I finally went in and broke my inertia! Yay!! Haven't been in for about 2 weeks (guests, then sickness, then plain old inertia)

Ice Cream Fitness A

Squats 3x5,1x4,1x5@95. I should have deloaded more to 90 or even 85 but let's be totally honest - I went to 95 because I could stick a 25 on each side instead of multiple weights. Yeah I was THAT lazy. I paid the price too because this was brutal and as you can see, I failed a rep in set 4.

OHP and good mornings 5x6@45. Deloaded as proscribed to the bar, but this was easy so I added a rep to everything.

Deadlift 1x6@135. Deloaded weight. Was very easy.

Bent-over rows 10% lighter day, went with 60. These were fine. 5x5

Bicep bar curls 3x8 @30. These were VERY hard. Last rep of each set was almost a fail.

Narrow grip bench 3x8@45 and hip popups 3x15

Planks 2x60 sec and 30 sec on each side

Great lifting everyone.

@threnjen - Yay! Welcome back to the gym.

@mirrim52 - that is too bad. I hope you feel better soon.

Will report back late tonight as I'm trying out day B in stage 3 tonight after work. It's supposedly easy compared to day A to the point people questioned its use in comparison. Will be interesting at least.

MalineVD wrote: »

First week of SL 5x5 is done diddly done!

Today:
Squats: 5x5 55 lbs
benchpress: 5x5 45 lbs (I repeated this weight until I feel good with my form doing bench. Same for OHpress)
Barbell row: 5x5 55 lbs

I absolutely loved my first week. I didn't mind getting up at 6am, to be in the gym at 7am. Actually enjoyed this rhythm a lot. Also ate really good and slept really good this week (sleep is something I have serious troubles with).

Squats, deadlifts and rows felt good. Benchpress and overhead presses not at all. I'm going to be much slower in increasing weight with these, because I want my form to be good first!

Have an awesome weekend, everyone!

Congrats and welcome to the group! It will grow on you! I've been doing it for a little over 30 days and my strength gains are through the roof!

sigh bleh. shoulder so much much much better, but now the high holy wars are about to start with the physio dude about squats. but that is a separate post.

workout b, with knobs on.

squats: 2x5@45, 2x5@65, 5x5@95. and that's all she wrote about squats. no extras, no new weight, but also no breakfast and no water at that point due to schedule malfunction that started the day. so i'm not too disappointed. not too.

ohp: i broke up the sets before/after squats but i think that i got my 5x5 in . . . with 45 once again. around three of the sets were 6 reps but then i ran out of poop and the last two were definitely no more than 4. press is a lot coming right after squats, because that low bar does put some work on my shoulders, esp rear delts. that's my story about it anyway. but on the other hand, i'm always reluctant to give up the rack because you usually can't get it back.

deadlift: i started at 50, did trial sets and form-finding reps at incremental weights until i was up to 120. i just don't like my deadlifts anymore, and i used to love them. i have this tendency to hyper-extend which has begun frightening me, but finding some good middle point between hyper-extended and rounded purely by the way that it feels is really really really hard. i have to let go of the bar and lay my hands on my back physically to make sure i'm not out of line. i had a couple of reps here and there through the whole progression that felt like gold stars where suddenly i remembered how it all is meant to feel. but the trouble is each pull takes so much out of me, by the time i'm rested enough to do the next one i've kind of lost how those stellar ones felt.

knobs on part of the day:

- skipped planks. i'm in a sulky mood and didn't feel like trying out any planks. that'll learn 'm.
- y's and t's at the physio. also trap work with a silly piece of chiffonized rubber . . . you know the thing. these feel GREAT.
- experimental set of 5 on bench press with 45. just to try out shoulder stabilization in bench.
- rows. guise. i just did five sets of five strict pendlay rows with 50 pounds . . . FOR FUN. who am i and what have i done with the real me? i could write you some writes about rows, and my [potential] discoveries. let's just say that i'm taking some of the thoughts that physio has given me and putting them into execution with lifts. and i did these FOR FUN, and they felt easy-peasy and great.
- barbell curls. diaf, but i did two sets of 5 of these gnarly little *kitten* with the 30lb bar.
- annnnnd, finally, more ohp. i learned/extrapolated something to look for about my shoulder, and i was trying it out all over the place today. so intermittently while waiting to rest up from something else, i was experimenting with it. air-pressing one-armed so i could actually check my collarbone position with the other hand at the same time. anyway, all of that and for my last trick today i did 3x8 ohp with 30lb.

@crabada - The hikes do sound nice.

Longish day at work for a short shift because of sales all ending today, which meant the limited number of people working close had to take down every sales tag (I got at least half of them done). Got out a little late then was kinda slow at the gym figuring out the different stuff for day B so it ended up taking me over an hour with light warmup and just 2 accessories at the end. Plus, I was really slow on the prone cobra cause I left my timer when rushing to get my stuff in locker so woman could get to her stuff in the locker above mine. I had to rely on watching my iPod to see time. Since it was shoulder accessory time and had the YTWL thing, I think I'll be feeling my shoulders tomorrow.

Stage 3 - B1

bar romanian deadlift/bent-over row 3x6 @ 70

partial one leg squat 3x6 just body weight. Aside from balance, my knees are not a fan. May consider another option cause I haven't had problems with squats but this one bugged my right knee in particular.
wide grip lat pulldown 3x6 @ 80 - tough but managed

back extension 3x6 @ body weight - awkward and hard to trust the little bench thing to not topple over
YTWL 3x6 with 5 lb dumbbells - did them separate after back extension as they are in different parts of the gym enough to make it inconvenient to do one set after another on each. Also found resting on my knees instead of sitting on the bench makes it a little better.

