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Thursday, January 1, 2015

2014 In Conclusion


After reviewing my old training logs, it turns out that my last heavy deadlift of 2014 only tied my 2013 PR. I somehow thought my old PR was 510. I did hit minimal PRs in the squat and bench press, so I guess I haven't just been spinning my wheels. In the coming year I plan to do more deadlift work and try to bring my pull in line with my squat. I think I've found a system that works (squat and DL on the same day, nothing but singles on the DL). Also to stick to the tried-and-tested bench press cycle and finally hit the long-expected 405.

Squat:



2013 Max - 535 lbs. @ 213 lbs. BW

2014 Max - 540 lbs. @ 215-220 lbs. BW

Increase: 5 lbs. Not great, but I feel like I should have tried 545 or 550. I did a lot of backing off from the heavier poundages this year and reduced heavy volume even further, and still my squat kept going up. Also my quad size has improved considerably. In 2015 I plan to de-emphasize the squat and work on my deadlift more, so I'm not planning on big squat gains. But another 5-10 pounds should be doable. I'm in a really good zone squat-wise and I hope I'll stay there for a while.

Bench Press:
2013 Max - 385 lbs. @ 214 lbs. BW


2014 Max - 395 lbs. @ 215-220 lbs. BW


Increase: 10 lbs. Knocking on the door of 405. I feel like the SlingShot is helping a lot, and I recently acquired the reactive model, which I'm pretty excited to try out. Also hit 410 with the SlingShot and missed 415. I tried experimenting with heavy singles, but the 6-5-3-2 system still yielded the best results.

Deadlift

Increase: None. Deadlift training in 2014 has been hit-and-miss. Messed around with deadlifting every other week and working up to triples, then switched to the "bastardized Gillingham program" which I had good success with a couple of years ago, but which didn't really yield results this time round. In 2015 I'll be sticking to the singles program and experiment with sumo pulling (seriously).


Things I'm going to try out in 2015:


- More conditioning work, and more consistent conditioning work,

- More light, high-volume exercises for the upper body,

- More front squatting and quadricep work,

- Tackling the sumo deadlift,

- Incline bench 315 pounds. Because I feel like it.

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