Congrats on the PR!

Damn, huge jump!

Awesome work!

Nice work renton, congrats

Congrats on the PR.

Did you switch gyms at some point? This gym you're at looks a lot more upscale than the one you were using earlier in the year.

Thanks, bros. Yeah Melk this is a new gym. I prefer the old gym by a country mile.

Monday Nov 30
A2S W6D2

Comp Bench: 45x10, 95x5, 135x3, 155x3, 165x3 x4 sets, LS @10

Pause Squat: 45x5, 135x5, 185x5, 215x5 x5 sets, LS @7

T = 0:55, RPE 8

***

Pretty blah day that I was short on time. Bench was in the rack with the new wider grip. Idk why I tried this again. Hole spacing is the same as the regular bench press upstairs and the j hooks are worse. It's like I can either self un rack or bench with the right bar path, pick one. I basically have no option at this gym for safely benching heavy weights.

Left elbow was randomly hurting afterward and it made racking squats a minor challenge.

Nice work! congrats

Nice squat!

Wednesday Dec 2
A2S W6D3

Deadlift: 45x10, 135x3, 185x3, 235x2, 265 @7.5, 255x3 x5 sets, LS @7.5

3ct Pause Bench: 45x5, 95x5, 125x5, 135x5 x5 sets, LS @6

T = 1:00, RPE 7

***

Kind of looking forward to deload week. My back felt good going into deadlifts so I thought to try a single. 265 moved kind of poorly so I stopped there; work sets got easier as I went along. There were some high school age bros in the xfit room doing distracting high school age ****. Hate this gym.

Anyways, bench went okay. Probably undershot but it still felt like a good stimulus. I didn't have time for a third exercise. That's happening a lot lately, gotta work on it.

Thursday Dec 3
A2S W6D4

Press: 50x5, 70x3, 80x3, 85x3, 90x3, 95x3 x4 sets, 95x7 @9

Front Squat: 45x5, 95x3, 135x3, 185, 205 @8, 225 @10 [PR+20]

Dips: x10 x3 sets
Chins: x5 x3 sets

T = ?:??, RPE 7

***

Pretty lol session. I blew off the early morning session and did this after work.

I combed through the annals of my 2p2 logs from the days when I trained the overhead press somewhat hard and 95x7 is a PR for sure but it's hard to compare to those days. First of all, I weighed like 20lb less back then. Second of all, I didn't pause my reps at the bottom like I do now. So I'm definitely substantially stronger than then, it's just difficult to say how much. I was TNGing 95x5 for 5x5 basically at my peak.

The leg press was permanently swarmed with bros at 5:30 pm, so I decided to squat. I didn't have my gym shorts with me so I made sure I could get to depth in my jeans; miraculously they were loose enough that it wasn't a problem. Then things felt decent and 205 was clean AF so I yoloed a PR. It was a not clean by any means rep but I did reach depth (barely) and considering it was 1000% RAW, no belt, no sleeves, running shoes, and in civilian attire, I'm counting that ****.

Improper gym attire and no safety equipment. No lift.

Two wheels on front squat is a pretty sweet milestone!

First person to ever PR front squat in jeans, WR

Lift on the FS 205. No lift on the FS 225. And of course no lift on any of the back squats.

Which is no big deal but it must be stated, h&f must have some quality control. Looks like I need to do it since Aidan and Kidcolin avoiding it and Cha doesn't read logs anymore.

Thanks guys. And I don't even train the front squat. Makes me wonder what would happen if I trained it as a primary lift for 3-4 months.




I agree for the most part. I'm more proud of the 205 than the 225.

However, my criteria for a PR for squats isn't usapl depth. It's just compared to old PRs. The 205 front squat kind of proves my point. Last time I FSed 205 it was in sleeves and squat shoes and I probably didn't go below parallel. So, I got a lot stronger. I could probably pause squat 300lb to depth now. Couldn't do that last year. So yeah.

