Notes: This training session felt great. I’ve noticed my body weight has been fairly steady at 247 recently, but I’m starting to notice differences in the way I look. I feel I look skinnier and more “like I lift”, my girlfriend is even commenting on it, but the scale is pretty steady. I’m starting to think that I am loosing body fat slowly, but maintaining weight. I even moved down another notch on my belt this week, which I believe further supports this. When I first received my belt, I weighted ~250 and had to squeeze into the 2nd notch from the end. I’m now on notch 4!
I put in some lat pull downs at the end which would typically be on a GPP day. I did this because of scheduling. I have concert tickets for shows on Monday and Wednesday of this week. To work around this, I’m going to have to do at least 1 GPP day at my house where I don’t have much equipment other than a stationary bike. That being said, I’m pumped to see Jimmy Eat World, Lil Wayne, and Blink-182 over the next few days. Let’s see how that effects my diet and sleep…
Notes: I had a really good training session yesterday. This was my first time ever putting 3 plates on the bar! It moved surprisingly well. I was pretty tired by the time I hit my squats, but overall I had a very positive session.
I’m pretty excited to move onto week 6 of the bride. It will be my first introduction to singles. I’m planning a GPP day tomorrow. I’d like to take my bike out for a ride if the weather holds off, but ultimately may end up indoors on the stationary. Squat single @ 8 on Friday!
Notes: I was amped for this session walking into it. I was really excited to try that single @ 8 having never really done singles before. Based off of recent training, the idea was to shoot for a single at 285. I SMOKED IT. It honestly felt like a 6, maybe 7. So I slapped on some 5’s and moved up to 295. I could feel this one a bit more, and decided it cut it there. It felt more like an 7-8ish. That 315 squat doesn’t feel that distant anymore. Cool stuff.
This positive mindset carried throughout the entire training session. All eRM’s moved up about ~6lbs.
Notes: I dislike thee pin squats…a lot…but I can really see how they are helping me. Deloading and removing the bounce puts me in an almost instant “sticking point” when I reload. I guess you could say it’s a love hate relationship. I need to focus on staying tight to avoid my hips shooting up too early.
The 135lb press has been a goal of mine for a while. I got really light headed during the press to the point where I couldn’t really judge RPE. I held my breath from unuacking it to reracking. I probably should took air at the top, but I was already light headed by that point. Putting it up was a struggle, but not a max effort from what I recall. The math made sense, so I cut it there, and did the remainder of the working sets. I’ve been light headed from pressing in the past, but not to this extent. I’ll be researching this more over the next week.
Notes: For the most part, this training session went as planned. I hit the numbers I wanted to on the deadlift and bench @ the given RPE. I was pretty gassed by the time I got to squats. Being tired combined with being in a time crunch (The gym was closing) led to me dropping the weight to meet the RPE on shorter rest.
Notes: My 300 Lb squat felt heavier than expected. I think I should have spaced out my warm ups a little better.I went Barx3, 135x3, 185x3, 225x3, 275x1. I probably could have done singles at 255 and 285 (skipping 275) to ease into it more. I didn’t exactly feel “amped”. I put a lot more focus into my last two sets and they felt the strongest.
My setup was OK for the pin bench. The spacing on my gym’s matrix half rack isn’t the greatest. I would have liked to have the spotter at least arms a half inch higher. The bar was definitely partially supported by my chest.
Notes: Overall happy with my bench and deadlift. I was pretty damn tired by the time I hit my squats. Same as last week. This is reflected in the weights.
Front Planks - (30sec hold/30sec rest) x 7
Rower - 5 min moderate work followed by (20 sec sprint/100 sec moderate pace) x 6
Lat Pull downs - 110x10x5 ~ 7min
Notes: I targeted and squated the same weight for a single as last week. It felt much more appropriate for the RPE this time around. I did end up altering my warm ups based off of my notes from last training session. Barx3, 135x3, 185x3, 225x3, 255x1, 285x1. The extra seemed to help.
It felt good to be starting a low stress week following the workload from the last few weeks. This was the shortest training session I’ve had in a while, clocking in at just over an hour. Recently training sessions had been averaging 2 hours.
Notes: Please with my press progress. It’s been slow, but It was really cool to throw up 135x3. Those plates seemed so intimating just a few weeks ago.
I’ve been noticing that my pin squats tend to expose bar path issues I’ve fought with since I started training. I have a tendency to let the bar drift forward on my decent, the drift gets on higher rep sets of regular squats. The drift leads to my hips shooting up out of the hole, and a partially disjointed “good morning squat”. Queuing to stay tight late in sets has helped in the past.
Notes: 360 felt like it moved faster than 355 last week. The beltless squats still feel way harder than I’m expecting at the end of the session. I guess the Deads really take that much out of me.
Front Planks - (30sec hold/30sec rest) x 7
Lat Pull downs - 120x10x2, 120x8x3 ~ 7min
Rower - 5 min moderate work followed by (20 sec sprint/100 sec moderate pace) x 6
This was the my last day of the bridge 1.0 Week 8.
Overall, I’m happy with the results. I gained significantly more technical confidence in both my deadlift and press. I still feel there is great room for technical improvement in my bench and squat.
There’s a fairly glaring dip in performance between weeks 3-5. During that time, I had a 5 day business trip, and 4 day mini vacation. This period featured an inconstant training schedule, training on short rest, poor nutrition, and increased alcohol consumption. RPE based allowed me to easily adjust for the additional life stressors. As the saying goes “What are you going to do, not train?” I still managed to complete the 8 week program in 8 weeks and 2 days.
My body weight has been continuing to slowly decrease. I lost a little over 5lbs during this block. What’s interesting to me, is that when I look in the mirror, it seems like a lot more. Visually, at least to me, I see more definition and less fluff in my chest, shoulders, and legs. My waist measurement went from 41" to 40", and I’ve moved down 2-3 notches on my lifting belt with 1" spacing. I even fit into some old college T shirts I hadn’t worn in over a year!
Moving forward, my current plan is to run the Bridge again, and then move on to Strength 1 or Powerbuilding 1. Prior to that I have a week of available training followed by a vacation week. So I will be running week 1 of the bridge, going on vacation, and then restarting it again when I’m back.
Notes: This is the start of my “filler week” Decent workout. I was riding a decent calorie deficit the days leading into this session. I was fairly tired by the time rack (Block) pulls came along. I was getting a lot of bounce off the bumper plates I was using as blocks. It probably didn’t help that I had bumpers on my bar as well. I’m going to try to minimize the bounce by using the regular coated plates on my bar next week.
