2-17-14 – Squats and Killer Abs

Throughout my warm ups, my body felt absolutely exhausted. My hip was hurting, my traps were sore. I was not looking forward to any of my working sets, especially 225 for a set of 3. Worked my way through my warm ups, and although it began to feel better, I was still exhausted. Throughout my working sets, I didn’t use a belt until my final set of 225. For being so tired, 225 went well. It went up easily and I didn’t have any problems lifting it at all. I carried this momentum straight into my first accessory, being snatch grip DLs. I experimented with swinging my hips into each rep and it helped a lot. Let every rep rest before lifting again. I also increased from the weight I did last week (185 last week, 195 for 3 sets of 5 this week). Focused of forcing my chest up, sitting back, and locking my knees and hips out simultaneously. These DLs really gave me a good pump to move on through the rest of my accessories, training harder and faster. By the end, I was super setting band spreads with band leg curls and calf raises with reverse hypers. Lastly, instead of doing just 4 sets of abs, Jesse and I completed 3 sets of 5 rose crunches, 3 sets of 10 TRX crunches with 5 twists on each side per set, finishing with 3 sets of 5 bench crunches with 5 twists on each side per set. Although it started extremely slowly and didn’t look very promising, it finished really strong and better than an average day.