Nate's plastic weights blogg

Week review

Consistently weighing in at around 70-71kg, so I've got plenty of room to compete in the 74kg class.

Monday:
 
Main exercises were squats and speed deadlifts. Worked up in triples on squats to a PB of 165kg, was happy with this, hoping I can get somewhere near a double at 170kg next week.
 
Speed deadlifts went very well, feeling confident on my deadlift at the moment. I don't know if anyone else has this, maybe it's just me, but the weight always feels to move slowly but then when I look at some footage it moves much much faster than it felt, I guess that's always a nice surprise.

After this I just moved onto some unilateral work and ABS. I've recently been doing a great new AB exercise using a band. The thing I found with crunches, especially weighted, was by the time you've gotten past about 45 degrees most of the weight will acting vertically downwards, not trying to push you back onto the floor. So, the lift actually gets easier as you progress up through the range of motion, so the only difficult bit is really the start. With the band however, it's the reverse, as the more the band is stretched the more force it will apply. I've only been doing this for a few weeks so I can't swear by its potential awesomeness but never the less I'd encourage people to give it ago if they are stuck for something to do for ABS. I usually do 3-5 sets of 10-15 reps depending on time and the strength of the band etc.

Wednesday:

This is my full range of motion bench day. Working up in paused triples, was an average day, had some pain in my front delts but that's been getting much better over the last few weeks. But still not doing anything exciting on the bench.

I then moved onto some higher volume close grip bench work, I really like this exercise for my triceps and shoulders. I prefer it for high(er) volume and something like clos(er) grip board presses for lower volume if I think my triceps are holding my bench back a lot.

After this it was just more tricep work, including: heavy dips and high volume skull crushers. Followed by back work.


Friday:

This is my squat and deadlift variation day. For squat I was doing reverse bands and deadlifts were off a 2.25" block.

Squats went well hit a PB of 3x172.5kg, felt reasonably comfortable, definitely had another 5kg left I the tank.

Deadlifts were okay, and I'm placing a big emphasis on the use of the word okay. It was the kind of session you can't really be pleased with but neither really annoyed. One thing I've managed to piece together after looking back at notes and training logs etc, is that I can train at a relatively light weight for reps etc and still hit something big for a single. However, this only seems to apply to the deadlift, I'd be interested to hear if any of you guys find the same thing, is it just with this lift? Or another, or maybe it's like this for all of them?

After deadlifting I moved onto assistance including: reverse hypers, GHR and ABS.


Saturday:

This is my lockout bench work day. Started with some 5's to a 2 board close grip. Went well, all easy. Then moved up with some competition grip benches for singles which was fine.

After this it did a bunch of assistance including: should work, back and trap work.

More importantly on this day Phil hit a great 250kg bench to a three board, really good work done by Phil! Nice to see his hard work paying off!