Added 30kg to squat in 6 weeks.
adpowah's training logs
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Added 30kg to squat in 6 weeks.
adpowah
Active Member
Half way through my return to HST. Everything has been going well. The 15s worked out exceedingly well and I am my first week into the 5s. I ran into a little hip irritation likely from the sumos but I think I made some form adjustments and it is feeling better.
I've lost some weight, about 5lbs so far (started at 195.5, weighed in this morning at 190.6), strength has been unaffected. I had a little yo-yo in the weight where I went from 190 back to 193 but then went back down. It wasn't my goal, I think its just I was eating so much as I was heading towards my yearend max that the body is used to running a little hotter. Anyways I'm not complaining.
Body composition went from good (for me) to a little bloated back to good following the yo-yo in weight. I feel my legs have retained their mass but my chest has shrunk a bit due to the lack of standard bench. Back has definitely grown and so have my arms and shoulders. Next cycle I might add back in standard bench or pec deck. Overall I'm not real concerned with bench/chest in general so I will let it do it's thing for now.
Anyways its going well, HST has so far been way less taxing than my DUP programs. HSTs volume and intensity aren't as high but the way it all works out in the weekly tonnage is only about 15% less. Anyways looking forward to next cycle, I will probably just make minor edits to the current program.
I've lost some weight, about 5lbs so far (started at 195.5, weighed in this morning at 190.6), strength has been unaffected. I had a little yo-yo in the weight where I went from 190 back to 193 but then went back down. It wasn't my goal, I think its just I was eating so much as I was heading towards my yearend max that the body is used to running a little hotter. Anyways I'm not complaining.
Body composition went from good (for me) to a little bloated back to good following the yo-yo in weight. I feel my legs have retained their mass but my chest has shrunk a bit due to the lack of standard bench. Back has definitely grown and so have my arms and shoulders. Next cycle I might add back in standard bench or pec deck. Overall I'm not real concerned with bench/chest in general so I will let it do it's thing for now.
Anyways its going well, HST has so far been way less taxing than my DUP programs. HSTs volume and intensity aren't as high but the way it all works out in the weekly tonnage is only about 15% less. Anyways looking forward to next cycle, I will probably just make minor edits to the current program.
adpowah
Active Member
Well my trip is coming a little sooner than I had originally planned so I won't make it into the doubles. Overall the cycle seemed very successful. Here are some highlights:
- After my 5s I went for an amrap on the Sumo at 245 and I got 15. My hands started to fatigue more than anything else since I went double overhand. Starting the cycle I had a 330 1rm and this put my projected at 390, granted its going to feel much different but I think the point is that my sumo has made great progress.
- My standing OHP made some great progress and I concluded with 115x7 and I had programmed with 100 as my 1rm.
- Bent over rows made similar progress where I pulled 195x7 with my programmed max at 185. Granted this was a bit of a guess and as I get back to my 500lb dedlift goal in 2016 frankly I need to bring my rows up so I will continue to focus here. I pulled 235 a couple of times but I couldn't do it strictly so I need to keep working here.
- My last area that I made some strong progress was pull ups, started with a 5rm of 200, today I did 220x6.
- Squat, I had a low bar 1rm of 385, today I did a high bar in running shoes for 295x6 (which projects it at 355). In the past I found my low bar being about 20% stronger and this puts it more in the 10% range. So I was fine with that but I'm a little done with squats for now, I feel it is sapping my DL progress. Anyways I will take this as a minor win.
- Incline Bench was fairly flat, I programmed at 185 as my max and I did 190 for a slow single. Maybe I could have gotten another but the only take away here is that I have moved all of my bench to paused reps.
- I lost 3lbs ending at 192 but my lowest was 190 from 195. This wasn't the goal but I didn't mind.
- My sciatic is feeling good more days than it isn't so I can't complain about that.
- Things are still a little in the air, I've got about 7 weeks before I can get back to a regular lifting cycle but in the middle I will be doing my 2-3 week experiment of going in and working up to a heavy single with some backoff volume on whatever lift suites my fancy that day. I feel great everytime I do this but we will see if the volume is sufficent to maintain or potentially get some growth.
- If my conventional/sciatic is feeling good during the experiment I may program it back in, if not I am going to alternate Leg press/Romanian and Sumo/something quad based.
Strongly advocating giving Bulgarian Manual a shot and integrating deadlift/PC work, and back work as you see fit.
