Cinco de Mayo = Deadlift Day

Whew, today was a Monday and what better way to start off the week than with a heavy leg day. It started with my 3X3 sets on deadlift (285, 325 and 360), but for some reason on the first set I did five reps and decided to just keep pushing through with five reps on all three sets. What can I say? I’m not terribly an intelligent programmer. I felt strong today after two days off and just decided to push through. The final set at 360 was pretty brutal but luckily I was in my garage instead of the gym so I was able to let out some blood curdling screams with the last couple reps. The deadlifts, although certainly heavy, felt strong and 360 for five is certainly a PR. I was tempted to try and bang out a couple more sets of doubles at a heavier weight just because it felt like a good day, but I was up against it time wise. I felt like getting in the accessory work was probably more important that t couple more sets at heavier weights. Who knows though, I left the weight on the bar so I might knock out a couple more sets after work. I also want to try some deficit DL’s or maybe some block pulls, but we’ll see....

After deadlift, I jumped straight into my second week of the Boring but Big routine with 5X10 back squats at 195. I could already tell this was a bit easier than last week. It had been a long time since I remember doing any back squats for 10 reps so it felt much more difficult last Monday, which is even more encouraging because last Monday the squats were done well after I finished my deadlifts. This week I jumped right into the squats though with minimal rest. Again, I might throw in some front squats when I get home. I wanted to do more during lunch but time wasn’t on my side.

Some quick general thoughts, this is my fourth month on the 5-3-1 program (thanks to the Open for screwing up a month in there) and it’s going fairly well. The first couple of months I was trying to do quite a bit of metcons along with it but now I’m 100% focused on just making lifting gains. I feel like my lower body is definitely stronger than it was day one and I think if I tried, I would PR on both back squat and deadlift. My upper body though is lagging behind, primarily because of a shoulder that doesn’t seem to agree with Crossfit. I felt like I’d dodged a bullet with the snatches didn’t go heavy in 14.1, because they always leave my shoulder wrecked but the toes to bar in 14.4 really destroyed me. It’s been well over a month since I did them and my shoulder still doesn’t feel right. That at least partly led to failing for the first time on shoulder press in the last cycle and I can also feel the weakness as I’m benching. I’m doing quite a bit of accessory work on my shoulders in an effort to build back up to where I was but it’s a slow process. This is my second week with the Boring but Big as my main accessory lifts and it’s too early to make any concrete observations other than I like the idea that I’m hitting all four “big” lifts twice in each week.

I’m also toying with the idea of mixing in some strongman type training because that sport requires such strong shoulders. For now though the main goal is just to get stronger. My goal by year end is to reach a 1,100 pound CF total (BS, DL and Press) and a 1,200 pound power lifting total (BS, DL and BP). That would require significant PR’s in all four lifts but with 7 months to go and a sole focus, it’s achievable.