I had great sessions Monday and Wednesday. Monday I combined a max and dynamic upper body day. Wednesday I belt squatted and did my supplemental work on the trap bar. I had not deadlifted for over 12 weeks.
Both sessions were awesome. I had a crazy grinder on seated overhead press lockout. Seriously, if a fly pooped on the bar I would not have locked it out. Video is over on my instagram if you care to see what an RPE of 10.5 looks like.
For Wednesday I was super psyched to deadlift completely pain free. It's been a while. I took 315 for 5x5 after my squat work. It didn't feel like too much work, but my legs sure got sore Thursday and even worse on Friday from the new stimulus.
Still on a calorie deficit through Thanksgiving I was feeling absolutely spent on Friday. If I pushed Friday's back workout I know I wouldn't be recoverd for my Monday bench session again. That is my focus as I still have my double bodyweight bench goal to hit this year.
I decided to deload Friday. I used a very straightforward method of basically halving all of the weights I would normally do. I hated doing it, but as I type this it's Sunday and I feel back to baseline, so I'm glad I did.
For me there is no alternative to training hard. I can't hold back a little each workout. I'd rather put the pedal to the medal whenever I can and work around recovery.
With bench being my primary goal for this block I will keep that on Mondays when I'm my freshest. However, if I'm ending up spent every Friday it will serve me well to swap my Wendesday lower day with my Friday back day every other week.
I'd rather not take a full deload week during this block if I don't have to. There's only 12 weeks to get this training in and go for my max. This means I can't push conditioning at all. There's only so much recovery to be had.
Deload weeks were always planned in the past. I could burn the candle at both ends knowing I could hold out until that week of rest would come. Now I can't push past it anymore.
All of us have had that feeling when we don't want to be in the gym, but end up having a great session anyway. However now, when fatigued I can no longer try and lean into a session. It always turns out to be garbage and leaves me further behind the eight-ball with recovery.
The longer you train and the older you get, you just have to be more intuitive. There are not a lot of us still trying to hit it hard in our mid fifties. It's a learn on the fly process.
