Week 7 - 5/3/1 - Day 27

12 May 2012

Cycle #2

Agile 8 + DeFranco's Gewd stuff. Wasn't as sore today compared to the previous two days. May get a foam roller for myself so I can do some rolling at home. More rolling, less soreness.

Squat: 5x115, 5x140, 3x165 + 5x210, 3x235, 1+"1"x265

All the reps felt good, no lower back strain. Had a real tight and low barbell position on my back. I felt the bar firmly against my anterior delts when I squeezed the bar. I think I lowered the bar a bit too slow on the 1 repper. I have a habit of doing that when I'm not mentally confident of completing the rep. I still cranked it out with fair ease. I went for another rep, but a slight lean forward and my form crapped out. I got the weight up, but if anything it was more like a good morning.

Boring But Big 60%

Deadlift: 10/8/8/6/10 x 170

Pretty tough. For the first four sets, my stance was a bit wider. I set the stance up such that it was about the spacing I would take when prepping for a jump. This form put considerably less if any stress on my lower back. However, it also made the lift much more difficult for me. Knurling scraping against the shins hard was discouraging when I lifted this way. Narrowed my stance on the last set and it was a breeze. It was only afterwards, though, that I realized it was easy because I was lifting with my back and not my legs.

Hanging Leg Raises: 10/8/6

Not bad. One thing I did differently compared to different sessions was crunching my legs upward once my knees reached as far as they could. I'm not sure if this is necessarily part of the exercise, but it definitely burned my abs quite a bit.

Tabata Sprints: 4x20-10

My route is still up in the air at the moment. For this session, I used a nearby parking lot. The first half of the sprint was flat and then the second half was about a 10% incline. Normally, for tabata sprinting sessions, people go for 8 sets for a total of 4 minutes of hell. Seeing as how I'm just starting, I decided to first start with just 2 sets, but ended up doing 4. The first sets were really easy. So I got cocky and went for another 2 sets. The fatigue hit me hard during the third and fourth sets especially once I hit the incline portions. My legs went limp and felt like I was lugging tree trunks when I walked back. I'm going to do 3 sets for another 2 weeks and then add another set on the proceeding weeks.