Saturday Dec 5
A2S W8D1

Squat w/belt: 135x4, 185x4, 225, 255, 285 @7.5, 255x4 x5 sets, LS @7.5

Press: 45x6, 65x6, 80x6 x5 sets, LS @6

SLDL: 135x6, 195x6 x5 sets, LS @6

T = 1:15, RPE 8

***

I decided to skip deload week. Just seemed like bad timing to be intentionally working less hard. My nutrition has kind of derailed and the last week has been its own deload in some ways, with me not being able to push the DL or bench particularly hard. The program is supposed to be a 21 week macrocycle with a pattern of two 3-week blocks then a deload week repeated 3 times. I may just do 9 weeks then deload then 9 more weeks.

Anyway today I focused on deeper squats. It seems like the belt and my waist pudge is a factor that limits depth for me. The 285 rep is about as deep as I can get with a non trivial weight without compromising my position at the bottom. Squats took a decent bit out of me today for some reason and my elbows were hurting a little by the end of it.

Presses felt good. I think gains are imminent there.

Sick FS especially since you don't train it.

My FS is absolute AIDS because I don't train it. I'm not sure I can even do 50% of my LBBS. It's more a problem of feeling like the bar is going to drop than being too weak. At some point I thought about getting some straps for FS. Maybe if I lift more in the future I may add that. FS are a really good exercise. If I could go back in time, I'd have forced myself to learn FS first and then added back squats later.

Just get your thoracic/elbow/shoulder mobility to the point that you can get your full hand around the bar. I found that this helped a lot. There's a Zack Telander video that I followed to get my mobility there in just a few weeks.

Yeah for most people they think it's their wrists limiting them, but it's usually going to be mostly thoracic mobility.

FS all about elbows high(which is achieved through good thoracic mobility.) and keeping your core solid throughout the lift as your legs pretty much always strong enough to lift the weight.

This is the video I mentioned in my previous post.

Good stuff I'm going to start doing those as my thoracic mobility definitely needs work.

So, Thanksgiving kind of derailed my dieting efforts. I cooked a bunch of stuff and ate probably 4k calories on TG, maybe 2500 the day after, and then I reigned it in a good amount. Didn't log calories accurately but I estimate I averaged 1600-1700 a day since then. Weight is right at 160, so no gains suffered, which is good. I still haven't fallen off the meal prep wagon either. I prepped last week and the food just didn't come out well so I skipped eating it on some of the days. This weekend I upped my culinary game a decent amount and went into an 8 hour youtube spiral of Basics with Babish. I prepped the following:

Pan Roasted Chicken Breast with pan sauce I used shallots, dried thyme and lemon. I went fairly light on the sauce to cut calories and paired it with frozen vegetables. Probably under 500 cals and over 50g protein. I'll estimate it more accurately later.

Homemade Stock and Chicken Noodle Soup This came out great, homemade stock wasn't worth it though. It seems like it would be just as good if I used store-bought stock with some aromatic vegetables and 1/4 of the time. Maybe if I start going through whole chickens at a rate that the byproduct stock just piles up it would be worth it, but doing it especially for a dish is just nopesauce. Probably under 400 cals and over 30g protein. Got the ingredients listed just don't feel like breaking it down.

I didn’t watch the entire video to see what his prescriptions were but when I was cross fitting and o lifting I went through the process of improving flexibility in that area for cleans, front squats and thrusters and tbh the progress came very quickly so I’m sure you guys will be able to do it within a few weeks

Dude 335, great progress man keep it up!!!

Have you ever thought of doing more cardio? Your maintenance calories is so low that losing weight must be a real struggle. A little bit of cardio will improve overall health, won't affect your strength, allow you to eat more. It doesn't even have to be traditional running/biking/whatever, just find an activity you like. Imagine being able to eat 300-400 calories more per day + doing something you enjoy + not affecting your weight!

I know you know all this, but I just wanted to put it out there.