Quads are now bigger than they were pre-surgery, which is about as big as they've ever been and will push through to 4 plates per side in a few weeks. 300kg deadlift is around the corner too.
Quads are now bigger than they were pre-surgery, which is about as big as they've ever been and will push through to 4 plates per side in a few weeks. 300kg deadlift is around the corner too.
adpowah
Active Member
@Jester I'm definitely interested, if you have a moment could you comment on some of my question:
- Are you using the HRV and/or Bar Speed suggestions?
- Do you feel you would be successful doing this 4 days a week (I don't see 5-6 in my current situation), realistically 3 will be more common.
- I feel my sumo recovers as fast, am I living in a dreamworld thinking of pulling sumo 4 times a week?
- Did you jump straight in to it or ease in?
- How much additional (back off) volume did you do?
Not using HRV/bar speed at this time.
4 would be the absolute bear minimum. I strongly recommend 5 though.
Do not pull 4 times a week, it is unsustainable for sure. But 3 times? 3 is fine.
What do you think?
You can see in my log, but for now I'm only doing a back-off set 2-3 times a week for squat. I've kind of given up on bench - it was progressing very fast, but I just don't care about it - and am replacing it with overhead work. Will be doing 1-2 back-off sets with that. When I was doing bench, it was similar to the squat; back-off when progression slows. I review my daily-maxes for the week-just-been and determine then. 3 weeks ago my max was 140 and I pushed into PR territory once a week. Right now it's 160 and I'll hopefully get 4 plates this week and keep going after that.
I'll say this though;
1. It's primarily a squat routine. I don't think bench is the same for very obvious reasons; most of them around functionality and 'natural'ness of the movement. Simply put; bench is only there for powerlifting purposes, for general strength you would do OHP/BTN in my opinion.
2. Do the minimum effective volume you need to increase your daily maxes week-in, week-out. After I my daily max hit 160kg, I took out the back-off sets, I'll put them back in when progression from 160kg slows/stops. And so on.
3. I don't mix up the variations that much. Tried Anderson and found them sub-par. Tried Box-squat and found them 'average'. I would always do straight up back squat (HB or LB whatever you use) for the daily max, and then use back-off sets for variation/specialisation focus. If you're simply not strong, do more squats. If it's an upright thing, do front. Stuck in the hole? Anderson. No speed? Pause. And so on.
4 would be the absolute bear minimum. I strongly recommend 5 though.
Do not pull 4 times a week, it is unsustainable for sure. But 3 times? 3 is fine.
What do you think?
You can see in my log, but for now I'm only doing a back-off set 2-3 times a week for squat. I've kind of given up on bench - it was progressing very fast, but I just don't care about it - and am replacing it with overhead work. Will be doing 1-2 back-off sets with that. When I was doing bench, it was similar to the squat; back-off when progression slows. I review my daily-maxes for the week-just-been and determine then. 3 weeks ago my max was 140 and I pushed into PR territory once a week. Right now it's 160 and I'll hopefully get 4 plates this week and keep going after that.
I'll say this though;
1. It's primarily a squat routine. I don't think bench is the same for very obvious reasons; most of them around functionality and 'natural'ness of the movement. Simply put; bench is only there for powerlifting purposes, for general strength you would do OHP/BTN in my opinion.
2. Do the minimum effective volume you need to increase your daily maxes week-in, week-out. After I my daily max hit 160kg, I took out the back-off sets, I'll put them back in when progression from 160kg slows/stops. And so on.
3. I don't mix up the variations that much. Tried Anderson and found them sub-par. Tried Box-squat and found them 'average'. I would always do straight up back squat (HB or LB whatever you use) for the daily max, and then use back-off sets for variation/specialisation focus. If you're simply not strong, do more squats. If it's an upright thing, do front. Stuck in the hole? Anderson. No speed? Pause. And so on.
adpowah
Active Member
OK thanks. I stopped squatting last Friday where I only did 1 set of 5 rather than 4 sets. Since these last two workouts were just kind of throwaways I pulled sumo for some maxes. Monday I hit 365 and missed 405, Wednesday I hit 345 and then did some backoff stuff. Point being, I am feeling pretty good where squatting usually leaves me feeling beat up. I'm a little burnt out on the squat for now and may drop it for a while but I do like the idea of daily minimum 1 reps so I am going to mull it over. (I probably need to figure out my squatting mobility, I think something is off that is causing some over-use type stress)
Likely on my 3 week stint in between these 2 two week trips I will try pulling 3 times a week and maybe add in some leg press. If it goes well, I'll drop squats for my next HST cycle, do my 15s, 10s, 5s and then daily min until I stop progressing or regress in body composition and then take a 10 day SD to reevaluate.
