Sumos felt strong as hell again. These numbers translate to roughly the same or stronger numbers than I'm putting up for conventional. I'm not using a belt either. Is sumo my calling? I'm not sure if my form is any good because my pulls feel very back-dominant, so I posted some videos below.
JM Press is starting to click for me. The trick is to keep the descent very slow and in control. My tri's were screaming, "Please, no more!"
I forgot my straps today so SLDL was limited by my grip strength.
I'll be testing my maxes this week. Squat on Monday, Bench on Wednesday, Deadlift on Friday. I'm hoping to total 1200. I'm definitely a dog to hit 1200 but it's possible. Anything under 1150 and I'll be pretty disappointed.
I went in and squatted today.
1x397
1x441
0x463
1x451
463 was close but I stalled out about halfway up and couldn't bust through. 463 is my PR and I've hit it twice before, so it kinda sucks that I wasn't able to hit it today. My squat is trending downards a bit.
270 was kinda close, maybe I hit it if I didn't attempt 265 before.
265 is a new PR for me (+5lbs). Good stuff. I hit 260 over 6 months ago, but my bench is finally showing some good signs of progress again. The old 260 PR was touch-and-go as well.
Decided to deload this week. I'll go into the gym 1-3 times and work up to @8 on the three lifts.
I went in today and the results were weird. My squats went fine, but afterwards my legs were starting to get wobbly and weak, especially my hamstrings. It actually hampered my bench quite a bit and ruined my deadlift. Weird feeling that I haven't experienced since probably some of my first lifting sessions ever.
Today was a really strong day and included some of my best squats. I've realized that I've developed a slight problem in my squats where I'm not driving through my heels fully. I've been working on fixing this, but today I focused on shoving my knees out and that mostly did the trick.
Awesome day. Hitting 400 for 5 reps is a nice milestone and also a PR. I felt like I was getting really good leg drive today, but I don't think I changed much. I wore my belt lower and a bit tighter, so maybe that changed my setup just a bit.
First time doing Larsen Press. It's alright. I think I'd rather just do pauses.
Yeah, it doesn't seem that crazy to me which is why I'm not too concerned. It's strange that Mike T recommends 4-6% fatigue and not something like 8-10%. Maybe I should increase my %
Another awesome day for my deadlifts. This lift has been shooting up for a few weeks now. There's still some work I need to do on my form - I was letting my back round just a tad, but wasn't getting into a compromising position. I also am tilting my neck back too much. I'm finding it difficult to keep my chest up and my neck tucked.
Tempo squats suck for high reps. My lower back was getting fatigued real quick.
Pretty beastly lifts dude. Are you sure it was the 'tempo' aspect of the Squats that was wearing out your lower back or was it prefatigueing yourself with 4 heavy sets of DL beforehand? In my (relatively uninformed) opinion it seems like it might be the latter
Probably a bit of both, but I think the tempo aspect is the main driver.
I've noticed that my low back gets sore/tight when I keep the bar on my back for too long. This has happened to me before when I decided to **** around and do a ~20 rep set on squats. I probably have a bit of APT going on which puts stress on my low back after some time.
My low back was tightening up during sumos, but I pushed through it. I think it's just a combination of fatigue and lack of mobility - mostly fatigue. This was a taxing week.
I'm continuing to make exceptional progress on the deadlift. My form could be a bit better, as I'm still letting my back round a bit. It's pretty noticeable on my 3rd rep.
I'm starting to like Larsen press very much. It took me a couple weeks to get used to it, but it's definitely helping with my upper body stabilization during bench.
I had to get this workout in quickly (30-40 minutes), so I didn't do any fatigue drop sets and barely rested between sets.
I'm getting some tendonitis in my left elbow again. I've dealt with this before, and I'm hoping it doesn't linger. When I had the tendonitis really bad in both elbows, I deduced that it was most likely from over-tucking my elbows during bench.
I had a bit of a bender of a weekend (hey, it was my birthday) and ended up missing the 4th workout of last week. I decided to just do that workout today, and I'm going to deload for the rest of the week. I am feeling a bit run down anyway.
Sometimes I feel like I deload too often, but even a program like 5/3/1 recommends deloading once a month. I'm doing one about every 5 weeks.
