Exercise Log 7.4.14 (Front Squat & Bench Press Day + Cardio)

Okay, it’s been a while since I typed up a meaningful workout log most of them are backlogged these days a week and a half and I’m rushing through logging them. I do keep them on the website, deep in here, but don’t syndicate them to the front page or Facebook or anything as to prevent routine annoyance.

Anyways, today was Front Squat and Bench Press day, my second cycle of my second 6-week rotation of my program. I tweaked volume of my secondary lift because I realized the secondary lift was doing as much lifting as the primary lift, which makes no sense would rather save more energy for the main lift.

I had noticed a chronic problem with my squat, with the form in tipping forward and failing to get hips to actually go very low. Thanks to Jonnie Candito of CanditoTrainingHQ I managed to get a good view as to what I need to do to fix this. What worked for me came in this video, mainly to look up but also to just focus on changing the back to be more straight up and down, which is kind of hard to do mentally until you see it and practice a little. It’s so easy with a movement like a squat to just do what comes natural and develop form deficiencies thankfully filming myself on my phone has been an aid in finding those.

Here is the video I mentioned…

Keep the back upright, it is a stronger position by default so even though it might not feel right at first, it definitely will feel stronger.

Alright, and with that out of the way I felt real good about this workout. To reinforce the newer form, I applied similar principles to the back squat and used that as a secondary leg workout, which felt and went really good.

Remember this week is about hypertrophy, so it’s about higher volumes (6-12 reps mostly, not as high as some do but my preferred range on a lot of exercises) at lighter weight levels. I use these old logs to make sure I’m following the principles of progressive overload when I go into the workouts day to day and it’s helping a lot. So ignore my spam if you ever review my workout logs on my site.

Front Squat: Set 1) 10 reps @ 110lbs. Set 2) 8 reps @ 130lbs. Set 3) 8 reps @ 140lbs. Set 4) 5 reps @ 150lbs.

Decline Bench Press: Set 1) 12 reps @ 110lbs. Set 2) 9 reps @ 130lbs. Set 3) 6 reps @ 140lbs. Set 4) 3 reps @ 80lbs.

Angled Leg Press / Calf Raises: 4 sets of 12 reps each @ 270lbs.

Back Squats: 3 sets of 5 reps @ 165lbs.

Stiff-Legged Deadlifts: 4 sets of 10 reps @ 100lbs.

Cardio today was a fun run outdoors at Frick Park. It was a great day for it, ran 4 miles and felt real good. My cardio as stated fell off the wagon after the half marathon. I notice even a slight loss in running training can produce a huge drop in performance. I find it odd how tempermental endurance training for cardio can be in comparison to the more consistent but slower results of strength training. Still I’m working on it and planning to not skip quite so much of my cardio in the future.