SB crunch 2x12 @ 25 - yeah I veered from the program on it
hip flexion - forgot to look up so did reverse crunches 2x12
lateral flexion - did 2x12 glute bridges with 25 lbs instead

prone cobra 3 x 90 seconds, okay but hard to watch iPod cause the light dims after a few seconds and that makes the time harder to see.

shrug 3x10 @ 25 - same as always
assisted chin-up with slow descent 1x5 @ 13 and 2x5 @ 12 - minor progress. Biggest struggle right now is the handles aggravate the calluses on my hands.

So late and must finish my protein so I can sleep. Rest day is tomorrow aka putting up new sales tags at work. At least I'll get a decent number of steps for the day.

Just a light 5k. Took just under 40 minutes. Next week is back at it, full steam ahead and the week after that I will probably find a way to leave Thursday and Friday as rest days because I have a race on the Saturday.

Lifted this morning

Squat 5x5x145lbs
Bench 5x5x85lbs
Row 5x5x95lbs

Kill the lower half superset of DOOM!!!
5x5 superset
Bulgarian split squat @ 70lbs,
Paused front squat @ 70lbs,
Hip thrusters @ 100lbs,
Romanian deadlifts @ 100lbs,
Step up onto bench - bodyweight

Legs are fried, butt is fried. I am fried. Off to eat all the foods and all the proteinz xxx

Week two of SL5x5!

Squats 5x5 60lbs (+/- 27.5kg) This is exactly half of my bodyweight.

OHP 4x5 38.5lbs (17.5kg) and 1x5 33lbs (15kg). Tried to increase my weight here, but I keep having a hollow back when I try to do them. Trying again on friday Sucks that I can't even do the requested starting weight of 44lbs (20kg)

Deadlift 1x5 55lbs (25kg)

Oh, and I've lost 2.2lbs last week. Lifting, superclean eating (didn't have a single cheat) and making sure I sleep enough. Really curious for what's going to happen next following weeks!

@krok, with OHP I can put the plates up in between upstairs floor joists. I have to stand at a very specific spot for it to work. With push-press it was really hard to get the sweet spot for it and I come up just a little bit more with a push press as well. DB snatches I can do down there (I can put the dumbbell between joists) but I can't do any explosive overhead bar stuff.

In fact, now that you mentioned it, I might try switching to seated OHP. Might make things a little less prone to oops (I have bashed the ducting a couple of times).

Oh and today - just got back from an hour long walk around my work campus. It's so pretty here, there are trails through the woods and the campus is giant so there's not shortage of different routes to keep in interesting. I saw a cute little chipmunk, some weird green flying bug and some pretty birds in the woods. It was squishy in there, though, from the rain - so I got some mud splash on my work pants. Don't care.

Sprints at lunch 14 x 30 sec sprint 60 sec walk. Got 3.56km which is just a smidget under my PR.

Squat 120 5x5. Form was pretty good but broke down a little at the end. Going to repeat this weight this week.

Row 85 5x5. Will repeat this as well.

Bench 90 1,2,1,2,1 oy! Why is 90 so much heavier than 85?!?

Face pulls 50 4x8, changing the front leg each time. Did this waiting for a bench to open up.

Assisted dips -28 3x5

sarah_K_parker wrote: »

Moral of the story: don't let pride get in the way of proper form and safety! The gains with this program are fantastic, but I wish I would have started filming myself sooner!

^^ this is a great lesson to learn!! Ego gets left at the door when it comes to lifting, otherwise you get sidelined!

psych101 wrote: »

Ego gets left at the door when it comes to lifting, otherwise you get sidelined!

hard to tell the difference between ego and heart though sometimes. or another way of putting it, sometimes it's genuinely hard to know how hard you 'should' be pushing in order to get growth.

but on that same general note:

**shoulder service before workout**
- external cable rotation aka chicken wing thing, 3x12 on both sides, extra set on the left. with 2.5 pounds. those external-rotator muscles are TINY when you make them do anything all by themselves. concentrating on learning the feeling of stabilizing my shoulder blade more than on the actual pull.
- face pulls 3x8 or something with 5 pounds. not sure i was getting these right, need to read up.
- shoulder dislocate, broomstick.

squats 2x5@45, 1x5@55, 2x5@65, 5x5@85. i took a 10lb deload because i really haven't been happy with the effects of saturday on my back. 85 was easy and i'll make myself prove i can handle 90 before i go back to it. i want it easy enough that form isn't even a question mark . . . for now anyway. concentration on core and on using hamstrings/glutes more. also on putting the bar just under the acromion, aka much higher up on my back, and it feels like the right path to take. couldn't believe how light the bar feels when it's up there. hands and upper back were tight, shoulder not fussed. pretty pleased with squats i wasn't sure that i'd do them at all.

rows: i did these before bench because - well, just because. 1x8@45, 1x10@50 for warmup, 5x5@70 working. was nervous about stress on my back but got a good tight position for them and it seemed to go okay even at this +5lb weight. plus, got complimented on my form by a big workout dude!

bench: 2x5@45, 1x5@55, 5x5@65. much better than recently. still some work to do but at least i think the shoulder carnage is getting less with each bench. in between times folded myself over so i was overhanging my own lap and did y's and t's either without weight or with 5lb plates.

pretty happy. nothing extra today, but i spent time afterwards doing stretches, 1x60 and 1x40 sec planks, and some lower-ab work because lower back. reverse crunches and those bicycle things, and some glute stretching which i can't even remember the last time i checked out the state of my glutes. probably part of my problem right there.