Week 7 - 5/3/1 - Day 25

Cycle #2

Agile 8 + DeFranco's  Felt the foam roll on the upper back and lats today.  Upper back and lats started getting sore a bit before noon today and foam rolling got to some tender spots, especially the lats.  Thinking retrospectively, I think I'm going to stick with the chin-ups instead of doing the lat pull downs.  I'm getting more bang for the rep with chin-ups than with lat pull downs.

Deadlift:  5x115, 3x140, 3x175 + 5x210, 3x240, 1x270

These felt very strong today, pulled with exceptional ease.  I took a note from Wendler's book and assumed a stance as if I was jumping to set up.  My stance was noticeably wider than what I previously lifted with.  Used regular grip on the 5 and 3 repper sets.  Alternating grip on the last set.

Boring But Big 60%

Squat: 5x135 + 5x10x165

As I write this, I'm still lightly disoriented from the exhaustion suffered after finishing these.  One thing I changed was to do quick triple or quadruple reps in quick succession with one breath.  I found that resetting and going from a dead stop really hindered my ability to recover and sustain enough energy on subsequent reps.  Of course, with that in mind, I made sure not to "divebomb" the reps.  I got one frustrated grunt out on the 9th rep on the 4th set because my body started shutting down at the start of the 8th rep- its never failed to get my body jolted from going to sleep on me.

Ab Wheel:  10/8/6

These didn't strain my back as much as before.  One thing I changed with the way I descended on the roll out was, to roll out and keep my arms perpendicular to the roller until my body was in a push up position on my knees.  From this position I then roll my arms out until my body is close to parallel on the ground.  Then, when going back, I simply reverse this.  I partitioned the lift this way because before I would bring my ass back before rolling my arms back to get myself into pushup position.  This was putting unnecessary strain on my back and taking out upper ab involvement.