Squaterday!

Training with Chris + Training at TPS = PRETTY MUCH THE BEST THING EVER.

Seriously.

It was explosive squat day on the Cube program, and I was a little anxious about squatting at all because my left knee has been feeling so shitty since the competition, but I figured with Chris there for advice I had a decent chance at getting a good session in. Overall it was definitely a success. My left hip/glutes have not been firing, which caused my deadlift day last Sunday to completely trash my back (and I'm sure didn't help my knee at all) and I wanted to avoid doing the same thing again today. I went through a thorough warm-up (Meathead Mobility by Molly Gailbraith) and Chris suggested some kickbacks against a wall to get my left side firing. I was able to get through all 12 (TWELVE!) sets of squats without any significant knee pain, and pretty much every rep was to depth.

Chris recommended I try the safety bar for my initial work sets, and I was glad he was there to set it up and explain it as it pretty much looks and feels like a medieval torture device. It definitely worked in terms of getting me to sit back into the movement and forcing my back to stay tight, this quick article from elitefts does a nice job explaining some of the benefits of the safety bar. Access to things like specialty bars is yet another amazing benefit of training at TPS, I get the sense it is definitely going to be worth the extra time and financial investment. And I just love the feel of the place.

I think we trained for close to two hours including warming up, but I seriously could have stayed all day if my body or my schedule allowed it. The only good thing about finishing training is that we went to Veggie Galaxy afterwards so I could get gluten-free pancakes (yay re-feed day!). So delicious. I am currently carb-dazed and starting to get really, really sore and feeling very, very content.

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Training today:
Warm-up Squats (regular bar): 45#x5, 5; 95#x5; 115#x5
Competition Squats: 135#x3, 3
Safety Bar Squats: 115#x3repsx4sets; 125#x3repsx2 sets
Front Squat: 95#x5; 115#x5
Pause Squat: 125#x8,7
(SQUATS ALL DAY, YO!)

Glute Ham Raise (another awesome piece of equipment at TPS) x 6,6,7,8,8
Farmer Carries (giant contraption+50# added weight) x 200' x 3
Snatch Grip Deads 135#x8, 155#x8, 8, 8