Beyond 1400: Kyle's Road to RUM VIII

Squats
350x2x3
365x5
w/ 70 lbs. chains
235x5
305x5

Notes: Squats felt lousy, for whatever reason. I'm going to spend some more time squatting with the squat bar to see if that's making these squats harder--if that's the case, I probably need to take every available opportunity to train with it.

Need to catch up on the last couple of days with a log:

From Friday:

Squats
365x1
405x1
440x0

Standing Goodmornings
275x5
315x5

Seated Goodmornings w/ SSB
225x5
245x5

Ukrainian Stallions, three sets

Notes: Impromptu squat singles session on my day off. I went for my 440 PR and missed it, though it's fair to say that it was a very "close" miss (i.e. I think I would have gotten 438 or something). I've decided to keep training for a couple mesos and then re-take 440 on August 2nd, which is when I turn 28. I'll also take a bench PR attempt on that day.

So, I'm making fast progress with the squat, but I'm also getting greedy here, and I need to just put my head down for a while and work at it.

From Saturday:

Paused Bench Press (w/ slingshot)
300x8 (PR)
narrower grip, no slingshot
225x12x3, 225x11 (missed 12th)

Rear Delt Flys, four sets

Pushdowns, three or four sets

Wide-Grip Pull ups, three sets (16-8-

Band Pull-Aparts, two sets

Notes: Trained with Andrew from just outside of town on this day (we met at Chris A.'s intramural meet) and watched him blow up a 515-lb. bench. It was nice to talk training and get his perspective on a lot of things, and it was very interesting watching him bench; he moves 405 REALLY fast, especially for a 265-lb. guy. Here is his awesome benching:

I like the idea of birthday PRs. I also think august 2nd gives you enough time that you'll hit 440 with a lot of confidence.

And it was awesome benching with you and other Andy Sat morning. I've never seen anyone bench that much weight in my life.

Andy Awad wrote:

I like the idea of birthday PRs. I also think august 2nd gives you enough time that you'll hit 440 with a lot of confidence.

And it was awesome benching with you and other Andy Sat morning. I've never seen anyone bench that much weight in my life.

Yes, I have no doubt that I will squat it on my birthday. And it was great having you there to bench; it's always nice to get a good group of training partners together to push you for a session.

From yesterday:

Squats
(no wraps)
350x2x3
365x2
w/ reverse mini-bands, 30 lbs. off at bottom
405x3 PR
435x2 PR

Aborted attempted front squats

Planks, two sets, 3-min. apiece.

SSB Paused Squats
245ish x8

Notes: Squatting felt much better today. I changed my warm-up to: 1.) light SMR (~10 mins.), 2.) light static stretching (~10 mins.), 3.) a couple light dynamic stretches and activation exercises, plus depth jumps (with a depth of like .0001 inches, done while seated on a box). The activation exercises in particular really helped, I think.

Depth isn't great, so I have to work on that. If I focus on it, I can make it fine, but I have to try to really sink all my squats moving forward. Mobility isn't really the issue here; with my technique, it's just something that I really have to reinforce.

I can front squat better in my Oly shoes, but I can tell that racking will still be the limiting factor.

Front planking is apparently very easy for me, and so I'm going to have to increase the degree of difficulty on these if I want to use them in my training.

Finally, SSB squats felt awesome, especially with the pause. The bar position allows me to squat much deeper, and I feel my legs really engaged in the movement. I've been looking for a vertical-torso squat variation to incorporate in an effort to continue building overall leg strength, and I think this will be it. I might not program these just yet, and I'll probably just use them as a main assistance exercise for this cycle and do a lot of hypertrophy-range training with a pause. Maybe I'll just progress linearly with these for the next two months and see where it takes me.

I will preface this by saying I haven't followed your training perfectly, but I have a general critique about your current (and future) programming.

You have a good work capacity, and when you hurt your back you were able to really develop your bench by giving it a lot of attention in the form of intensity and frequency. At that time you were squatting and deadlifting very light, and recovery was not an issue. However, as you are starting to reach previous training numbers on Squat and a more moderate deadlift, I haven't seen you taper the bench work. I think the exercise selection for the squat seems a bit aggressive, especially the good mornings and use of contrast on squats (unless you are willing to reduce the bench work). As your deadlift training numbers continue to increase, it would be a good idea to be mindful of how much the overall stress has increased in your training these past few months. It seems to be increasing very quickly

You know missing reps that you can get and aching are bad things, and I think the cause stems from you treating your bench work like when you were essentially bench only. 400+ lb squats are a much different stress from 10+ rep sets.  

stay safe

KevinAlvy wrote:

I will preface this by saying I haven't followed your training perfectly, but I have a general critique about your current (and future) programming.

