After an abysmal showing at APF Equipped Nationals, I'm now in an off season mode of training. Currently, I am in a strength block building up strength and weaknesses to prepare me for a meet prep cycle for WPC World's in November.

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Friday I was able to get back under some heavy weight again finally. While the session was moved up a day, I think this was probably a good call because I was definitely feeling it come Saturday. I wasn't expecting to hit a rep PR on the first day back, but it looks like taking the needed time to build some muscle and increase my calories has paid off already.

I've also changed up how I'm approaching my back down sets on the main movement. We're running a similar method from Mike T from his RTS book. We're essentially setting a training max for the day, and doing the drop down sets that fall within a given rep range for the percentage of the day. For the average day, we're going to be trying to get a total of 10 reps (including the top set), so this will be sets of 2-4 reps with  2-5 sets. So on really good days we can push the reps more, but on days where things feel off, we can keep the reps on the lower end and take multiple sets to work on technique and dialing things in a bit more. It's quite a bit of volume on the main movement (compared to most conjugate layouts), but it's still rooted in applied science. I'm excited to see how this turns out for the next 8 weeks or so.

The supplemental movement has also changed for the ME day. We'll be waving these with a 3x10, 3x8, 4x6 - and then repeating the wave. While the max effort movement will change from week to week, the supplemental movement will build momentum. Accessory work is still pretty normal for me, higher volume and attacking specific weak points.

A tough day back, but I felt really good and happy with it.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBtmLEzPy9o]

Items Used in this Training Session
Cambered Bar
SS Yoke Bar
Average Band

Warm Up
Hip Flexor Stretch - 30 sec per leg
Leg Swings (forward and side to side) - 10 each
Single Leg RDL - 10 per leg
Bulgarian Split Squat - 10 per leg
Goblet Squat - 10
Standing Band Crunch - 15

A1) Cambered Bar Squats
65x10
155x5
245x5
295x3
335x3
375x3
405x3
435x3 - PR
400x2x3
400x2

B1) Cambered Bar Pause Squat
265x3x10

C1) SSB Step Ups
3x10 per leg

D1) Dimel Deadlift
3x20

E1) Bent Knee Reverse Hypers
4x20

F1) Band Assisted Hip/Quad Lift
150 total reps
F2) Wtd Sit Ups
4x12