Journey to 600DL and 500SQ: First stop 405SQ - Team Franco Bodybuilding Forum: Competition and Fitness Board

The Lioness · The Truth!

RE: Journey to 600DL and 500SQ: First stop 405SQ

Azbury · Guru

GREAT STUFF bRO...kicked their arsess!

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

Joe wrote:

Great work Dwayne! Impress with the deads, solid.

So where are you tipping the scales? To lazy to look back if you post it already.

240 about.

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

Those guys definitely fired me up for my set..so I guess I should thank them for the inspiration : )

Yoster · The Truth!

240 - You're a MOOSE!!

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

Moose tidbits:

The average adult moose needs to consume 9,770 calories per day to maintain its body weight.

An adult moose stands 1.8–2.1 m (6–7 ft) high at the shoulder.

Males weigh 380–720 kg (850–1580 pounds) and females weigh 270–360 kg (600–800 pounds).

Yoster · The Truth!

So you can totally Deadlift a female moose!! This is too funny!

The Lioness · The Truth!

that would be a fun challenge.....who can lift the heaviest female moose! :) haha

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

That's the goal! To deadlift a light female moose...LOL : )

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

WOW that was a HEAVY ONE TODAY...some success and some failure..but all in all a good one:

SQ: warms, 325/ 5 5 5 ***PR***
Press: warms, 201.25/4 4 4 (almost PR... failure but I know why... Monday will be redemption!)
Back extensions: 3 sets
Chins: 3 sets

The gym was cold and empty tonight. It was so hard to warm up. It time to go back to sweats. I got so used to my shorts but its not going to work if the gym is going to be that cold. Maybe I need to bring both options just in case. My back was SO tight tonight due to the Deadlift PR on Wednesday. I was actually thinking about not doing a 10 lb jump...but I manned up and did it. It wasn't that bad except for the back tightness. It felt heavy and that's to be expected after doing the heavy deads on Wednesday. Going up 10 lbs on Monday. The back should be fully recovered by then. Its good to know that my hips and legs are doing the majority of the work on squats because it wouldn't be possible if I relied too much on my back.

Press was a failure tonight. It was a combo of not really getting warm. Not getting enough sleep last night and being tired mostly all day...and sore traps/neck from Deadlifting on Wednesday.

The deadlift is really a butt kicker (literally and figuratively)....but you gotta do them to get stronger!

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

Again some success and some failure....

SQ: warms, 335/5 5 5 ****PR**** (a former 1RM goes down...345 next)
Press: warms, 201.25/5 4 4 (another almost PR...I may soon actually need a deload on this movement)
Powercleans: 160/3 3 3 3 3 (I should train these more often, may consider a slight programming change in a few weeks to get this up faster)

Full and warm gym tonight in sharp contrast to Friday. The shorts were on! Killed the squats! Back was less tight than Friday. Bounced all of them right out the hole. My brother is coming up this weekend so maybe I'll get a vid of my squats on Saturday to post up!

I was reading some quotes by Tom Platz today to get psyched for my squats. One of the things he wrote was that he left a little space between the plates so that he could hear the jingling noise the made as he squatted and it would fire him up. So me, being a goofball, I went ahead and left a tiny space between each of the plates to get the jingling sound. It was cute but did nothing for me. But I kept it that way for all the sets in homage of the King of Legs!

Press: I think I'm at a point where I might want to deload a little before continuing the progression, or the fact that I haven't been benching is killing the progression. I will give this weight one more go and if it doesn't go up for all five reps on all three sets, then its time for deloading to allow for some supercompensation to occur...or I may have to decrease my frequency here on press and increase bench frequency a tiny bit more to catch it up to the level that my press has gotten. Basically the press for 3 sets of 5 should be about 60-70% of the bench press. That means I should be doing anywhere between 285-335 for 3 sets of 5 on bench right now....and I'm not. My last bench workout I did 245X5X3. The bench loads the shoulder girdle with more weight and provides the strength for the skill of pressing. Pressing overhead strictly is more of a skill when you have adequate strength. The technique is a killer. But sometimes it helps to have the strength to overcome that technique. So maybe a programming change is coming here as well.

