Saturday Speed Lower
I’m back to box squatting for speed work. I did not do a lot of box squatting during the last meet cycle because of my low back issues/injury/hurtiness/whatever. The meet cycle before that I did my fair share but sometimes it fucked me up more than it helped me. Which is more because I can’t squat as opposed to the inherent nature of box squatting.
Thinking about the novel nature of this hypertrophy and conditioning block and re-implementing the box for speed work got me thinking more about the changes in our program this off-season.
I always understood the concept of addressing weaknesses but for some reason, I assumed there would be more constants from meet cycle to meet cycle and off season to off season.
I am starting to get that addressing weaknesses is a constant process and the implementation can be kind of drastic.
For instance, this conditioning and hypertrophy block is a new one, I have never done a hypertrophy block with such bodybuilding-esque vigor. I always have some sort of hypertrophy-based block before the meet cycle but last time around revolved more about getting my back healthy and able to squat. Before that it was high rep work but not a huge deviation from exercises and rep schemes that I was familiar with. But I was also weaker, less conditioned, and the goals of the off-season were different.
The re-introduction of box squats addresses my issues coming out of the hole (slow and a lil squishy).
I previously had to work on upper back strength and while I want to maintain it, my new issues now are low back and hip strength.
A lot of times when I ask Dave about certain choices or changes in our program (especially when it seems like a drastic change from what we’ve been doing in the past), the answer is that the circumstances have changed. The weaknesses and goals are different, so therefore the training is too. I guess it makes sense if you do a good job of bringing your weaknesses up, they will no longer be a weakness. Others will show in their place. This seems very obvious as I am typing it out but I guess I went for years before not being strong enough or able to identify my weaknesses and also not good enough at training that I would be able to fix a weakness in a cycle. The other half is since I have had Dave explain our programming, I now have a better idea of what programming to address weaknesses looks like.
Ok well that was a mildly useless stream of consciousness. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Speed box squats 235 12x2
Still conditioning the ol squat. We do things in 3 week waves so in the next 2 weeks of speed squats, the weight will stay the same but the sets will go up. I was told to choose a weight between 40-50% of my max squat where I would be able to get through all the prescribed sets while maintaining good speed (but not breaking down) but would be out of breath if we stick to speed squat rest periods (about a minute).
Lying hamstring curl with chain 4x10 followed up with some partials (so 4x10-???)
Sissy squats 4x20. These fucking suck. Who invented these? Rutherford M. Sissy? Fuck you, Mr. Sissy.
Pull thrus super setted with pull down abs. I guess I can’t really say super set since I got in a discussion halfway through about rankings (nothing new. The same bullshit we like to talk about all the time) which kind of put an end to the super setting.
Glute kickbacks so I can fill out adult pants
Innie outtie machine
Sunday Max Effort Upper
Close grip very incline
50% time spent setting up the bench and rack height, 50% time spent benching.
3 heavy singles at the same weight. 175x1 175x.6 Dropped down and did 165 for the next two singles. Boo.
Flat bench close grip with shoulder saver 155x10 for like 3 sets then 165x8
T bar row 2 plates and a 5 3x10
Lat pulls 4x12
Dumbbell ohp 3x12
Curls 3x20
Push ups on barbell in bottom of rack 4x20-25 to work my chesticles since most of the day was tricep intensive and not off the chest.