This past weekend was a productive one in terms of both raw and gear work.
Sunday was a deadlift day, with most of the guys doing conventional deficits from about 3 inches. Since I am forgoing conventional deadlifting for this meet cycle, I lowered the deficit to about 3/4 of an inch, and pulled sumo.
Long story short, I got up to 500, which doesn't seem like much, but is a pretty big milestone for me. Due to my back pain, I hadn't pulled 500 from the floor raw in YEARS. The biggest challenge had been my back basically shutting down at the start of the lift, making me unable to strain at the start. This time, I was able to hold position and muscle the weight off the floor.
Best of all, no pain whatsoever!
I'm really looking forward to my first suited DL workout because my confidence is higher than it's been in a long time with the pull. Granted, 500 still kind of sucks in the scheme of things, but its a start!
Finished the day with glue-ham raises, reverse hypers, incline sit-ups and dumbbell side bends.
Monday was a shirt work, and it was time to start loading the bar up. The movement was a 3 board, and the goal was to get something heavy in my hands. Took my typical progression up, and wound up at 695. At 30 lbs above my meet max, this was a good start for this. I basically use boards as a way to overload the lift, and work technique on a separate day. I will wind up going much higher than this over the course of the meet cycle, but this, like Sundays deadlift was a great starting point!
Finished with hammer strength rows, triceps extensions, pec flys and DB shoulder raises.