Powercleans: caught my right shin on one of the pulls for a nice gash. The weight is still too light and my strength is overcoming technique. I need to get these heavier so that I'm forced to perfect my technique. I think training these with more frequency is going to be happening in a few weeks.

Joe · Beyond Nutrition - Co Owner

When I first started training in the basement of my parents home, we had a picture of Tom Platz right in front of the squat poles!

The Lioness · The Truth!

Dwayne...it sounds like you are finding inspiration everywhere - which is awesome! Keep your legs covered when you do powercleans - you still get bruises, but they aren't as bad:)
Congrats on the PR on your squats!

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

Hey Gina and Joe...I'm going to use the jingle plates technique again tonight. I'm psyched to go after 345....after all it is the date that my wife and I got engaged (3/4/05). Hope to see some progression on bench as well...but its all about the squat!!

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

Jingle plates, jingle plates, jingle all the way!!!

SQ: warms, 345/5 5 5 ****PR***
BP: warms, 250/5 5 5
Back extension: 3 sets
Parallel grip chins: 3 sets

Great workout. Gains were made, as Joe would say, even though I'm still a tad tight from the 5RM deadlift last week. I had to make the 345 because those numbers are special to me. The first set left me a little dizzy probably because I was so excited about it...and I got someone to use my phone to video it. Its kind of pixely (which makes the last two reps look like I'm dive bombing but assure you I do not, I just don't have the best video on my phone that's all) but you can see that I was bouncing right up out of the whole. HIP POWER!!! (and those are not knee wraps, they are knee sleeves - they slide up and down the leg- that I use to keep my knees warm and pain free throughout the duration of the workout...also knee sleeves are legal in raw powerlifting competition-I only know of 1 org that doesn't allow sleeves for raw comps--also, belts are legal in all powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting orgs...so this counts as a good raw lift!!!)

Bench was great. Last week with 245 I could feel a slight something in my shoulder afterwards but this time with 250 absolutely nothing. I brought my grip in and kept a firm arch. This really helped. On bench, I'm going to make conservative (for me) jumps of 5 lbs instead of 10. I want to progress and ensure that I'm pain free with perfect form. As my bench progresses back to where it was, my overhead press will start to move easily again due to increased pressing strength. Finally, I'm going to change up my benching/pressing schedule so that I alternate the two equally. This way I can press a little less frequently and bench press a little more frequently to catch the bench up a little bit and rest the press up a little bit. Hopefully, I will conquer 201.25 on pressing on Saturday (training with my bro), if not, I'll deload and work it back up. No biggie, sometimes that is how the cookie crumbles.

Other changes I'm going to make to the programming are in the pulling. I'm going to go to a once a week Deadlifting schedule starting next week, instead of the three times a month thing I'm doing right now. So what that that means is that I'm going to take a slight decrease (about 8-10%) on what I just did last week since it took me so long to recover from it. I will be deadlifting more often with a slightly less percentage of the max. That way I can keep the pull in shape and not have it tax me so much as it did last week. So, I'm going to do 370 again this friday and then do 385 next Wednesday and just do 10-15 lb jumps from there. It should be manageable to recover from. The MWF schedule will now look like this for pulls Powercleans/Deadlifts/Chinning. The good thing about this schedule also is that I will be powercleaning more often (4 times a month instead of 3) so that will allow that lift to progress a bit faster even at a conservative rate of 5 lbs per session.

Okay enough about my programming...

Here's a set of my Squats 345X5 (hard to believe that I was maxing on 275 a year ago...soon I'll be repping 375...I can smell it!):

(Finally, there is a USAPL powerlifting meet in Feb in Princeton..I'm thinking of either attending or competing in it...I'm not sure right now which I will do, but by the end of January, I will be 100% sure what I will be doing. Hopefully training will continue to go well through the next two months.)