You have a good work capacity, and when you hurt your back you were able to really develop your bench by giving it a lot of attention in the form of intensity and frequency. At that time you were squatting and deadlifting very light, and recovery was not an issue. However, as you are starting to reach previous training numbers on Squat and a more moderate deadlift, I haven't seen you taper the bench work. I think the exercise selection for the squat seems a bit aggressive, especially the good mornings and use of contrast on squats (unless you are willing to reduce the bench work). As your deadlift training numbers continue to increase, it would be a good idea to be mindful of how much the overall stress has increased in your training these past few months. It seems to be increasing very quickly

You know missing reps that you can get and aching are bad things, and I think the cause stems from you treating your bench work like when you were essentially bench only. 400+ lb squats are a much different stress from 10+ rep sets.  

stay safe

I went in to bench today, felt achy, benched 290x4 with a close grip pretty easily but felt terrible while doing so, then shut it down. I cried in my cheerios for a bit and listened to the voice that told me that we had a good run but it was time to scale it back. It's interesting that you posted all of this when you did, because this is what I needed to hear following today's session.

I'm probably going to take the next session or two (very likely two) to do some limited pressing training--possibly some floor pressing, as that doesn't seem to bother me much--and just give myself as much time as needed until I feel right on the bench again. My bench training has been very high-exertion, even for the supplemental work, since the meet, and I think you're right that that well's run dry.

Finally, a big issue here is the fact that I've been dieting down for a while now, and because I've been training for a long time now on 1800-2000 cals per day, I'm not recovering as well as immediately following the meet. So, I'll really have to scale it back a bit further if I plan on continuing the deficit (which I do, at least for a while longer).

On top of all that, my sleep is currently terrible and I'm only sleeping at two- to three-hour intervals. Blah.

Thanks Kevin--this does help a lot. I'll probably scale back the secondary stuff for squatting as I return to deadlifting this week and just see how I feel. I need people to help keep me in check sometimes, especially when something works, because I will just hammer it to death and beat myself down in the process.

Squats
330x4x3
350x4

Paused SSB Squats
225x5
300x4

Notes: I took today as a long-overdue reduced session and excluded the heavy reverse-band squatting. Even with the 15-lb. increase for this meso, unwrapped squatting feels fine and easy, and all the sets are still in a low RPE (RPE@6) range. I got naked and checked depth, and that went surprisingly well. Finally, I really need to learn how to jump.

Gotta load your hips on the eccentric

Nathan Poage wrote:

Gotta load your hips on the eccentric

What do you mean?

Keosawa wrote:

Nathan Poage wrote:

Gotta load your hips on the eccentric

What do you mean?

Your landings, brah





See how all your weight is shifted to your toes and you don't really use your hips in the eccentric (and a subsequent amortizing phase if you were going to jump again)? Also, the knocked-knees.

Oh, gotcha. I thought you were talking about the squats. That makes a lot more sense now, and yeah, I see what you're saying--it felt as awkward as it looked.

Good to see you doing some jumping!

I wouldn't recommend jumping in WL shoes unless you're trying to be very specific and I don't think that exercise is very specific. A big part of that exercise is getting your center of mass in front of your feet. So you're not really jumping from the box. It might put you in a slightly lower position than you'd assume otherwise, but it's basically standing broad jump mechanics at that point. The most specific exercise would be jumping vertically from a full squat. I bet anything would provide a pretty good warm up though.

We had a similar discussion at Magni today.  At this point any jumping will probably help with RFD but eventually training vertically instead of horizontally would be ideal since that's more specific to powerlifting.  


This link should work. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nlsdl06ya77bvpn/Shock%20Method%20Plyometrics.pdf

Thank you both! That's very helpful.

Paused Deadlifts
420x3x5

GHRs, three sets (w/ two minis)

Banded Hip Thrusts, three sets

Notes: Paused deadlifting didn't feel super tough or anything for this session, but the pause did suck pretty hard, especially for someone who isn't used to spending much TUT around his knees on his deadlift. I think I did a pretty good job with these, but I will have to consult with Paul and see what he thinks. This is the heaviest I've pulled in the last four months, so I'm pretty happy with how it felt. I was told to use a stiff bar, and I went with the thick one (I didn't have many options), but it felt pretty good.

