itchy. Luckily, however, my soreness is almost all gone and hopefully tomorrow I will wake up ready to go squat like a mothafucka.

Today, I just went to the gym for a bit to warm up, stretch, and do some "weightlifters cardio." Basically, short bursts of work (15-20 seconds) with about twice that much rest (30-45 seconds) for rounds. I decided to flip tires today (relatively light tires), and did 5 flips every minute for 10 minutes. It wasn't too hard, but got my blood pumping.

After that, I just stretched and worked on mobility a bit. I feel a little rusty, not having squatted in about 5 days (heaven forfend), but as I said, i'm excited to start my next cycle tomorrow, and with any luck 250 will feel great for reps.

I have prepared. Now, I RETURN

Dead press

Today I feel only slightly better than I did yesterday. I slept better last night, but overall I'm still pretty sore and shitty feeling. HOWEVER, I'm sure loads of cheating on my diet and taking the next two days to rest will be a huge help, and I'll be full of power on monday.

Anyways, didn't want to push too hard today, but I did want to get in some quality technique work. Since I have been having trouble in my overhead press on rep 1 (where I have to press the weight from a dead stop), I decided to do some heavy singles with my OP, to work on getting better at that initial press, before the stretch reflex comes into play. So, I warmed up, then put 135 on the bar and pressed it for 1 rep, on the minute, for 15 minutes. This was pretty solid, so after 15 reps I got rid of the timer, and moved the weight up: hit 140 for 1, then 145, then 145 again, then missed 150. Then, I dropped the weight back down to 135, hitting it for another single and then a triple to finish it off. Over all, it was a solid workout - 145 is the weight I had trouble with last week, and I hit it for two singles, amidst a bunch of other heavy singles. Not too bad. I'm gonna keep working on that dead-stop pressing strength in my lighter work as well, so I make sure to never miss a weight on my 5/3/1 week.

Next, I simply did 3 sets of 10 kipped pullups. These weren't to bad.... I feel them a bit in my lats, but mostly it's my grip that gives me trouble. Elbows don't hurt at all, but they feel a little strange - I'm still pretty nervous about them getting really inflamed again, but I'm gonna continue feeling it out, and take that as it comes.

Anyways, nothing too special today. Looking forward to good food and rest, and then coming back hard next week.

Bad Santa

Today was a day where I felt like a piece of shit, if you will. Like "suckabagadicks" if you will. Like a sack of poo, if you will. Everything was fucking sore... my ass, my back, my fucking BICEPS were killing me. I think the stress of exams and moving just finally caught up with me. Add in the fact that I'm not used to sleeping here yet, and that I max deadlifted monday, and max squatted tuesday night (which I never do), and you have the perfect recipe for "shitty bones stew." If you will.

However, considering how bad I feel, my workout today was alright. I worked up to a heavy single, getting 295 pretty easy and then just missing 315. Normally, I would be mad, but considering how I felt i couldn't really be too surprised.

Next up, I lost the belt and did a big drop-set type thing. With very little rest, I hit a single at 295, then a set of 5 at 245, then 8 at 195, 10 at 145, and 15 at 95. At that point, my legs felt like they were going to fall off. So, I did a couple sets of really light deadlifts, just to feel out pulling the weight straight to my hips, rather than doing that weird hitch thing I do. Then, I grabbed an 88 lb kettlebell (one of the advantages of being at a crossfit gym instead of a shitty school gym), and did three sets of ten swings, which weren't hard but just made me move a little more before I called it a day.

Anyways, all things considered not a bad day. But I do feel like ass. My bones hurt. Probably, i'll take it pretty easy tomorrow, CHEAT LIKE A MOFO and give my body all the calories it needs to heal, then take both saturday and sunday off so that when I have to squat monday, I can go in fresh and ready to fuck shit up.

Get fucking ready. 

Moving day

Had a hectic day today because I was moving all my stuff back home, but as soon as I woke up I went to the gym for arms day.