For now, I don't really care that I missed my 405 squat goal but not having a 500 deadlift really annoys me. So I will probably just work for a while to accomplish that.
Likely on my 3 week stint in between these 2 two week trips I will try pulling 3 times a week and maybe add in some leg press. If it goes well, I'll drop squats for my next HST cycle, do my 15s, 10s, 5s and then daily min until I stop progressing or regress in body composition and then take a 10 day SD to reevaluate.
For now, I don't really care that I missed my 405 squat goal but not having a 500 deadlift really annoys me. So I will probably just work for a while to accomplish that.
Christ, no. Don't do that.
adpowah
Active Member
Care to expand why? I don't compete, I don't particularly care about my squat and it seems the to be a contributing factor to my sciatic issues. It's not like I intend to drop it forever but I think leaving it out of the equation will allow me to focus on my deadlift for now.
First off; not squatting for medical reasons is totally fine - goes without saying.
The reasons I would advocate not stopping it - assuming there are zero medical issues;
- Tremendous for strengthening core in application. Belted squats even more so.
- I find there is carryover in leg drive. Not that stronger squats will directly lead to stronger deadlifts, but that squats teach you how to better drive through with your legs. Narrow stance, low-bar box squats even more so.
- Front squats may be more viable for you (sciatic), and they are tremendous for deadlift purposes IMO. Alternatively, just hold the bar in the starting position, out of the rack and work your upper back like crazy.
- Quads are still there for the start of the pull, whether conventional or sumo. And frankly, I think squats teach one how to drive better than a leg press does - leg press also has a million safety issues and if you have sciatic troubles, I would stay away from those machines.
If you aren't going to squat much, I can certainly see sumo-pulling 4 times a week.
I would do something like Mo-Tu-Th-Fr and put your big days on Monday and Thursday. Biggest day on Monday/day 1 of your training week - whichever day that is. Tuesday/day 2 would be a sumo variation/rep work no more than 75% of your 1RM.
Realistically though, I would rather do something like;
M - big and heavy day.
T - Front squat and d/l accessory/ies; Good Morning rep work, glute-bridges/hip thrusts - something like that.
W - Weakness/break work - for me this means block pulls below knee, SLDL or deficits. Whichever I feel is most relevant to my current pulling.
Th - Front squat.
F - Volume day, lighter than Monday but more volume overall.
That's if I were going to "pull" 4 times a week".
Alternatively, do daily-max on sumo-pulls and throw in a back-off set or two only once progress slows.
The first thing I'd figure out is how many times a week you're going in for sure.
adpowah
Active Member
Re-posting from my 2 week experiment thread:
Figured I would update you guys with what I did on this 2 week experiment.
I ended up deciding to just deadlift for the time I was back. I leave this Friday so Wednesday was my last chance to workout. Something came up on Sunday and Monday so I called it good at last Friday. My intent starting out was really work on my form and identify any weaknesses in the movement. As the lifts went by I realized I should have been recording myself the entire time but I ended up only capturing the last two sessions.
From the videos I took, I did notice that I hitch at the knees when the weight starts getting a bit heavy. So I worked on keeping my shins more vertical and added some dimmel deadlifts (except I didn't fully lock out, just above to below the knee and repeat) to improve that aspect of the motion. These adjustments made my last session much smoother than the previous. (When I get home I will post the videos if I can figure out how to string them together) Anyways I ended up hitting a 10lb pr, I feel I could have continued with this for a while and maybe gotten another 10-15lbs over the course of a month.
@Jester I am still thinking through your suggestions, I will probably do one more block of HST and do Front Squat/Conventional DL rather than Sumo/Back Squat and see how it goes and then really get serious about specializing to hit the 500lb mark.
Figured I would update you guys with what I did on this 2 week experiment.
I ended up deciding to just deadlift for the time I was back. I leave this Friday so Wednesday was my last chance to workout. Something came up on Sunday and Monday so I called it good at last Friday. My intent starting out was really work on my form and identify any weaknesses in the movement. As the lifts went by I realized I should have been recording myself the entire time but I ended up only capturing the last two sessions.
