Wednesday
We're done with our first strength cycle but my strength improved so much in such a short time that I've decided to keep training the squat, press, and deadlift once a week in 5 rep, 3 rep and 1 rep max effort schemes. Wednesdays will generally be the day I train strength and I plan on going at it this way for as long as it proves productive and my body can tolerate. I will not go after any more than 3 sets of each exercise. Even if I come up short of max effort on set 3 of a lift, I'll call it good. And many times I'll only do 2 sets. 1 to feel some moderately heavy weight and the 2nd to get gnarly. If the 2nd set wasn't max effort I'll up weight and hit a 3rd. Today was my first go at it and my sets looked as follows:
Back Squat
5 x 225#
5 x 255#
5 x 275#
Press
5 x 135#
5 x 155#
Deadlift
5 x 315#
5 x 365#
My strength in the bottom of the squat continues to improve and 275 proved too light for a ME x 5! Last time I did ME x 5 I barely hit 255. I should have finished at 285 or 295. I'm stoked with the way my squat is improving. The press was ugly and 155 was more than enough. I haven't trained it in a while and look forward to spending time on it. The deadlift was a true ME x 5 as I had had to earn that 5th rep, another solid step in the right direction. My last ME x 5 three weeks ago was 335 and barely. A 30# improvement in 3-4 weeks isn't too shabby and only has me about 30-40# away from my x5 pr. Stay tuned.
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Hey man, just wanted to say that your blog is awesome. You're super accountable and it's really cool to watch all the progress you're making. And I'm lovin' all the extra strength work, it's good stuff. I put myself through a bit of a hybrid program for a few weeks recently with some great results, so I'm sure you'll be setting some nice pr's soon. And if you do find your 5rm squat sometime, it's fun taking 90% of that number, and using it for 5 sets of 5. Brutal fun! Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteJThom