Strength Cycle Week 9, part 1

Max has instituted weekly 1RM deadlifts on Wednesdays to act as a sort of overtraining-o-meter, given the crazy shit he and Gita have planned for us over the next few weeks (ie, tomorrow's WOD). All well and good, except Rebecca and I already have strength days set aside, and they aren't jiving too well with the new CFEB schedule. Solution? Move 'em. So now we're going to do our strength stuff on Wednesdays and Saturdays, instead of the deadlifts and so we don't have THREE workouts on Sundays. Hopefully this will work out - we only have 3.5 weeks left in the cycle, anyway.

Back Squat x 5: 145 - 170 - 190(pr)
Back Squat x 21: 140
Bench Press x 5: 125 - 145 - 160F/2 - 157F/4
Bench Press x 21: 120F (16-5)
Finisher: 50 unbroken burpees for time: 4:11

Well, the squats went well. 190 was my 1RM when we started this cycle. I've discovered a bad habit: when coming out of the hole and trying to get my chest up, sometimes I PULL down on the bar very hard. This makes it more difficult, I've found. I need to be lighter on the bar with my hands - I can manage this on the big set, but at high weights I find I'm falling back into the good-morning habit. 140x21 was miserable.

The bench was terrible. I've definitely backslid and/or stalled out on this one. While it's nice to be making all the progress on squats and deadlifts, my press strength (shoulder and bench) just does not want to budge much. Next week I'll go for 157 x 5, then 5x3's up to 160 the following week. Maybe I'll get 160 x 5 by the time the strength cycle ends.

The 50 burpees were a good challenge: once you stop to take a breath, you're done. The obvious plan, then, is to set a pace slow enough that you can maintain it. Mine felt pretty damn slow, but really I don't think they were THAT much slower than my regular burpee pace - 4:11 translates to a 5-second-burpee pace, which may be a second slower than regular. My quads were burning throughout and trembling afterward.