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Monday, February 7, 2011

New 5/3/1 Program - Week 5, Day 1

7 February 2011

Decided to make some changes to my weekly schedule:

Pressing was lacklustre - probably due to excessive pressing volume in the past week; combined with the bottoms-up work I've started doing it will probably take some adaptation. However, I don't want my main lifts to suffer, so I'm reducing the number of reps and adding weight to my dips. Pullups I can still handle.

Abdominal work - I have been doing it almost daily, both in the gym after lifting and at home. This is too much. I will do one heavy day (incline board situps with weights behind head) and one regular day (incline board situps at different angles of elevation and/or hanging leg raises), then perhaps just a single set on the other days. I think the volume is doing my lower back in.

Lower back is sore by the time I get to deadlifting, which equals shitty deadlift performance; for some reason grip is weak too - I don't know how to deal with this one, it's probably due to the high (for me) volume of kettlebell work I've added in on Saturdays. I will keep at it and just hope it goes away. Alternatively there is a good deadlift program that I'd like to try - keep doing 5/3/1 for the other 3 lifts but switch to this one for the deadlift.

Anyway, today's toils:

Bench press:

Warmup 2 sets
215 lbs x 3
245 lbs x 3
275 lbs x 7 (felt a good 10 lbs. heavier)

Bottom-position bench press:

225 lbs x 2
235 lbs x 2
245 lbs x 1
255 lbs x 1
275 lbs x 1
285 lbs x fail

So now I have set a goal of bottom-up benching 285 lbs.

Pullups 5x5

Dips unweighted 1 set x 10, +45 lbs. x 4 sets x 5

EZ bar bicep curls 3 sets

Barbell skullcrushers 3 sets

Preacher curl machine 3 sets

Tricep pushdown 3 sets

Incline board situps 3 sets

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