Phineas decides to move north of vag with 5/3/1

[ihateschoolmt]

Though I'm loving this program I do want to try the other major strength programs like 5 x 5 and Westside.

I liked west side when I did it a long time ago.

 

[omerta2010]

Actually, looking at my workout schedule it seems that more or less the weights in mesocycle B are the weights from mesocycle A but one ahead. So, in week 2 of cycle A I had to squat minimum 3 at 225 lbs. In cycle B week 1 is minimum 5 for 220. So, you can see it slowly creeps up. I imagine cycle D is where it's going to start getting really tricky, as I'll then begin to hit weights I never have.

You'll be suprised how if you stick to the plan it does work without you even realizing it. I made the mistake of overthinking it the first 2 cycles. But for these last 2 followed the weight increases the way it's written and without realizing it I've consistently gotten numbers I had never done before.

Only thing is that I noticed your setting rather high rep out goals so you may have to adjust those a bit.

Overall your first cycle looks great though.

 

[Gazhole]

I did a similar thing and really over-thought my rep targets for the first two cycles. Just go in there and go untill you can't anymore. I've had some sessions that were better than others, sometimes when a weight i've done before comes up again i do better, some i don't get the same reps as before, but the overall load over the cycle is higher than before - its THIS that gets you stronger.

You'll barely even notice it, then you'll retest and add like 40lbs to your max. Have an aim, but so long as its at least 5, 3, or 1 you're set.

 

[Phineas]

Mesocycle A, Week 4 (DELOAD): Deadlifts and Military Press (Thurs, Feb 17)

Deadlifts:

5 x 115 lbs
5 x 135 lbs
5 x 165 lbs

Military Press:

5 x 50 lbs
5 x 65 lbs
5 x 85 lbs

BB Split Squats:

8 x 115 lbs
8 x 115 lbs

Chinups:

5 x BW (190)
5 x BW
5 x BW

Bar Dips:

5 x BW
5 x BW
5 x BW

-------------------

Forgot to post this last night.

Second of two deload sessions. This one took 15 minutes. Basically I got a decent pump which was nice after all the inactivity this week. For my deload I also refrained from training runs for the 10km race I'm doing May 1. To make matters worse I work a desk job where I sit most of the day. Add all this together and I'm just dying to squat tomorrow.

Cycle B starts tomorrow. SQUATS!!! I'm listening to Judas Priest and getting pumped up thinking about it. In case you're wondering the song is "All Guns Blazing" and it is truly badass mastery.

 

[Phineas]

Mesocycle B, Week 1: Squats (Sat, Feb 19)

Warmup:

5 x 100 lbs
5 x 125 lbs
5 x 150 lbs

Working Sets:

5 x 165 lbs
5 x 195 lbs
< 5 x 220 lbs = 12

10 x 165 lbs
10 x 165 lbs
10 x 165 lbs
10 x 155 lbs
10 x 155 lbs

BB Romanian Deadlifts:

10 x 165 lbs
10 x 175 lbs
10 x 185 lbs

DB Farmer's Walks:

0:42 x 200 lbs (100 lbs x 2)
0:34 x 200 lbs
0:24 x 200 lbs

---------------------------------

Phenominal workout today. I was aiming for 10 reps on the squat rep-out but dug deep and pulled out another two with some breathing reps. Week 1 of cycle A I maxed 10 reps at 210 lbs. That was January 15. Not much more than a month later and I added 2 reps at 10 lbs more to that. I'm one fucking happy man.

Switched assistance from planks to romanians and farmer's walks for (a) extra posterior chain work, (b) grip strength, and (c) general conditioning and muscle building. Planks are great but do only so much for the rest of my lifts.

 

[ihateschoolmt]

Farmers walks are a bitch.... I need to do those sometime.

 

[Phineas]

Mesocycle B, Week 1: Bench Press (Mon, Feb 21)

Warmup:

5 x 95 lbs
5 x 115 lbs
5 x 135 lbs

Working Sets:

5 x 145 lbs
5 x 165 lbs
< 5 x 190 lbs = 8

10 x 135 lbs
10 x 135 lbs
10 x 135 lbs
10 x 125 lbs
10 x 125 lbs

DB Bench Rows:

10 x 85 lbs
10 x 90 lbs
10 x 90 lbs
10 x 95 lbs
10 x 100 lbs

(45 Degree Incline) Leg Press Calf Extensions:

20 x 450 lbs
17 x 450 lbs
15 x 450 lbs

-------------------------

Disappointed with my rep-out tonight. I was so sure I'd get 10. Every rep right up to 8 was smooth and feeling good but then I stalled half way up to 9. I'm still trying to learn proper leg drive. In fact, my form might have been screwy tonight as I was experimenting further with leg drive and I notice myself losing stability. I have no problem maintaining the arched back with my rib cage projecting out. In fact, I can feel how it helps with the lift. My problem is the feet. I'm bring them in and under the bench and close together with my toes out about 45 degrees. On light sets it feels like I have great leverige but then on heavy sets my feet will slip and it's probably screwing with my rep outs.

