10-16-12: Squat/Bench/Row
Squat
5x225
5x265
3x5x295
Bench
3x3x135
3x185
1x205 paused 80%
11x180 repped 70%
Pendlay Row
3x5x175
2x8x135
Decent day today. Squats went great, technique felt awesome on the warmups, on the work sets I couldn't really tell, but it seemed good. Bench is officially in the shitter. I didn't even try for 5x225 today, so I just started a 7 week bench cycle I got from lift-run-bang.com where you hit progressively heavier paused singles, then do back off sets for max reps. I think that doing any kind of volume on my squats before hand kills my bench technique, my hips get way too pumped and therefore unflexible and I can't get any leg drive whatsoever, and my arch gets screwed up too. Bar path was good though, and besides the shit leg drive and arch, and on rep 11: ass coming off the bench and shoulders going unpinched, everything else was fine. Warming up with a thumbless grip works wonders for the bar path. Still pissed that my bench sucks though, and that squatting anything besides singles and maybe doubles/triples before hand kills it, but at least OHP is going well. Pendlays felt good today as well, felt it all in the lats, traps, forearms, and biceps, just like it should be, while moving decent weight. Only slight kipping, but not enough to degrade the quality of the movement. I think I'll just suck it up for the next 7 weeks on bench, maybe if I ever run squats and bench on the same day again I'll do front squats on my bench day and/or do legs after bench so my leg drive doesn't get messed up. Or hit a heavy single on squats, then do bench, then do the squats for volume, to get used to squatting before benching for if I ever decide to do a meet. But the last option is overly complicated.
Recovery has been good and bad. Sleep has been the worst it's been since I was a depressed nerdy insomniac in 9th grade and played video games until 2 AM , feel asleep at 4 AM, then woke up for school at 7 AM every day (maybe I would have grown to be 6'3 like my dad instead of 5'11 if I'd actually ate/slept properly back then...) It's really hot at night so it takes me 2 hours to fall asleep, then my roommates always wake up at 6:30 and I can't go back to sleep because their alarms go on loud for a pretty long time for them to wake up, which wakes me up instantly and then continues to wake me up for the 5 minutes it plays until I"m wide awake, and they finally shut it off. Not their fault that they're heavier sleepers than me but it still sucks. Also this weekend I made a huge mistake. The dining halls closed at 8 pm on friday, and because all the lines at restaurants were insanely long, I just popped some fish oil and told myself I was doing intermittent fasting for some stupid reason. I ended up going out that night and getting to bed at 5 AM, then woke up at 10 AM, and got out of bed at 12 AM to eat. So I went 16 hours without food, on no sleep, while on a high carb diet. I weighed myself on thursday night at 198, then on sunday after eating 6 meals I was only 194, and looked smaller and fatter in the mirror. I really hope I didn't lose 4 lbs of muscle. I look better today, haven't weighed myself but based on my performance in the gym, my pressing muscles either shrunk or are overtrained due to heavy pressing 3x/week, and everything else is fine.
On the bright side though I started doing yoga 10-30 mins every day so my mobility is already improving and all my joints hurt less (probably also due to fish oil). Also I learned my lesson that I respond well to a steady intake of nutrients, and from the last 3 times I've fasted and the last 4 times I've cut, I've learned that if I go low calories on a high carb diet I just lose muscle, so I need to be already fat adapted in order to go low calories without losing muscle, or if I want to lose fat (cyclic ketosis diet).
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