Deadlifts
- Warm Ups: 10 x 135, 5 x 225, 3 x 315, 1 x 365, 1 x 405, 1 x 455
- Work Sets (<90%): 1 x 495, 1 x 545, 2 x 495, 5 x 435 (back off set)
- Video Deadlift 545 x 1
Dynamic Effort (Speed) Squats
- Warm Ups: 5 x 135, 3 x 185, 1 x 225
- Work Sets: 12 x 2 x 250 + Doubled Mini-Bands (no box, no pause)
Not sure why I deadlifted today. It wasn’t on the agenda at all. The plan was to begin the session with speed squats and then follow up with some lighter goodmornings. Truth was I just really didn’t want to squat tonight and I was piddling around the gym trying to find every reason in the world to stay busy doing something else.
But there was a 135 lb bar laying on the floor from earlier in the day so I just knocked out a set of 10 to warm up. Felt really light (yeah I know – its 135). So put on 225 and it felt like 135. 315 wasn’t much heavier. Thought – hey, deadlift feels light tonight, might as well pull a heavy deadlift. Not an all time PR but is 20 lbs heavier than the last time I pulled heavy. Considering I’m on super low carbs still and losing weight, I was happy with 545.
I absolutely credit the speed work (squats and deads) with the deads feeling light tonight. For what I’m doing with my diet right now, I really feel like dynamic effort work for volume is the right call. Gonna ride it all the way into the meet.
Speed Squats after deads were a little tough, so I kept the bar weight really low and just added some light band tension to keep the bar from flying off my back. Really felt great to do speed work this way tonight. I allowed the bands to pull me down pretty fast into the hole (overspeed eccentrics in Louie Language) and then I attempted to reverse direction as explosively as possible. Quads are totally smoked. Actually – all of me is pretty smoked. Looking forward to an off day tomorrow.