Any pointers on leg drive? We don't have anyone at my gym who could help me. At least I don't think. The trainers are into the swiss ball stability movement crap and lat pulldowns/seated row/pec dec kinda thing. I don't imagne they could teach me proper leg drive for bench.

As for the rest of the workout, rows went pretty well. Got back up to my old 8 rep PR of 100 lbs, only for 10 reps. Also should mention I'm getting some noticeable size increases in my quads and lats. Take note "hardgainers" this is what we call "progress". All made possible by NOT doing endless sets, resting more than I train, and eating plenty of good food.

Arm curls can go fuck themselves. Lateral raises, too.

 

[ihateschoolmt]

I think you just got to mess around with the leg position til it feels right. And hard gainers are a figment of imagination.

 

[Gazhole]

Well done on the Squats - fucking awesome improvement! Bench is still fine, as upper body progress on this program is kinda weird on this program sometimes. Takes a little longer to "kick in" so to speak.

As for the leg drive the only advice i can give you is keep doing it. Its a tough one to get right. Don't worry about getting your whole foot down either - im on my toes and balls of my feet. Try to slide yourself up the bench in the direction of your head rather than pushing directly downwards into the floor, too.

 

[gtbmed]

The advice I got on leg drive from a pretty strong guy was this:

"You're either going to get a feel for it with your feet really spread out wide or with your feet tucked in narrow and underneath your body."

Personally, the best leg drive I ever got was with my feet narrow and way under my body. It was an extremely uncomfortable position but in my setup I slid my feet back as far as possible, then when I slid my body forward to get the arch and lift the bar, everything felt really tight.

The other thing is, you want to try to keep your heels on the ground. It pushes your chest up and makes the distance of the lift shorter. Once you touch your chest, imagine sliding yourself backward.

That's my experience. Admittedly I suck at benching so take it with a grain of salt.

 

[Phineas]

I think you just got to mess around with the leg position til it feels right. And hard gainers are a figment of imagination.

I agree. It's one of those "feel" things. And I agree on hardgainers. No such thing -- only under eaters and/or overtrainers.

Well done on the Squats - fucking awesome improvement! Bench is still fine, as upper body progress on this program is kinda weird on this program sometimes. Takes a little longer to "kick in" so to speak.

As for the leg drive the only advice i can give you is keep doing it. Its a tough one to get right. Don't worry about getting your whole foot down either - im on my toes and balls of my feet. Try to slide yourself up the bench in the direction of your head rather than pushing directly downwards into the floor, too.

Thanks for the kind words. So far my squats are taking off. I love it. I see what you mean about the upper body progress. I do feel my pressing has improved -- in fact on military I added 1 rep to my original 5RM in cycle A -- but I just need to get the leg drive down. I really didn't switch to powerlifting bench style until this program, so once I get it down then I'll be banging out rep PRs. I still think my rep outs have been good, just not as good as my squats and deads. In time...

The advice I got on leg drive from a pretty strong guy was this:

"You're either going to get a feel for it with your feet really spread out wide or with your feet tucked in narrow and underneath your body."

Personally, the best leg drive I ever got was with my feet narrow and way under my body. It was an extremely uncomfortable position but in my setup I slid my feet back as far as possible, then when I slid my body forward to get the arch and lift the bar, everything felt really tight.

The other thing is, you want to try to keep your heels on the ground. It pushes your chest up and makes the distance of the lift shorter. Once you touch your chest, imagine sliding yourself backward.

That's my experience. Admittedly I suck at benching so take it with a grain of salt.

I've played around with different foot positions. Initially I had a wide stance and that was working well for stability. Now my feet are narrow and under the bench and it makes it shorter distance for the bar to travel but also I find I get great leverige from the back arch. The only problem is keeping my feet planted. I have been doing just toes/balls of feet on the ground. I don't think I could do a narrow position with heels on the ground. I'll try in warmups next time and see. Or maybe I'll add a few lights sets in another workout for technique work.

 

[Phineas]

Also should mention I'm thinking about switching the 3 x 10 romanian deads on squat day to rack pull 3 x 10 or some other combination of reps. I'm not sure, though, if this would be overkill as the weight would obviously be much higher than romanian deads, especially if I go with more sets of lower reps for total of 30 reps.

