Tag Archives: Back Squat

Monday Morning Strength

I am really liking this morning workout time. It’s hard to get up, but if I drag myself into the gym, I feel great afterwards.

Here’s what I did today… still working things back up to where they were:

  • 500m row to warm up (1:47)
  • 3×5 back squat – 265# for all… felt good. Not too hard.
  • 3×5 bench press – 205# for all… challenging but doable.
  • 3×5 clean – 155#, 160#, 160#… felt really good. I failed on one of the 160#’s, but it was just due to bad form. The weight actually felt relatively light.

I did lots of stretching in between the sets. Good stuff. If we could just get our sleep back on track, I think that would make the whole package.

I am still progressing, though. I was able to fasten the weight belt another notch lower today =)

Work & Strength: Some Thoughts

First, last night’s workout…

  • 50 GHDs
  • 50 GHBE (35#)
  • 50 Russian KBS (1.5 pood)
  • 3 minute KB complex (1.5 pood)
  • 4×3 3-position snatch (75#, 95#, 105#, 115#)
  • 4×3 3-position clean (115#, 135#, 145#, 155#)
  • 5×5 Romanian Dead Lift (225#, 295#, 315#, 325#, 335#)
  • 3×5 Back Squat @ 85% of 1RM (310# x 3)
  • Negatives @ 50% of 1RM
    • Dead Lifts – 8 @ 225# (grip gave out)
    • Back Squats – 12 @ 185#
    • Presses – 12 @ 95#
    • Dips – 10 @ Bryan
    • Pull Ups – 10 @ Bryan
  • 1 minute of 90% effort on the AirDyne – 29 cals

This was a ton of work and I was exhausted when it was over. I came home and ate a ton. I would have liked to have gotten a bit more sleep, but I ‘m not going to complain. What I got was good sleep.

Goldberg and I had an interesting little conversation last night. I can say, without tooting my own horn, really, that I put up some good numbers. I am strong. I am not really fast or, anything else for that matter, but I am say I am pretty strong. Still though, strength is relative.

I can say with a fairly high level of certainty that someone who is dead lifting for a 1RM @ 100# is working JUST as hard (and in some cases, maybe even HARDER) that someone going for a 1RM @ 400#.

Don’t sell yourself short and think that just because you are lifting less weight than someone else that you aren’t as strong or working as hard. It’s all relative. Work hard.

SuperStrong

Bigg Dave started a new strength class at CrossFit Cedar Park called “SuperStrong“. We could NOT pass this up. It’s an 8 week class (2x/week) that focuses on making you freaky strong.

I haven’t really been blogging my workouts a whole lot as, for a while, I was happy just to get into the gym and move around. But now that we are doing more strength oriented workouts, I need to record stuff so I can gauge my weights.

Monday 9/19/2011

CrossFit Total – 3 attempts to find your 1RMs of:

  • Dead lift
  • Back squat
  • Strict press

Apparently, the starting strength stuff I was doing over the summer has had a pretty good affect on my capacity. My numbers worked out like this (holy crap!!):

  1 2 3
Dead Lift 425# 445# 455# (PR)
Back Squat 315# 345# 365# (PR)
Strict Press 155# 175# 180# (PR)

It was a good night, with a trifecta of PRs. My total was 1000 on the dot and it felt fantastic. I haven’t PR’d something in a really long time and it felt nice to show some progress SOMEWHERE.

My last successful CrossFit Total was back in October of last year and was 945# (445# DL, 335# back squat, 165# press). I have added 55# to it (10# DL, 30# back squat, 15# press).

Wednesday 9/20/2011

“We are going to get sore tonight”… he said as class started and… yes, he’s correct.

The workout last night was:

Hang squat snatch: 5 – 3 – 3 – 3 (75#, 95#, 105#, 115# (2, then lost grip).

Then,

  • 3×5 Front Squat, then 1 set of negatives
  • 3×5 Strict Press, then 1 set of negatives
  • 3×5 Dead Hang Pull Up, 1 set of negatives

Weights used:

  1 2 3 Neg
FS 225# 245# 265# 155#(12)
SP 155# 155#(4) 145# 135#(8)
PU Me Me Me Me(6)

I am pretty happy with all of this. My strict press seems to have suffered a bit, but it could be just fatigue, so I’m not really stressing about it. I really surprised myself with the front squats and the pull ups seemed pretty easy… not the negative… those were a bitch.

On top of all of this, the class runs from 645pm – 830pm, which is sort of hard with little Ms. Brenna, but, she has been SUCH a good baby and the people in the class have been so incredibly tolerant and helpful with her. I can’t thank them enough for not making us feel like we had the annoying baby there (I don’t think she’s annoying at all, but some people just don’t like kids).

Anyway… she has been a really good baby through both classes now and everyone in the class is awesome. This is why I love CrossFit and this gym. Thanks, guys (and gals)!

Back Squats & Thrusters

I’ll keep this one short. Last night, heavy metal class, we did the following:

  • Max Back Squat 5×1
  • Thruster Breathing Ladder (45#)

My back squat lifts came out like this:

  • 135#
  • 225#
  • 315# (Not technically a fail. I came forward and had some bad form, but still got it.)
  • 335# (PR)
  • 350# (F)

The breathing ladder wasn’t so bad. Thankfully, I was able to remember my Yang Chi breathing from KF which REALLY helped. If you are unfamiliar, a breathing ladder is where you do pyramiding reps and get the number of breaths in reps that you just did.

Example:

  • 1 rep, 1 breath
  • 2 reps, 2 breaths
  • 10 reps, 10 breaths
  • 2 reps, 2 breaths
  • 1 rep, 1 breath

This was not timed.