Saturday, June 18, 2016 Training
I went HAM today.
Bench Press 104.5# (5,
5,
9!)
I benched for over an hour today, getting help from an English guy with a powerlifting background who seemed to be pretty smart. He helped me a lot with my setup. I know I still have issues with bar path, but this setup felt much more powerful than anything I've done previously. Once I get the hang of it, I'll be able to devote more attention to how I execute the reps.
Squat 162.5# (
5,
5,
5)
**15/15 Quality Reps**
These felt pretty good. I showed the videos to the English guy after and he had a lot of negative stuff to say that I'm honestly ambivalent about. He says I need to use a thumbs-around grip which goes against much of what I've read. He also says that shoving my elbows up like I do is bad, and causes my chest to cave. Again, it seems like most of the literature I've consumed on the subject of squatting says to shove the elbows up to tighen the back and create a shelf for the bar. I dunno. All reps were deep and only a couple reps didn't have a vertical bar path so I couldn't be happier with my squat right now.
Deadlift 132# (
5,
3,
3),
154# (
2),
198# (
1),
214.5# (
5)
I allowed for a pretty generous rest interval between the last squat set and the first warmups for DL, maybe 15 minutes or more of chatting with the English guy about my squat. I probably over-warmed up for this because I couldn't settle on a setup that felt strong. The 198# warmup was just me mis-converting kilos to pounds, I'd rather that warmup had been 185 or so.
I've been pretty casual about my deadlift form for a while, just trying to focus on one or two things at a time. Now that my squat is out of the woods and my bench is starting to find it's way out, I need to start giving the deadlift more attention. It looks like I can't set my back properly during setup. It seems like some of the warmups look better than others, but I can't reliably set my back. I think it's really more likely to be a proprioceptive issue than a flexibility one. The work set reps felt very sloppy. I'm not sure if I was able to lock out, at the top of the ROM I just wanted to put the bar down ASAP lol.
I was at the gym for over 2.5 hours so I didn't do any of the accessory work.