Just a little bit of recent training info, as I've been really busy and haven't updated this week. The week in a nutshell went like this:
Tuesday: up to 515x1 on reverse-band squat, plus a little extra volume.
Wednesday: up to 225x10 on bench with two-second pauses, plus some easy-ish volume.
Thursday: day off.
Friday: A 565-lb. deadlift single, plus 415x5x3 and a bunch of pulls off of blocks (including 415x20) to continue working on lockout.
Saturday: day off.
Today I go in and squat/bench up to openers, and I'll do one more squat session on Tuesday before shutting down training for the meet.
Overall, I've felt strong this week. A few assorted observations:
1.) My SI joint feels good now. My reverse-band squat felt so-so, but 515 was a PR, and I've regularly squatted at a high intensity with success during this training cycle.
2.) My tendonitis still hurts like hell, and my volume benching day was rough. I'm going really light on the reps today (just doing a few singles up to ~300, then shutting it down) and maybe even using the slingshot in the hope that it'll make the session easier on my tendons. I'll do some light floor pressing on Tuesday, I think, but the goal here is just to try and get healthy for the meet without detraining.
3.) ...The good news is that 225x10 was my best paused bench set when I first benched 300, and now I've done it with long pauses.
4.) 565 felt good for a deadlift single. The speed off the floor was a little slow, but the lockout is much faster now. I timed my 565 pull from yesterday (3.56 seconds) and measured it against other recent pulls:
570 (Nov. 2012): 5.48
573 (April 2013): 5.66 (done in a meet)
580 (June 2013): 4.63
578 (July 2013): 3.54 (done in a meet)
601 (July 2013): 5.49 (done in a meet)
580 (Sept. 2013): 4.08 (done with a deadlift bar at 319)
565 (Nov. 2013): 3.56
5.) I'm opening big at this meet. I'm either going to hit a good total or I'm going to bomb. I'm not going to be anywhere near as conservative with my openers as I have been the first two meets of the year; frankly, that strategy hasn't worked very well for me, because even though it guarantees I total something, I have to cover a lot of ground to get from a 446 squat, a 276 bench, or a 518 deadlift to something I'm capable of hitting.
My plan for this meet is to take hard openers, but to take openers I know I can hit. I'm now opening at a 479 squat, 298 bench, and 573 deadlift. Those are very high, and they all but guarantee that I won't be going nine-for-nine (the deadlift will make it really tough), but they also give me a lot more freedom to maneuver strategically through the meet. Basically, I'm shunning conventional wisdom and running my attempts how I want to run them. If I don't hit the total I want, then I don't want a total anyway. I prefer to train under pressure (and I usually perform better in training when I give myself something ambitious to shoot for), so I will use that at the meet. The theme of this meet is definitely "PR or bomb" for me.
