OK! What a weekend, and what a fun weekend, but fun has its costs. My body weight is up, and waking up this morning was a challenge. Just need to remember to keep these fun weekends in control and keep things moving in the right direction. Using today to keep a very moderate diet, focusing almost entirely on protein with some carbs, and going to BJJ tonight to get my get rid of the excess water weight that I’m definitely storing up at this point.
Woke up at 4:30am without any real issue this morning, it really helped that my kids slept well last night and didn’t really fuss at all. I rolled into my first conjugate workout this morning and it felt really good.
To be fair, I’m not using a real ME/DE program, but I’m using the basic structure to program my workouts. For example, today was my ME lower workout – in a traditional ME workout, I would work up to a true max single in the designated exercise (looking at RPE10, true maximal effort) before moving into my supplemental work and accessory work. For my purposes, specially longevity and general strength and not a true maximal effort, I’m working up to a top set of 5, where I feel like it was a RPE8. This is definitively lower than even a RPE10 set of 5, but ideally I’m hoping to get to a weight somewhere above 80% of my true 1RM, and get some volume there.
After the top set, instead of moving to a mechanically similar movement for supplemental work, I’m using the same movement and load accommodation (where applicable) and dropping to 80% of the top set and doing 3 sets of 5 with 2-count paused reps. As a raw lifter, my biggest area of challenge is always going to be at the bottom of the movement, so I think this is a good supplemental movement for me.
As I progress, and potentially find a meet to compete in, I’ll start pushing the reps lower and intensity higher as I start working into meet prep and peaking.
Here’s today’s workout:
5RM Front Squat vs 1 Chain per Side – 205×5
2-Count Paused Front Squat vs 1 Chain per Side – 165x5x3
Split Squats w/ Weight Vest – 26x15x3
Ab Wheel – 10×2/5×1
Used chains for the first time ever and it was an interesting challenge. Since I’m lifting at 4:45/5am, I’m always paranoid that I’m making too much noise and going to wake people up in the house, so the added noise from the clanging chains made me very worried. Luckily, as I worked up in weight, my mind was taken off of the noise and focused more on the weight and dealing with the way the chains throw you around. I’m going to have to play around with chain set ups as I get more savvy with them, and throw them in from time to time.
Pause squats were done with only 30 seconds of rest between sets, so there was a nice conditioning aspect to the workout. I think I got through the max work and the supplemental work within 30 minutes, which was the goal.
Split squats were great to get a solid quad pump going, I’m going to add some weight to the vest next workout and see how heavy I can get these.
I’m really hoping it isn’t going to be absurdly cold tomorrow morning, because I really want to actually get out there to run again. Regardless, I’ll just have to bundle up and make the best of it.
Ramble on Fitness 