Exercise Log 12.30.13 (Leg Day, No Cardio)

Alright quick log for my workout on Monday the 30th. Going to keep this short and sweet, it was almost literally a repeat of last week’s leg day.

Today was leg day. Last leg day left my legs battered and confused, with the knees feeling a little weak and a rip in my quad. It might not have been just leg day doing that… I had three hard days before last leg day too. So I wanted to do something similar, even though I wasn’t feeling 100%, to test and see if it was the routine that contributed to the bad feelings or something else.

I had much more energy than I thought.

Front Squats: Warmup) 10 reps with a bare bar. Set 1) 5 reps @ 125lbs. Set 2) 5 reps @ 135lbs. Set 3) 5 reps @ 145lbs.

Here I wanted to go for a new max, feeling overly ambitious I set the bar for 165lbs, yet another +10. I scored two reps, but wasn’t very happy with the squat depth. It was low enough I felt the reps counted, but barely and I considered it poor form. I am lenient when considering new maxes, so I’m going to count it and up my weight accordingly, but I’m not going to expect the next couple of leg days to increase that new max any quicker. I just pushed the bar up +20lbs in two weeks, so I’m going to test that the next few leg days and get comfortable. So…

Set 4) 2 sets @ 165lbs (new max!). Set 5) 8 reps @ 125lbs (drop set, slower tempo better depth). Sets 6 & 7) 5 @ 95lbs (slow, controlled form, deep ass to the ground squatting). As a penalty rep for the poor maxes, I did 5 brutal 60-second static holds of 185lbs. This is to prepare my body for heavier loads I’ll hopefully be doing in the not too distant future, get myself mentally prepared for having the weight racked on the shoulders. To be clear – these static holds were just racking the weight with a clean grip and standing with good posture… and that alone is an effective exercise.

Alright, about sick to death of front squats, I moved on!

Standing Lunges: 4 sets of 10 reps each leg, pair of 45lb dumbbells. Noticed the weight swinging back and forth made grip strength an issue, which is actually a nice positive of doing these standing versus marching (when marching, the weight travels with the arms, standing it swings back and forth and your arms gotta grip and stabilize them to keep the weight held). Nice burn in my forearms added to a better weight exertion on the actual lunge, but substantially less control. Stabilizers had to work extra hard. I guess marching is more a natural movement for lunging than standing still.

Seated Angled Leg Presses superset with Calf Raises: Sets 1-3) 12 reps each @ 360lbs. Set 4) 8 reps each @ 540lbs. Focused on better form.

Jumping Curl Bar Medley: Did the workout I mentioned last week a series of leg exercises in a 4 exercise set with a light curl bar (40lbs). I didn’t record what the exact workout was last time which bothered me as I refer to these notes constantly at the gym, so here it is: 15 reps of jumping squats, 8 reps each leg of one leg stiff legged deadlifts (although today I did more like one legged lunges, I got the pattern wrong a bit), 8 reps each leg jumping lunges (hard) and finally 20 reps high knees. Doing all that with any weight can be a lot of impact on the legs and knees, but I need to learn to use explosive energy more and deal with impact better, so I like it. 3 rounds of these 4 exercises!

Goblet Squats: 3 sets of 6 reps @ 90lbs. These are hard, but aside from working on the postural issues by having you have a front loaded weight (and giving you better core strength and thoracic extension to support front squatting) the extra low depth you can do with goblet squats (I like to let the elbows supporting the weight to touch the inner side of my knees before driving back up) I think will assist a lot in growing the muscles needed to get past the sticking points of deeper squats. Deeper squatting equals better squatting.

Alright that’s it for Monday! As for the leg workout… it didn’t drain me as much as it did last week, in some ways I was energized, but my knees felt a bit weak the next day due to the jumping medley. I don’t think I can do that jumping medley every week, until I train up for it, so I’ll be alternating weeks on using it.