This morning was squat day at the gym. The squat used to be my favorite of the big three lifts (bench, dead, squat) but since I struggled with depth at my last competition, getting no-repped on my first two attempts, the lift has definitely become a struggle for me. I have dropped my 1 rep max weight several times to accommodate practicing hitting depth consistently, and I think I finally dropped it low enough, as my current working 1rep max for the purposes of my 5-3-1 program is 215#. Over a year ago I was consistently squatting 235# or more, but I was also consistently at least several inches above parallel, and if you don't make depth, it doesn't really matter how much weight is on the bar.

I took video of myself for the first time since July (I intentionally stopped videoing my lifts because I think it was serving as more of a distraction than a help, as I knew what my weaknesses were - depth for the squat and keeping my back from rounding with the deadlift.) I was pretty pleased with the results, as I worked up to 182#x6 this morning and of those 6 at least 4 were definitely to competition depth.

At or below comp depth (my hip crease is lower than the top of my knee.)

I also worked on speed sumo deads and pistol squats, and somewhere in there either strained my right glute or just have some really bad muscle cramps. Not sure which but planning to take it easy for the rest of the day and stretch it out tonight and see how it feels in the morning. I'm supposed to do hill sprints tomorrow afternoon and definitely don't want to try those with a strained glute.