Foam roll and warmup
Sumo dl w/dbl overhand grip 135/185/225/275/315x5 w/straps 365x5
Step ups 2x10
Swiss ball hip ext leg curl 2x10
Crunches 2x20

Wow, I felt really weak. I should expect nothing less the day after a meet. However, I have been thinking long and hard about my lower body training. I have been more or less going through the motions for years now. I have played it safe and have not really made any progress. In speaking with Rhodes I think I have come up with a plan.

By sticking with the same exercise every week, safety squat bar squats, I am really only good in that position. I know when I went with block programing, sticking with bench as my main exercise every week for upper body, I feel my bench suffered. So why not add ME effort to my programming for lower body. Well, first of all, I am quite certain I will bang myself up pretty quickly with traditional ME work. I nearly trashed myself a couple of years ago when I ssb box squatted 700 and missed one side of the rack. Luckily I held it together and got it in before a complete explosion happened in my basement.

So what's the answer, max sets of 5. This way I can build up different weak areas by changing exercises every week, yet keep weight reasonable enough where I HOPEFULLY don't kill myself. After I set up my 5 rep maxes, I have numbers to go after the next time around, ensuring progress.

I stole the idea of 5's from DeFranco's WS4SB. Yeah, I do too much reading sometimes. Now I know traditionally I should have a DE day for lower body. However, for my purposes of increasing my bench, that will just be too much work to recover from. Instead, I will drag the sled for that second day. It will serve two purposes. It will work conditioning as well as lower body training, without beating me up too much.

I am hoping this tweak might just give me a little more leg drive for my bench. I am really close to that 600 raw bench at 275. I don't care whether I get the carryover from upper body or lower body as long as I get the result I want. Every little bit helps.

Ask me a question
My Facebook