Tuesday, 11 December 2018 Training
BBM Heavy Light Medium W3D1
Squat w/belt: 105x5 @6, 112.5x5 @7.5,
117.5x5 [PR] x2 sets @ 8.5, 9, 110x5 x2 sets @ 7.5, 8
Pause Bench: 57.5x5 x2 sets @ 7, 7,
60x5 x3 sets @ 8, 8.5, 8.5
Block Pull: 120x4 @7, 125x4 @8, 130x2f (lol), 120x4 @8
***
This workout had the structure of a Lonely Island song. It started out somewhat serious, then went off the rails around the 1-hour mark. Squat was a rep PR I was "100%" sure I would hit, just a matter of how high the RPE, and I was pretty thrilled to find out it was @8ish. Nothing much else to report here. Depth was decent. One thing I'm doing as a policy is to get deeper with the last rep of a heavy set. With this program I'm never handling a weight where failing a rep is likely, it's just a matter of how slow the grind is.
I knew it wasn't going to be a banner bench day when the 57.5x5 was @7 instead of @6. I repeated it just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, then chose 60 for working weight, same as last week. I was pretty frustrated with the first 60 set and spent a lot of time fiddling with j-hooks height and ultimately switching to the standard bench press bench. I mentioned in an earlier post that these are troll benches that make a self-unrack impossible with even remotely heavy weight. I circumvented that by putting a flat bench up against the back of the bench, effectively extending the length of it. The unrack is still bad, but better than with the power rack.
I think by the time I got to block pulls I was just mentally exhausted. I've had a pretty rough week professionally and stresses related to that came to a head yesterday. Probably should just be thankful I walked away from this one with a PR.
*** PROGRAMMING SPERG TIME***
I really wanted to just follow a program to a tee for once but I'm going to go forward with one minor change. On the light day instead of doing USELESS pendlay rows, I'm going to do TNG bench for sets of 8. This week is the highest the volume gets in the program and I'm demonstrably losing strength on bench press. I paused with 70kgx3 at my old gym, and even considering the possibility that the bar is a bit heavier, it's still a big drop in performance to be troubled with 60x5.
HLM seems to be working great for my squat and deadlift, except that the pulling volume is a little to get used to. Probably wouldn't hurt to intentionally underestimate RPEs on pulls but my consistent lack of WIM seems to be autoregulating just fine regardless.