I'm still getting used to the belt on the deadlifts. I feel like it really changes my form, and allows me to get away with my torso collapsing forward on my last few heavy reps. It may however be that my form has always broken down that way, and I'm only now noticing it, because I have a thick piece of leather wrapped around my midsection.
Well, at least I thought he was. Turns out, just sleeping. I trained alone today.
FRIDAY - "SQUAT" DAY
As I said before, my hip flexors have been hurting me when I squat, so the mission of today was to figure out what I can do without pain. I fucked around with a bunch of different stances etc. Every variation of back squats I could come up with hurt me, so I tried front squats. With just the bar, these felt ok. So I did
Front Squats
45x5
95x5
With this heavier weight, I could feel it starting to irritate my hip, so I quit doing that. I pretty much gave up on squatting, and decided to go heavy on the Good Mornings. If it's good enough for Louie Simmons, it's good enough for me. I didn't feel like figuring out what my "true" 5/3/1 weights would be, so I just took a stab at it:
Good Mornings
95x5
135x5
165x3
195x5
225x5
235x5
Last set is here:
Yeah, that's fucking right. I listen to All Things Considered stories about Of Montreal to get me fucking psyched.
I think my form was pretty good. Probably could have gone lower on the fourth one. However, this is heavier than I've ever gone on GMs, so I think it was pretty good for that. I'm glad I can find a way to put something heavy on my back every week.
Then I thought maybe this would be ok:
DB Goblet Squat
40 x 15
This started to irritate my hip as well, so that was it.
Ab Wheel
+2 chains x 10 x 3
DB Side Bends
60 x 12/side x 3
I made Teresa take these pictures of me:
Consider this post a BLOG RECOMMITMENT. Prepare for the onslaught of slow, methodical progressive overload AND HARD FUCKING WORK.
Updates have been lacking for a while. Nobody reads this, but I'm at least gonna start holding up my end of the bargain, and get it back together.
Pushed the prowler today. I felt like crap, and I got worn out a lot faster than I usually do. This was a bit of a wake up call for me. I need to get back to regularly including conditioning in my life, and I need to clean up my diet a lot. Also, I had to dookie, and I think that influenced how I felt a lot.
Lifting is probably going to get cut back to twice a week for the next couple weeks, with a mid-week prowler pushing day. This is because I need more time to study for my exam on Nov. 4, which I really want to pass, because I hear kids are expensive, and I really need a raise. I've also been feeling beat up lately, and think that maybe backing off a tad on the volume won't hurt anything. I'm going to make a conscious effort to keep up with the foam rolling and stretching at least a little bit everyday though. I say this a lot, but this time I mean it. My hip has been hurting me when I squat, to the point now that it's affecting my performance, so I think it's important I keep up with the shit like stretching that I hate.
Here's a video of some various stuff I've done in the gym lately. I've been taking more videos, cause Sean hasn't been around much lately, and I like to have some sort of feedback.
The things depicted below are, in order,
Squats 295 x 3+ (2) shoulda had this, but couldn't stand up out of the hole for some reason
Good Mornings 135 x 12 wanted to check my form, personally I think it's pretty good
Good Mornings 185 x 8
Deadlifts 340 x 1+ (5) happy with this
Sorry the good mornings are so boring, but fuck you.