Started with bench. Worked up to 155 for 11, then moved my grip in and hit 135 for 8, then moved it closer still and hit 115 for 8, then went as close as I could and hit 95 for 6 or 7. Then, I dropped all the weight and did a set of 20 skull crushers with just the bar. I don't love extension movements for triceps though - personally, I feel pressing movements exhaust them a lot better. But I was just playing around today, so it was no big deal.

Hahahaha is this guy even real life? 

Next, I decided to play around with pullups a little more. I felt very irritated and disheartened yesterday, so today I worked a little more. I ended up doing 3 sets of 10 kipped pullups. Generally, I would advocate for strict pullups over kipped ones - but the truth is, doing those three sets of 10, I really felt my lats working hard. It seems like, just as with other back movements, my body responds better to me giving precedence to reps/weight over form. I think I'm going to, for now, replace the 5 x 10 lat pulls with a 3 x 10 kipped pullups, trying to only use the kip as little as possible. After a cycle of two of doing this, I'll see how I feel about them, and if I think they are working, I will start increasing either sets or reps - right now,  I'm leaning toward increasing reps, because my experience is that more reps will help overload my back and make it grow. We will see, it's going to take some experimentation.

Finally, I ended with some different curl variations, none of which were that useful I think. Isolation and preacher curls seem to feel best to me, all other variations I don't normally like.

Anyways, a fun arms day. I'm looking forward to continuing to work on the pullups, hopeful I'm on the way to finding the best way for me to do them so I gain some serious size and strength. We will see.

BACK. Nothing beats back. 

Bonus Squat!

So a friend of mine came up to me, right as I was heading to the gym to stretch around 10:30 tonight, and poked fun of me a little because he ALWAYS sees me squatting, and yet I didn't squat today.

Which made me really want to squat. So, when I went to the gym, I did just that. ended up hitting 305, with no belt and no chalk. Not bad, considering I max deadlifted and did a bunch of squatting yesterday. Just goes to show, you can handle whatever you think you can handle.

Gotta love heavy squats man.

Dumbbell upper body

Today was an interesting day in the gym. Since I wanted to do something a little different than my normal tuesday workouts, I decided to focus on dumbbell work in order to get a new stimulus in.

If you want to look like this - nothing but isolation curls. 

I started with dumbbell flat bench, working up in sets of five until I was using the 70's. These were pretty heavy, so I stuck with them and just kept doing sets of five without TOO much rest, until I failed (which was the 5th rep of my 8th set). Overall, these were fun, I got a lot of pretty heavy reps in which is really cool. I like dumbbell bench because it teaches you how to simply muscle the weight up. Great technique is incredibly important to a good bench, but at the same time there is a lot of benefit to just being able to muscle up a heavy weight, without leg drive or perfect tightness.

After the heavy sets, I switched to incline bench, and did 3 sets to failure with the 45's, and a fourth et to failure with the 25's. These were more or less just to hammer my chest, get a good pump and work my bench from an angle I don't normally use.

This guy looks pretty badass, I must admit

Next up were kroc rows. Went really heavy with these today, using the 100 lb dumbells. My form was horrendous and I had to pause once or twice, but I managed to row the Hundo for 25 reps each arm. I still love this movement - no matter how horrible my form, going heavy for  ton of reps just FEELS like it's making my back grow way better than anything else I've ever done.

Next, I put 85 lbs on a bar and did strict presses with it - I did a set on the minute for 5 minutes. The first two sets were 10 reps, but then I got pretty tired and the next few sets were a struggle. Which is fine really, my main goal was just to tire out my shoulders, so I did my job.

Finally, I wanted to feel out some pullups today. They felt shitty. Granted, my back was wrecked from the kroc rows, and the bar i was using was shitty, but I still really HATE pullups. BUT, I'm going to try and hold back my hate until I get home, and on friday I can test them out when I'm fresher and I have a better bar. Hopefully they will feel a little better... but if not, then I'm just gonna have to work really hard to make them my bitch this summer. I'm thinking tuesdays, I'll do low reps (3 maybe) for a bunch of sets (10?), and then friday I'll do something like 3 sets to failure. Depends how they feel I guess.

Pullups, why am I so bad at you? I will own you one day. 

Anyways, solid day. I think my back is gonna be insanely sore tomorrow. Can't wait to go home.