oh man so jealous of yer deadlift. I think I'm gonna go for 3 plates next workout, then hopefully grind my way to 4 plates by the end of the year.

Can't lie 4 plates felt pretty good, first time I ever had someone stop and watch me lift . I must have been tired last night because I did not do 4x5 bench I did 4x5 squat.

Lifted today went pretty well but I just did not feel recovered from Thursday didn't really effect my performance though.

Squats 4x5 135,165,195,235 1x3 275 1x8 195

Bench 3x5 135,165,195 1x3 235 1x8 165

Row 3x5 135,165,195 1x3 230 1x8 165 my form was pretty bad on my first two heavy rows but I pulled it together for my last one.

Dips 1x3 +90 1x3 +80 1x15 bw

L pull up 4,2

I think I'm going to switch to the following workout plan on Tuesday and try to squeeze out another month or two of week to week progress. After that I will switch to a more advanced program. Current goal is to get to 300 bench/400 squat/ 500 dead lift. I have no time frame for this goal.

Tuesday

5x5 Squats at 85% of Saturday

5x5 Bench/Press at 85% of Saturday

5x5 Row

Thursday

O lifting technique work

2x5 Bench/Press at 75%

Pull ups

Saturday

1x5 Squat go for PR

1x5 Bench go for PR

1x5 Dead lift go for PR

For the Saturday work out I took out rows because I think I would not be able to dead lift well if I left them in.

Some stats from the 5x5 program, 25 weeks on the program.

Squat start 185 finish 275 for a gain of 3.6 pounds per week

Bench start 175 finish 235 for a gain of 2.4 pounds per week

Dead lift start 225 finish 405 for a gain of 7.2 pounds per week

So I decided to get some extra exercise tonight and bike over to the basketball court and practice jumping. It went OK but I still can't dunk, not that I really do anything specifically to help me jump higher. Right now I get about the same height standing flat footed and jumping off two feet as I do running and jumping off one. I can grab the rim with one hand and my finger tips can touch it with two. Basically I have no coordination to jump while running.

Also if anyone thinks my new lifting plan is terrible please let me know otherwise I'm going to start up on it tomorrow.

Dude, at 6'3", you should be dunking with EASE

I think it's fine if you aren't gonna do it for too long... except going for PRs on 3 compound lifts on Saturday has GOTTA be a bad idea, I'd change that up. You're awfully talented if you can go for a PR at 5 reps on the deadlift every week and make progress at this stage. I would probably change up the deadlift volume, go for PRs at it periodically if you find it necessary, and not go for a PR in bench/squat on the same day either, although that probably wouldn't be that bad.

throw in some jump squats and depth jumps or box jumps and other plyos if you really want to get that vertical up

I should take my advice since I'm 6'1 and can't jump for **** either.

He's using the Texas Method. It's actually perfect for him and where he's act in terms of his lifting. Do you have Practical Programming?

Btw, laser, should start the lifts off about 10% less than what you would be normally using. This will help build some momentum and prevent any premature wall hits.

I know I should add more plyo type stuff but I never get around to it with any regularity. Still not exactly sure how I am going to go about dead lifting. Lifted today though, first time doing this much volume. I was sweating quite a bit more then I have been but after the work out I felt less fatigued then usual.

Squat 5x5 @ 225

Bench 5x5 @ 195

Row 5x5 @ 185

Tried to do L holds in the parallel dip bars but I couldn't hold it for more then a couple seconds. Did some hanging leg raises trying to hold at the top till failure then went to the leg raise station or whatever that thing that looks like a chair is and did some sets with a pause at the top. Finished with some decline sit ups with a 5 second pause.

I did drop ~10 pounds on the lifts before figuring out the weight for todays lifts not sure if that was quite enough or not but it was overall pretty easy so hopefully i'll be ok for awhile.

yeah they kick my ass too. I use the parallel dip bars for my ab work or my parallettes at home. I would like to do weighted hanging leg raises with a large ROM but my hamstrings aren't flexible enough. Holding an l-sit with weight between the legs would be incredibly badass too.

from personal experience, there are two likely reasons you are failing almost immediately (1) your abs aren't strong enough to hold the position (2) lack of ab strength or hamstring flexibility is forcing you to push back further into the l-sit, which puts enormous strain on the upper back and shoulders resulting in failure of form

I can hold a full l-sit for over 30 from parallelettes but slightly rotating my COG backwards causes violent shaking and failure, I think I'm at 9 seconds there. I think the curve from an l-sit to a v-sit is gigantic and requires a very high degree of upper body strength as well as increased flexibility, so if you are pushing back to try to keep the legs straight you are probably ****ed. You will also absolutely torch your upper back and shoulder girdle which might interfere with your other training.