-- Edited by winflex on Wednesday 16th of December 2009 09:26:28 PM

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

PR's all around

SQ: warms, 355/5 5 5 ****PR***(got vid too)
Press: warms, 201.25/5 5 5 ****PR**** (FINALLY!!)
DL: warms, 385/5 (not a PR but perfect for where I am right now)

Squats were tough. I grinded that last set with grit and fervor. Every moment was a question of "Are you man enough". I got a vid of the first set which went pretty easy compared to the last two. I have no doubt in my mind that I can squat 405 easily right now. I may switch to 5 lb jumps but to be honest I think I'm going to continue with the 10 lb jumps until I hit a wall. 375X5X3 was the original mini goal or 405 for one. I don't plan on doing singles for a while so I will continue through with the goal of 375, 3 sets of 5.

Press. I have finally conquered 201.25 lbs. Feels good to win battle with a familiar foe. It was a combo of better technique, a heavier bench on Wednesday to drive the adaptation for pressing, and more recovery from the heavy deadlift last week.

Talking about Deadlifts...since I see how hard it is for me to recover from a 5RM deadlift max, I decided to scale down on the DL's tonight an focus on pulling mechanics. I have learned that jumping 55 lbs (370 to 425 last time) was a stupid idea in terms of recovery. The name of the game is stimulate not annihilate. 385 was a good place to go with this. The most I will jump from here on out is 20 lbs. But will most likely go with 15 to be conservative and help facilitate progression on the other lifts. So 400 is up next. Wednesday has officially become deadlift day..so I'll do that on Wednesday.

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

Dwayne Squats 355 for 5:

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

MINOR SETBACK TONIGHT....

SQ: warms, 365/5 4 2 (FAIL...I know why)
BP: warms, 255/5 5 5
Back Extensions: 3 sets
Chins: not happening

So while I was doing squats, the off feeling I've been feeling in my left arm became a real nuisance of a pain in my biceps. I think I strained my biceps last week while doing powercleans. My form really sucks on those and now I'm suffering the consequences. I didn't feel the pain during the sets of squats just in between. It was gone by the time I got home. However, it did manage to make the rest of my training session quite s h i t t y.

I got through the bench press solely on the fact that this is ridiculously light for me but the aching bicep didn't help the matter...and chins didn't happen because well my bicep.

So now I have to figure out what I can do to make my bicep better and get started on that so that I can get back on the horse.

Oh and squat sucked today because of the snow this weekend. I didn't eat enough because we didn't have enough food in the house over the weekend, so I didn't have the right fuel up for today's session. Got the grocery store Sunday afternoon and I am cooking up a storm at the moment. I will make sure to crush 365X5X3 within the next two workouts for sure.

The nice thing about tonight's craptastic workout was that, well a couple things:
-I decided power cleans are out for a while until I can get some real formal quidance through them.
-I pretty much am only ten pounds away from the first mini goal of 375X5X3
-My form on squats tonight was the best I had the entire training year...and I know that I can squat more than 405 for a 1RM for damn sure.

Joe · Beyond Nutrition - Co Owner

How many warm up sets prior to the work that you list?

Azbury · Guru

ain't nuttin' but a peanut

you'll be fine. injuries are a way of keeping us grounded and thankful for when we are able to crush it in the gym. this will fire you right back up!

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

Joe wrote:

How many warm up sets prior to the work that you list?

3 sets with the bar to loosen up the legs, 1 set each with 135, 225, 295, 335.

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

Azbury wrote:

ain't nuttin' but a peanut

you'll be fine. injuries are a way of keeping us grounded and thankful for when we are able to crush it in the gym. this will fire you right back up!

Yessir...definitely thankful to have made it thus far. Just gotta come up with the proper course of action to get this bicep happy again.

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

Not so good today...next workout will either be a deload or a good ol' college try one more time:

SQ: warms, 365/5 4 *did not do last set because I felt that even if it was better than last time, this weight would still have to be repeated and it wouldn't make sense to dig myself more of a whole to recover from.

Press: warms, 202.5/ 3 3 *did not do last set because the bicep pain was just ridiculous plus the gym was so cold...I really have to bring more layers with me.

DL: warms, 400/5 The only shining star in this entire workout. Despite my bicep pain and my back tightness that I've been experiencing lately, I could still get my deadlifts to move for me.

