Week 2 Training Not Testing

As most of you know the last month of training has been quite convoluted. The first week of the Xmas break was a dream then gastro quickly ruined my training momentum. The worst thing about gastro and those types of ailments is its not something you can work around because it fucks with your food intake as well.

Regardless I'm rested now and back under the bar. Last night was a good session with Deads, bench volume and back squats. Note my primary leg exercise is front squats twice a week while I have a single 5x5 pause squat day with back squats. I am doing this so I can work on my movement pattern and eliminate some of the crappy butt wink that had found its way into my squat.

After doing a lot of work side on to the mirror I found that I wasn't bracing my upper back as hard and if I really drove it into the bar and kind of tried to wrap my back over the bar then I would have a much better back position. Interestingly this eliminated a lot of butt wink as well. From a proprioception perspective I found that I felt much more stable in the bottom pause and it felt like the bar was very much in the sweet spot with glutes and quads firing. Overall a really positive session.

Deads are going well but with the bench and squat work in the same session I am finding I am a little fatigued. Despite this I am making sure I am training within myself and working the numbers. I am a big fan of Paul Carters concept of always be training not testing i.e. base build without constantly pushing into the 95% 1RM and missing reps.

Now there will be a few coaches out there that disagree but please exclude those of you that are on the gear and lets see how long that high intensity shit can be maintained.

Personally I have found a slow build up plugging away over time helps condition me for the big work ahead but provides much more confidence if I am working hard but always hitting rep targets. I am far from an expert but 90% of this game is using good principles of training and then tweaking them to reflect what works best for you.

Stay Strong
Thomo