So, that's the first of many upcoming paused DL sessions. We'll see what the progression for subsequent weeks looks like--I'm excited for future training. The deadlift training is still easy enough so that I don't feel like I need much any time to recover, but that at some point will probably change.

Floor Press, narrower grip
185x10
225x10
235x10
245x10 (PR?)
260x10 (PR)
185x20

Wide-Grip Lat Pulldowns, four or five sets

Banded Crunches, two sets

Tricep Pushdowns w/ bands, four or five sets

Notes: Floor pressed pretty light today due to achiness from the last few weeks, and thankfully I felt none of it and was able to train just fine. I will run floor pressing for at least one more session as I give myself a chance to recover. 260x10 is a PR of some sort, though I haven't done these in a while and my tricep strength is a lot stronger (which is going to have direct carryover). My guess is that with a wide grip, my floor press is probably a bit stronger even than my bench press at this point.

I used my narrower grip for these (pinkies on the rings), though the difficulty of pressing narrower for me is offset somewhat from the fact that a narrower grip on the floor press keeps the bar further off your chest, due to the forearms being more vertical.

Squats
330x4x3
350x4

SSB Squats
145x15x2

Leg Extensions, three sets

Hip Abductors w/ two minis, three sets

Notes: Squat speed was pretty good, but I just didn't feel that great. Legs didn't really feel like they were there, and I got a little loose trying to descend quickly on some reps. I was planning on taking some heavy reverse-mini band reps after these, but I decided to scrap it and rest up. Training's gone very well but I'm trying to do my best now to stay cautious and emphasize recovery.

Deadlift
450x3x3
450x6

GHR Band Crunches, three sets

Neutral Grip Pull-ups, three sets

Pull-Aparts, two sets

Notes: Not sure how to feel about this deadlift day; everything felt really slow, but I didn't really feel like I was going to miss any of the reps, either. I just feel like I'm moving in slow motion, and it takes me a few reps before I start to find my groove. Reps 4-6 on 450x6 were easier than the first three sets, which is both heartening and disheartening.

Overall though, 450 is a 30-lb. "PR" for post-RUM deadlifting, and I handled it pretty well, so that's good. I tried to make technical changes during the session and felt more lost than when I began. I do feel that I have to get my hips higher and pull with a slightly more vertical femur, and that I'm sitting back too much on my initial pull and missing the groove. I think this technique will work well for paused squats, but I don't think it's the best cue for me for my competition pulls. Finally, I feel right now like pulling with a deadlift bar is harder in some way than pulling with a stiff bar, so I think I will switch back to the stiff bar next week to test this theory out. I have to get practice with the deadlift bar, since I'll be using it in competition, but right now the bar-bend almost makes it feel like I can't get any speed off the floor.

Tuesday:

Floor Press
315x2 PR (third with my ass sky-high; not even a cheater like me can count that)
325x1
280x4

Notes: Just a little higher-intensity floor pressing to test out my achiness. Everything felt fine, so I should be good to start benching again on Thursday. I didn't really have a plan, so I took a big (30ish lbs.?) PR triple and a small (5-lb.) PR single, then a drop set, then called it after I started getting cold. My basic assistance was all done the following day.

Are you still doing any jumping

I was thinking it could be a good idea to do like 2x2 jumps exactly how you squat and do them after your last squat warm ups. I think you might get the most out of that.

I haven't tried before I was just thinking it might work for me. Now I want to try.

Yeah, I've been doing 3x3 narrow-stance depth jumps before my warm-ups; I might try your way of doing it. I'm still figuring it out, but the materials Nate sent me were helpful.

Paused Deadlifts
450x2x4
450x4

Face Pulls, three sets

Tricep Pushdowns w/ average band, three sets

Band Pull-Aparts, two sets

Notes: Much better deadlift session. Paused deadlifts suck so hard, but these felt better than last week's regular pulls with 450. I am making fast progress on my deadlift and feeling better with each session, but there is still a lot of work left to be done. Still, this was nice progress. I've got three more deadlift sessions before this cycle ends; next one's going to be 480x3x5 (on Sunday), and that will be tons of fun.