Well this workout turned out to be a real doozy that just put me in a bad head space.
I figured that given I had skipped my Friday workout from the week prior that I would either be super low energy, or very high energy and I would go by feel on the work sets depending on how the warm-ups all felt. Squat warm-ups were ‘meh’ at best, but by the time I got to my top set with 285, I was feeling ok, so I figured I’d get a few extra reps for a low volume AMRAP. This went fine enough, but I was feeling some low back fatigue, which tells me that my warm-up protocol isn’t doing enough to fully open up my hamstrings and hips.
Bench press was fine, no real issue here, actually did pretty well on the top set and I’m happy about that.
Deadlifts were a complete crap shoot. Warm ups were feeling fine until I was setting up the warm-up set with 185lbs and felt a spasm in my lower back. I figured it was something that would pass and paid extra attention to my set up for the next few warm-up sets. But getting to 275, and I realized that just nothing was feeling right. My back was getting progressively worse and feeling beat up. I stopped it there.
After, I started to think of my track record with injury, and I came to a bit of a realization. The times I experience the most injuries is when I’m trying to force-feed the competitive lifts and not focusing more on tissue load tolerance and overall mobility and stability.
To that end, I’m once again making a shift in my training. I’m going to go to a 2 days per week training program: 1 lower and 1 upper. No competitive lifts, just variations, and focusing more on a bodybuilding style of lifting.
For my lower day, I’m going to do front squats and SSB squats, with an emphasis on feeling my quads and glutes working, while working to minimize my lower back movement. Aside from that, I’m definitely feeling the need to start getting more cardiovascular training in. To that end, with the weather warming up, I’ll be hitting the roads again, trying to increase my mileage gradually each week. The plan is to run 4 days per week, but as long as I get 3 days, I’m happy.
Here’s the lift from this day:
A1. Low Bar Squat – 3×5/5/5+ @ 285lbs
- 45x10x2
- 95x5x2
- 135×5
- 185×3
- 225×1
- 275×1
- 285x5x2
- 285×5+ (7 @ RPE 8)
B1. Bench Press – 3×5/5/5+ @ 170lbs
- 45x20x2
- 95×10
- 135×5
- 170x5x2
- 170×5+ (11 @ RPE 8)
C1. Conventional Deadlift – 3×3/3/3+ @ 295lbs
- 45×10
- 135x5x2
- 185×3
- 225×1
- 275×1
Ramble on Fitness 