Is this going against the point of the assistance? My rationale is I would get more frequent heavy lifting, as opposed to repping out on moderately heavy weights. Heavier posterior chain work plus grip and it will have great carry over to my deadlift.

Just a thought at this point, as I love romanian deads.

Thoughts?

Also, I really wish my gym had those what'cha call'ems that people use for farmers' walks? They hold weight plates I think and the handles are more narrow and are higher in the air so you don't even really have to deadlift them off the ground...when I was doing the farmer's walks the other day I was having trouble getting a good grip because I had to deadlift them from so low off the ground and I had to do it quickly as once I hit the timer on my watch there's like 2 secons before it starts, lol.

I wish I had a training partner.

 

[ihateschoolmt]

Maybe lower the rep range on the rack pulls but those are a good sub for RDL.

 

[Phineas]

Maybe lower the rep range on the rack pulls but those are a good sub for RDL.

That's what I was thinking. What I'm worried about is overdoing the intensity. Wendler doesn't say much about assistance work in the e-book aside from the 5 x 10 for the main lifts (50-60%). The 1 extra assistance exercises he just says lists as 5 x 10 but he seems to give the green light on other approaches as long as it's the same total of reps. However, 3 sets of 10 romanians (at a generic intensity for that many reps) isn't as stressful on the body as 5 sets of 6 at a relative intensity. Even though rep total reps are the same, the stress on the body is greater on the heavier sets.

I know I shouldn't be overthinking the assistance but I just want to be cautious not to interfere with my main lifts. I have plenty of recovery time with 3x a week in the gym and 3x a week short fast runs..cutting down to 2x now for most weeks. But, rack pulls are pretty heavy duty. Still, those together with farmers walks will make for awesome deadlift assistance work, even though it would be on squat day. I seem to be doing the leg assistance on the opposite days. I do split squats (squat assistance primarily) on deadlift day, so that I'm not obliterating one side of my legs each workout. I figure it makes more sense.

But, rack pulls would have carry over to squats, too. Pretty much everything actually. Hell, even military press requires a strong posterior chain. The back is brought into the lift quite a lot once you learn how to properly perform the lift.

 

[ihateschoolmt]

What do you think of good mornings? I like them pretty good as a sub for RDL. Rack deads are good but I don't like doing them as I don't have a problem locking out my deads, if I can get it off the floor then it's going up. Kinda just feels like a half range of motion to me, but they have their place i guess.

 

[gtbmed]

Here's my take:

Start off subbing in the heavy rack pulls and track if it helps. If it's not helping, then cut down the heavy rack pulls to once every-other week.

Just experiment with it and figure stuff out through trial and error. A lot of things related to recovery are highly individual. You'll figure out how long you need to recover from adding the heavy pulls.

 

[Phineas]

What do you think of good mornings? I like them pretty good as a sub for RDL. Rack deads are good but I don't like doing them as I don't have a problem locking out my deads, if I can get it off the floor then it's going up. Kinda just feels like a half range of motion to me, but they have their place i guess.

I'm not a fan of good mornings. I never felt like I got much out of them. If I needed some extra lower back work I might use them high reps but for posterior chain strength in general I think they're further down the chain (no pun) than romanians.

Here's my take:

Start off subbing in the heavy rack pulls and track if it helps. If it's not helping, then cut down the heavy rack pulls to once every-other week.

Just experiment with it and figure stuff out through trial and error. A lot of things related to recovery are highly individual. You'll figure out how long you need to recover from adding the heavy pulls.

This sounds like a good plan. I'm still not even sure if I'm going to bring in the rack pulls or not. I should probably stick with my new set up for this cycle and see how it goes.

 

[davegmb]

How low down do you start your rack pull from Phineas? are you not overly concerned about losing out on some leg work as the raack pulls will be more back dominant i think?!

 

[Phineas]

How low down do you start your rack pull from Phineas? are you not overly concerned about losing out on some leg work as the raack pulls will be more back dominant i think?!

That's a really good point. The lowest I can do them at my gym is knee height. Our squat racks have retarded safety bar slots where the lowest setting is pretty high for exercises like floor press and rack pulls. I have to put a big wooden block that I stand on so that I'm higher up and the bar then rests knee height, otherwise it would be well above my knee.

I do want plenty of direct leg work, and rack pulls do reduce the leg element. However, they're still heavy on the hips (not as much the hamstrings) and the posterior chain in general.

 

[davegmb]

Im going to be mixing them in between my deadlifts actually ie one week dead, nxt week rack pulls etc, im able to pull the bar down really low in my gym where its practically a deadlift so im lucky.

