Heavy-ER Day

The soreness was almost completely gone when I arrived at the gym. I am trying to get in a rhythm of having a warm up that consists of riding the bike, PVC rolling and stretching. Not only do I feel better during the session but my body is noticing the benefits when I am not training as well.

Back Squat:

5x1 @ 385#

Cleans:

3x3 @ 205#

1500m Row

5:41

Very pleased with the back squat for two reasons. First, I was a little nervous going into it because of my disaster last day of 5/3/1 where I failed at 395#. Today I felt much stronger and each rep was consistently solid. Good form and good drive out of the hole. There is a new member to the Colleseum who I immediately friended after seeing him lift. He is a competitive power lifter and has given me some advice. He told me, since I have flexible shoulders, to grip the bar with as narrow of a grip that I can tolerate. This brings me to the second pleasing thing about this workout. I didn't want to try anything too drastic but I did move my hands in a finger width in order to try to keep my chest up and prevent my butt from rising too quickly. Even with just a finger width I noticed a tighter fuller chest. I look forward to working on this technique for further progress.

The cleans felt heavy because I was tired and because the only spot I was able to do them, due to over-crowdedness, was uneven and it was hard to get good footing.

The row was just tough enough. My iPod shut off about 500m into it causing me to row with 1 hand (with which I was able to maintain a poor 2:30 pace) for about 20 seconds. This obviously increased my total time. Regardless, without expending much more energy I was able to improve on my last 1500m.