All in all, I feel like I still have the juice but I'm probably starting to get a little overtrained and might need to deload/supercompensate. Its hard to tell when you don't have a program with it all built in but its all part of the learning process.

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

After a few hours of thought....deload it is...I'm going to let the calories of the holiday's flood my system and create the necessary supercompensation my body has been waiting for and I will reset my squat and maybe press (depends on bicep there). Will drop down 10% off the squat and rebuild up from there so that's 330. Will try to provide two weeks of rest by doing the following progression 330-340-350-355-360-365. This should cause a slight enough break that I should break that 365 barrier in two weeks. From there I will continue with 5 lb jumps per workout...until I can't go anymore. Hoping that it will continue up to the four plate mark at least which would be ideally 7 workouts after I hit 365...so another two weeks or so after that. So we're talking the last week of January....which lines up really well with the goal to compete in the PL meet in Feb!!!

Hope that things get back on the upswing soon. Doing all that I can!!

I have to buy really thick baggy sweats for the gym. The owner doesn't like to turn on the heat. I think once I can feel warm, my performance will get back on the upbeat.

Joe · Beyond Nutrition - Co Owner

when and where is the meet?

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

The meet in question is on Feb 27th&28th at the Hyatt in Princeton, NJ.

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

Deload day 1 (only for squats though)

Squats: warms, 335/5 5 5 (pain in the left bicep still but less than before...so that's good)
Bench: warms, 260/5 5 5
No back extensions as the back is still feeling tight from the failed 365 attempts.
Chins: 3 sets (happy that I could do these again and my bicep wasn't so bad that I couldn't do it...road to recovery)

Dropped squats down about 8-10 percent today and worked at 335. I probably could've done only one set but I did the three. I will feel it out for 340 next time [Monday]...I might stay there until the back is recovered and the bicep pain is more manageable.

The bicep pain is getting better though. I could actually manage to do my chins today which is awesome. It really wasn't painful doing the chins either. The arms felt better as the chins were performed. Looking forward to getting back to where I was not so long ago and surpassing it in about 2-3 weeks.

winflex · Beyond Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

Deload day 2

Squats: warms, 340/5 5 *elbow pain again..stopped there*
Press: warms, 202.5/1 * * too much elbow pain--FRUSTRATION sets in
Chins: 3 sets ( no back extensions)

Incremented squats up by 5 lbs from last time. The elbow pain resurfaced and back was getting tight. Man, I didn't realize how beat up I actually am until today.

Went to the doctor today to get my elbow checked. He said its golfer's elbow and it can take a few weeks to get rid of. I guess that could throw a wrench into my competing plans in February. I told him about that and thank goodness he's a lifter and has experienced the same thing. He said that I can try to take some Vitamin I prior to workouts, wear a golfer's elbow brace, and see if I can push through until the meet. I tried it today and the pain still hit me after set two. I called it quits there because I want the elbow to get better. There will be other meets...and i will put up better numbers when my elbow/bicep issue is healed. I may go with tylenol for pain relief and just live with the inflammation for a while because I know the inflammatory process is the first step in healing and it just needs to go through it. There's no use in trying to stop the inflammation because its going to happen whether you like it or not.

The bad part about all this is that the arm hurt so bad that I had some weakness in the press so I couldn't get myself together to do good heavy sets. I did however do several warmups to help keep the groove of the movement and the strength up. I was happy to even do 1 rep with my planned weight after the pain in the elbow. Once its all healed, I'll blast through this plateau easily.

Actually, I was thinking of rearranging my press workouts to the following:

Press
Squat
light press
Pull

This way the press won't be affected by the elbow pain brought on by the squats and the light pressing will keep the "mental" flow of the workout going (aka squat press pull..like a meet).

Chins went well still oddly enough. I think its because I really rely on my lats more than my arms which is a good thing. Can't wait to deadlift on Wednesday...that and the bench are two movements that are still moving well.

-- Edited by winflex on Monday 28th of December 2009 09:19:04 PM

The Lioness · The Truth!

time heals all wounds Dwayne. stay patient. heal and recover:)

Yoster · The Truth!

great attitude Dwayne - the difference between you and other is - Others quit . . . you adapt!