Accessory day, squats, bench, romanians

I made it to the gym this morning.  I really didn't want to but I won't have time tonight.  It's amazing how bad I feel in the mornings because once the session is over, I really like how I feel the rest of the day.  I'm committed to making this schedule work so I'm going to have to really focus on getting through the morning haze, stiffness and pain so I can enjoy the payoff later.

Whoever first took this picture of their cat, this is how I feel in the morning.

I'm starting to get a feel for how I need to load my accessory day sessions so they enhance my main sessions without impacting my ability to recover for them.  I was a little pressed for time due to my morning procrastination but the subsequent emphasis on training economy ended up working out very well.

I switched out front squats for high bar back squats to reduce some extra stress on my elbows and kept the weight on my work sets to 275 lbs (60% of my 1 RM).  This weight is heavy enough to require my attention but light enough that I can concentrate on form and speed.  I've been noticing a tendency for my weight to shift towards the balls of my feet as I sit in the hole so today I worked hard on keeping my weight through my heels all the way down.   To emphasize this, on about 80% of the reps, I paused in the hole and made sure I felt the ground pushing through my heels.

On my bench press work, I realized I need to train with an exaggerated pause.  I've noticed I've lost a bit of conditioning at the chest and I fatigue too quickly when forced to hold the weight at my chest and accelerate it from a dead stop.  Since I've had to greatly reduce my overhead pressing volume due to balky elbows, I'll need to make a point of doing more dead stop reps in the bench press to make up for the reduced shoulder work.  Hopefully the elimination of the front squat and continued poundstone curls will allow my elbows to heal up and facilitate overhead barbell and incline dumbbell pressing again.

I finished up with snatch-grip romanian deadlifts and was able to really get some good hip action.  I kept the weight low and the reps high to encourage speed and technique.  I will keep the repetitions high in future workouts but will start to increase the weight now that I feel comfortable with the action.

High bar squats:  135x10, 225x10, 275x5x3 sets

Bench Press:  135x10, 185x10, 225x8, 225x6, 225x5

Snatch-Grip Romanian deadlifts:  135x20, 135x20

While low in both volume and intensity, it felt just about right for an 'extra' session.  Got in some good technique work and just enough repetition to 'grease the groove' for next week's main sessions.