I 86ed my mid week raw stuff because I've still been a little beat up and wanted to be fresh for my max effort work. I never like taking time off and was hoping that it would pay off. Fortunately it did, and I felt great this weekend.
Sunday was a max effort deadlift day, and the exercise was a deficit deadlift standing on a 3 inch mat.
I haven't done deficits in a long time since I was protecting my back for the last couple of years, but I felt healthy enough to give it a go this time.
I wound up working up to 425, probably close to 100lbs off my best. Despite being weak as shit at these, they didn't hurt and I guess that's something. I've been raising the frequency of my max effort DL work over the past few months and I'm gradually getting better at it. It's going to be a while though before I'm actually "good" at it.
Still though, even when my conventional pull is low (or nonexistent) I've been able to pull reasonably close to my best sumo. Whatever ground I can make up in my conventional work this cycle should result in a pr on the platform this fall, provided I can stay healthy.
Finished up with 4 sets of reverse hypers and 4 sets of pulldown abs. Had to cut this one a little short because my wife and I took my son to the Bronx Zoo for the day. It's an awesome zoo and the kid loves animals so the trip kind of blew his mind. For me it was mostly a lot of walking around in the heat, but if the kid is having fun, that's all I need!
Monday was a shirted bench day, and since my bodyweight has been fluctuating (mostly up) I never really know quite what to expect anymore. This was a good one though.
My previous full range shirt day, I worked up to a touch with 585. This time, I was looking to get up to at least 600.
Warmed up to 335 raw before putting the shirt on at 425 to a 3 board.
then went:
515 - 2 board
565 - 1 board
605 - touch
635 touch
Although I'm not at my strongest yet, the shirt was grooving just right and the 635 was pretty clean. Check it out:
Also, check out Ferret's beard while he feels out the commands. I still have a hard time believing he has an office job that tolerates this mess.
After benching, we did some JM presses on a decline bench. This is another exercise I haven't been able to do in a long time, but with a couple of days off, my elbows felt good enough to do it. I did 3 sets of 5 with 135, and on the last set, I went to failure on them (7 or 8 reps or so) followed immediately by ripping out on close grip benches (lost count, just went till I was tired).
Finished with 5 sets of lat pulldowns with as much weight as I could to without the weight of the stack throwing me off the seat.
Good times, gonna carefully work the speed work back in this week and see if I can get a little more explosive at the start of the pull.