Gave myself a full day break yesterday in preparation for a leg day today where I planned on increasing the load on key exercises like the squat and deadlift. The results, however, ended up blowing away even my most hopeful expectations.
After a good amount of warming up, I started out with my normal set of 5 x 5 squats at 115kg. Thus adding 2.5kg to my previous workout mid-week according to plan. I usually make small marginal increases of 2.5, and had been setting aside progressing my squats for a bit, so expected this to go fairly well.
But this is where it started getting crazy. I had decided that I wanted to try and do a 3 x 3 series of deadlifts, something which I don't think I've ever done before. But with my challenge being to do a one rep max overhead, I need to get used to pulling and lifting heavy singles. Thus, I'll be doing more sets of fewer repetitions as I approach the last day of the challenge.💪
So for my deadlift so I decided to give it a go with 140kg, thus increasing my the weight by 10kg since mid-week, and instead go from my usual set of 5x5 to instead do a 3x3. However, on my first set I felt so good that I ended up doing 5 repetitions after all. I went on to perform 5 reps on all three sets. I'm not sure if I could have done a whole 5 sets of those as I was starting to get quite fatigued, but simply knowing that I can do 5 reps of 140 kilos was just amazing! It is safe to say that I've never pushed myself so hard on a deadlift ever before (my all time one rep max is 150kg).
With my glutes still pumped from those lifts, I went on to do three sets of a barbell hip thrust. Here, I also decided to increase my weight by 10 kilos to 130kg. Since the rate of progress I've made today was already making no sense, I ended up squeezing out one additional rep taking what is usually a 10x3 series into a 11x3 instead.
To give my hamstrings, glutes and quads a bit of a break, I went on to do 4 sets of standing calf raises, also with 130kg, but with 10 reps (chose not to include them in the video), as well as a quick series of crunches for the abs. I then finished the workout with 3 sets of standing lunges if 10 reps on each foot. It's safe to say that my legs were pretty dead by then, but it's a rule I've made to always include at least one workout of single-leg-training whenever I do legs. It is tempting to Stick with the barbell exercises that allow you to lift the most weight, however, most of our daily life movements are done with one foot at a time. including single leg training also help prevent muscle imbalances If one of your legs do most of the work on the other lifts. it also allows you to hit your different quadriceps muscles differently, then if you can only do the same movement pattern in the squat and deadlift.
In any case this was one of my best workout ever, and I'm honestly quite blown away by how well I did. it's been really cool to see how does challenges motivated me to set new goals and break old barriers.
Now let's see how much of the power I can carry with me into my clean and jerk 😉.
