4-23-14 – Back to Heavy Weight on My Back

My previous week consisted of no heavy lifting. It was a nice break to relax my muscles and give them a chance to recover more. Having said that, I was ready to lift some serious weight again. What day is better to lift heavy ass weight other than squat day? Today being my second day back to serious training, I was excited to see that my “light” week included a set of 240 pounds for five reps. Not long ago; I remember this being part of my heavy week for as many reps as possible. Warming up felt great, less pain in my hips, there was no concern with moving forward. For my first working set, I decided to use a belt although it may have only been 65% of my training max. As usual, it felt great and easy. Regardless, for the my final two sets at 75% and 85% I decided to wear knee wraps just to be on the safe side. Just after wrapping them, I went under the bar and squatted the weight with ease. Best of all, my final set with 240 pounds was my easiest set of the day. This excited me very much so due to the fact that I have been dieting and doing whatever I can to cut weight. Unfortunately, this joy didn’t last for very long as I moved into sumo deadlifts with light weight on a one mat deficit. I was only required to do three sets of five reps and I made the decision to go easy with 225 pounds but, it felt significantly heavier than it ever had previously. My grip was slipping, my feet were sliding, balance was difficult to keep under control, and the pull itself was a bit of a struggle. Regardless, I pushed through it and pushed through my accessories. Band leg curls, reverse hypers, calf raises and abs all went well as usual. But, just before abs, we had a new accessory being sled drags. I had always seen people doing them and I couldn’t wait for the day I could do them. We had five laps (back and forth the gym) pulling it backwards and I moved up to four plates, a 25, and a 2.5 equaling 207.5 plus the weight of the sled.