Bothell Barbell, 3/28/12

Some lifts: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dD6rnd_u50

Overall:
First of all, this was an awesome day. I've had days where I've gotten more PRs or whatever, but the atmosphere today was just so much fun. I'm going to post a video of some of the best lifts from our group later, but just today alone we had Tony hitting a 315x5 deadlift, Nick hit a 405x5 deadlift, I squatted 390x5 and finally pressed 150x5 (thanks Matt), and our friend Mark made a guest appearance. He got to try GHRs for the first time which was cool. All in all, just had a blast today. On to the workout.

Squats:
Tom: 390x5
Not even that hard. I didn't deadlift this week though. So, we'll see how my change works next week. I'm hoping the extra day of recovery will allow this setup to keep working a while longer. I'm thinking that I probably won't max on April 7th after all. I'm on such a roll and I don't want to mess it up just to post a gym total. Ah! I don't know. I'm so conflicted about it.

Nick: 290x5x3
Tendonitis strikes another victim down. Nick will have to do the ibuprofen protocol. His rack was pretty effed from the beginning and we were working on it, but we had him go for PRs anyway (he wanted to). Probably should've waited till he had the rack right. The sad thing is that these were easier than 285. Low-bar makes you stronger real fast.

Mark: 275x5x1
Easy squats for Mark. Today was hit light day.

Tony: SSB, 260x5x3
Tendonitis and all that jazz. Sucks cuz he would've hit 300 today and that would have made today even more epic.



Zach: 140x5x3
Best worksets Zach has ever had. He's hitting depth consistently and things are looking better and better. He'll get 145 next time, no doubt.

Press:
Tom: 150x5,5,4
Fuuuuuuuuu. This was just too heavy. Everyone told me I didn't rest long enough on the last set and that may be true, but the reps were just super hard today. No way around it. I'm going to go to 5x5 press for a while and continue making 2.5lbs jumps. When I stall on 5x5 press, I'm going to reset 12.5% and do 3x5 with 1lbs jumps. When I stall with 3x5 on 1lbs jumps, I'll move to 5x5 1lbs jumps. I've also decided that I'm going back to 2.5lbs jumps on bench. So, 227.5 on Saturday not 230. I'm leaning towards not doing the max out thing at all. It doesn't seem like the best thing to do for my training.

Mark: 162.5x1
Mark benched yesterday and still tried to press today. Not the greatest idea, lol. This was still an awesome rep. I wish I had a vid because it was like a 10-15 second grinder. Awesome.

Zach: 95x5x3
Made these look so ridiculously easy.

Deadlift:
Nick: 405x5
The form is really quite awful, but the set was very entertaining and he absolutely smoked these. He wasn't setting his chest well enough before the pull and he wasn't maintaining a neutral spine when the bar came off the ground. He did these things during warmups easily. Too much hype for that work set, probably.

Tony: 315x5
These went up QUICK. He hasn't been squatting on deadlift days for quite some time now. Or, I should say he's been deadlifting first and then doing SSB squats afterwords. We'll have to see how he adjusts once he's fully healthy. Check the vid. No one seems to listen to my coaching on deadlifting. Music is too loud/10.

Zach: 255x5
A real tough set, but Zach did a great job and even listened to my cues. His technique was the best of the bench and he got his PR. He did this for 255x4 last time. Cool to see him keep pushing it up.

Cleans:
Tom: 90x3, 110x3, 135x3, 155x3, 165x3, 180x3, 190x3
Far from a 3RM to be honest. Things are kind of clicking with cleans lately. Obviously, they're not perfect, but I'm happy. I'll get 200x3 on film next week. My assault on skip continues.

GHRs:
Mark: BWx5x2 /w 2 orange bands, BWx5 with no assistance
After he got the hang of them and learned to use the bounce, he was able to crank out some good sets of GHRs. He said he hadn't felt anything hit his hamstrings this hard in months. Good stuff. Oh, he'd never done these previously.