 

[Phineas]

Im going to be mixing them in between my deadlifts actually ie one week dead, nxt week rack pulls etc, im able to pull the bar down really low in my gym where its practically a deadlift so im lucky.

You shouldn't go much lower than mid- to upper-shin. Slightly below knee is optimal, in my opinion. Otherwise you might as well deadlift. The intent is to (a) strengthen lockout and/or (b) strengthen the posterior chain in general with an emphasis on back and/or (c) grip training. The ROM needs to be reduced a fair bit to get the benefit of the lift, but too much (above knee) and you might as well just do static holds (is that what they're called??).

 

[omerta2010]

I'll be following to see what you think of the rackpulls. Riptoe (sp) says they should start 2-3 inches below the kneecap.

great journal Phineas

 

[ihateschoolmt]

You shouldn't go much lower than mid- to upper-shin. Slightly below knee is optimal, in my opinion. Otherwise you might as well deadlift. The intent is to (a) strengthen lockout and/or (b) strengthen the posterior chain in general with an emphasis on back and/or (c) grip training. The ROM needs to be reduced a fair bit to get the benefit of the lift, but too much (above knee) and you might as well just do static holds (is that what they're called??).

Ya I call them static holds. And I agree with your form description. Just go ahead and try them, if you wanna work the posterior chain then they are certainly on the list of movements. Also, I quoted you in an argument earlier so you better have been right.

 

[Phineas]

Song of the day....

YouTube - Kreator - Extreme Aggression

 

[Phineas]

I'll be following to see what you think of the rackpulls. Riptoe (sp) says they should start 2-3 inches below the kneecap.

great journal Phineas

Thanks, omerta.

I've actually done rack pulls in programs before. I love them! Just not sure if they're appropriate to include as assistance at lower reps. I don't want to strain my CNS too much after the rep out. Overall, I would keep the total reps the same as the romanians, but the romanians would be fewer sets with more reps for the 30 rep total so a lower intensity and thus easier on the CNS. More of "muscle building" reps as opposed to "power" or "strength" oriented work.

It would be wise to stick with romanians for 1 cycle just like I did with planks. After that, if I feel rack pulls would serve my needs better I'll make the switch. Farmer's walks stay, however. They're badass and work so well for just about any purpose.

 

[omerta2010]

Here is the link to his description on the rack pulls:
Starting Strength

Good idea on the waiting til the cycle is complete before changing it up. I've been toying with the idea of doing rack pulls on my "deload" week.

 

[gtbmed]

If you're going to use heavyish loads, use Prilepin's chart. It's a good place to start.

I forgot to add with the leg drive - you don't need your heels to touch the floor the entire time. A lot of guys are up on their toes but they actively try to push their heels to the ground because this raises the chest up and shortens the bar path. Leg drive is a really tough thing to get IMO.

 

[Phineas]

Mesocycle B, Week 1: Deadlifts (Thurs, Feb 24)

Warmup:

5 x 115 lbs
5 x 140 lbs
5 x 170 lbs

Working Sets:

5 x 180 lbs
5 x 210 lbs
> 5 x 240 lbs = 12

10 x 170 lbs
10 x 170 lbs
10 x 170 lbs
10 x 170 lbs
10 x 170 lbs

BB Split Squats:

10 x 135 lbs
10 x 145 lbs
10 x 155 lbs
10 x 165 lbs
10 x 150 lbs

--------------------------------

Good workout tonight. In week 1 of cycle A I maxed deadlifts for 12 reps at 230 lbs. Tonight I hit the same reps but at 240 lbs, so a 10 lb improvement in a month! I'm pretty happy with that. The PRs keep rolling in.

Split squats felt awesome. I'm aiming to work up to 185 by the end of this cycle.

Relaxing at home with Aerosmith. I noticed my next two weekend workouts are military press and bench, which is good because I naturally have more energy on the weekend from getting to sleep in and relax all morning/early afternoon at home before the gym and so I anticipate solid workouts for those two lifts which haven't been progressing as well as squats and deads.

 

[Phineas]

Okay I keep confusing myself, can someone please tell me how to write "greater than or equal to (X number)".

I had been doing it like this: " > 5 x ... lbs"

But, I read it again and I think this would be right: " > 5 x ... lbs"

Trivial bullshit, I know, but I like my journals to look all legit, as they say in Jersey Shore.

Ya, okay, so my girlfriend got me into that show. They're such douch bags but jesus christ are they entertaining.

 

[ihateschoolmt]

you've been doing the greater than correctly, just remember the alligator eats the bigger number haha. and also, I used to talk shit about jersey shore too but I watched it once with someone and it is straight up hilarious.