From the videos I took, I did notice that I hitch at the knees when the weight starts getting a bit heavy. So I worked on keeping my shins more vertical and added some dimmel deadlifts (except I didn't fully lock out, just above to below the knee and repeat) to improve that aspect of the motion. These adjustments made my last session much smoother than the previous. (When I get home I will post the videos if I can figure out how to string them together) Anyways I ended up hitting a 10lb pr, I feel I could have continued with this for a while and maybe gotten another 10-15lbs over the course of a month.
@Jester I am still thinking through your suggestions, I will probably do one more block of HST and do Front Squat/Conventional DL rather than Sumo/Back Squat and see how it goes and then really get serious about specializing to hit the 500lb mark.
At your age, you can probably get away with pulling 4-5x per week in the 80-85% mark, so long as you aren't coming near failure on any of your sets (just means more sets to get the same volume).
I would recommend RDL's for what you've described as your weakpoint, sounds like a classic hamstring weakness (relative to strengths).
I would recommend RDL's for what you've described as your weakpoint, sounds like a classic hamstring weakness (relative to strengths).
adpowah
Active Member
So I had to head out on a trip that disrupted my workouts again but I was able to make some great progress in my 4 week block. I've been continuing with a focus on the singles.
At the second week of 15s I hit a 5lb pr (420). Starting with the next week I started to feel that 380ish was a little high to start with my first pull so I added an extra pull that starts at 365. I proceeded to hit two further 5lb PRs at 425 and then 430. While the workbook below shows a nice 2 work outs a week what actually happened in the last week of 10s was I had to work out Sunday (Friday), Monday (Monday) and then Wednesday (Friday). So this created a situation where I pulled a pr 425 (sun), pulled it again the next day (mon) and then pulled another pr 430 (wed). Regardless it worked out fine but when I left traveling I didn't end up working out again for a week.
Wednesdays are blacked out because I don't do HST on those days. I am working out with my friend screwing around doing a "300 workout" he picked up (1st workout). It is a lot of high rep program with light weights. I treat it as cardio/hypertrophy whereas my lifting is more strength/hypertrophy. Its great for blood flow and hanging with my friends.
For the next cycle I am going to do the same and aim for another 20-30lb gain in the DL. I like hitting a new weight on Fridays and then repeating it on Mondays. I figure that gaining 5lbs a week on a lift is unrealistic long term, but so as long as I can continue I will, but I will probably have to move to 5lbs every 2 weeks in the very near future.
Major take aways: 1) Deadlifting heavy 2x a week is really working right now so I am going to hold to that and 2) RDLS where I get the bar as low to the ground as possible has greatly increased my strength right after the bar breaks. Anyways pulling anything in the 450+ range in the next cycle will be what I am looking for.
Issues: Consistency. My schedule is more hectic than ever and sometimes my workouts suffer.
At the second week of 15s I hit a 5lb pr (420). Starting with the next week I started to feel that 380ish was a little high to start with my first pull so I added an extra pull that starts at 365. I proceeded to hit two further 5lb PRs at 425 and then 430. While the workbook below shows a nice 2 work outs a week what actually happened in the last week of 10s was I had to work out Sunday (Friday), Monday (Monday) and then Wednesday (Friday). So this created a situation where I pulled a pr 425 (sun), pulled it again the next day (mon) and then pulled another pr 430 (wed). Regardless it worked out fine but when I left traveling I didn't end up working out again for a week.
Wednesdays are blacked out because I don't do HST on those days. I am working out with my friend screwing around doing a "300 workout" he picked up (1st workout). It is a lot of high rep program with light weights. I treat it as cardio/hypertrophy whereas my lifting is more strength/hypertrophy. Its great for blood flow and hanging with my friends.
For the next cycle I am going to do the same and aim for another 20-30lb gain in the DL. I like hitting a new weight on Fridays and then repeating it on Mondays. I figure that gaining 5lbs a week on a lift is unrealistic long term, but so as long as I can continue I will, but I will probably have to move to 5lbs every 2 weeks in the very near future.
Major take aways: 1) Deadlifting heavy 2x a week is really working right now so I am going to hold to that and 2) RDLS where I get the bar as low to the ground as possible has greatly increased my strength right after the bar breaks. Anyways pulling anything in the 450+ range in the next cycle will be what I am looking for.
Issues: Consistency. My schedule is more hectic than ever and sometimes my workouts suffer.
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