Either way your best bet is probably going to be to experiment changing your arm position on the bars and pulling your legs in. If you start with a tucked l-sit and slowly push it out you can do the holds for longer. Same for a straddle and a low l-sit. Right now I'm doing the full l-sit slightly pushed back but doing 5 second holds after raising my legs into the position for sets of 4-5 holds, and I find this significantly more difficult than just holding l-sits for longer periods.

the bodyweight stuff is so awesome because it builds an enormous degree of strength and much of it can be trained with little recovery. Right now I'm trying tucked planches and pushups with a planche hand position and they are absolutely crushing my wrists, if you want some variety in your routine i highly recommend giving some of the stuff a shot. Google building the olympic body and look at some of the stuff on dragondoor if you are interested, they have great info.

I like the front lever, planche, l-sit, and this weird seated straddle floor press progressions as well as flags and pullups. I'm personally tempted to just toss most of my upper body lifting for BW progressions and see what type of progress I make, but I'm not quite ready to dive in.

good luck, looking forward to the log progress

Wow thats a lot of info basically lately I have just been trying to do different things where my abs are forced to hold a position rather then do reps or whatever. Going to check out those sights and read more about it. I was failing on the parallel dip bars because I could not really figure out how to balance correctly especially how far froward/back my hips where supposed to be.

Also just did 8 minutes of 20 seconds on 10 seconds off of lateral jumps over and 18 inch high bar, air squats and push ups. Just rotated through the exercises. Might not be a good idea to do this on lifting days but I felt like I had some extra energy.

Played racquetball today for a hour or so then went over to the gym. Tried to hold the L position in the parallel bars again and was more successful this time, messed around with that for a few minutes. Did a little bit of practice work with cleans just using the bar and was pretty terrible at it, I will work on this more tomorrow. Finished up with 25 minutes on the tread mill doing intervals of 1 minute at 8.5 mph and 1 minute at 4.5.

Lifted today

power cleans 4x5 @ 95 started to feel a little better about these towards the end

snatch just did a couple sets with the bar and it felt very awkward going to have to watch more videos and stuff on these

OH press 2x5 @ 100

Pull ups/chins did a bunch different grips 30 total reps

3 sets of hanging leg raises

best thing for cleans and snatches would be to watch a lot of vids and practice with very light weight from the hang in the athletic position- hips pushed back as far as possible, chin as far out as possible, huge stretch in hamstrings, shoulders over bar, bar right beneath knees and close to shins with knees and shins perpendicular to the ground and arms straight. That's the start of the 2nd pull.

It's pretty easy to just deadlift really fast and pull with your upper back as hard as you can like many of the abortions of cleans people post on youtube.

That makes sense I was practicing from the ground but I can do hang cleans next time, do you think I should use any weight or just the bar to start?

I'd probably throw around the bar and try for 95 pounds or so on the cleans, maybe more when you're more comfortable. I think the learning curve on snatches is a lot steeper than power cleans, even power snatches, so idk. Google the Dan John fitcast video if you haven't seen it already, he goes into detail on the squat, RDL, and snatch I think

The problem is that it's pretty easy to just throw lighter weights around with upper body strength and not execute the pulls correctly. I still do that a lot, lol

and remember to really strap yourself to the bar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-M8...eature=related

Yeah thanks for the advice, a lot to think about on the o-lifts compared to squat bench and row. Also lol at that video.

Lifted today, it sucked. I couldn't get the squat rack, I was real tired and I only had like 45 minutes till the gym closed so I didn't really get to do the work out I wanted.

Bench 1x5 @ 235

Dead lift 1x3 @ 410

wide grip pull ups 3 sets 8,8,5

dips 2 set @ bw 15,15

I hate being rushed, I'd almost rather skip the day

Lifted today, felt pretty good except for my left hip. I think I tweaked it playing baseball this weekend, it loosened up by my 3rd work set of squats though.

Squats 5x5 @ 230

Bench 5x5 @ 200

Row 5x5 @ 190

Did 3 sets of static holds with 315 till failure, it was harder then I thought it would be. I started shaking pretty fast but managed to hold the first one for ~10 seconds and then didn't really keep track on the next two.

3 sets of hanging leg raises, I can't get my legs as high as I want them unless I have a slight bend at the knee probably a lack of flexibility.

Rode my bike for a few miles today then went to the basketball court by my house and practiced trying to dunk again, no progress from last week. I am going to have to actually devote some time to jumping if I want to dunk anytime soon. Once I got home I did 10 minutes of 20 seconds on 10 seconds of rest doing lateral hops over an 18 inch bar alternating with squats.

Lifted today did some hang cleans and hang snatches with the bar. I spent like 2 hours before going to the gym reading up on proper form for these and I'm just not really getting it down. The cleans feel sort of ok but the snatches awful. I feel like I need like an hour with someone that actually knows what they are doing. Next week I might just do light front squats instead because I am probably just teaching myself bad form.

OH press 2x5 @ 105

Pull ups/Chin ups 32 total reps

Static holds with 315

3 sets of hanging leg raises

bw dips 1x20

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YriLwPqtXuw

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ed1n_U3fOJc

doesn't teach technique but this guy has very good technique and has a log on fortified iron, a lot of his vids are good and he does a lot of his training lifts from the hang.