I am in the thick of a long off-season.  My next meet will be at the end of November, raw with wraps at 220lbs.  For now, my focus remains on my professional endeavors, but I will continue to work diligently to improve as a lifter while enjoying a lower stress approach to training.

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If you haven’t yet, check out my most recent article series:

All things DELOAD – Part 1

All things DELOAD – Part 2

All things DELOAD – Part 3

Tempo squatting is something I have implemented to improve my tissue tolerance.  That’s a fancy way to say that I am slowing down my eccentrics to increase the time my muscles are under tension, so they become resilient.  I am a speed lifter.  I am at my strongest when I can use my stretch reflex.  So, by implementing slow eccentrics and pauses I am taking away my biggest strength and working on my weaknesses.  Tempo also has another benefit, which is actually more important to me.  The slow eccentric is helping my feel the tension evenly and reduce any residual hip shift.  On this day, my shift was basically non-existent and I was again, pain free.  This marks the 4th session in a row where I haven’t had any issues while squatting.

On the deadlift, I swapped out the front squats from last mini-cycle for trap bar deadlifts.  The reason for this is two-fold.  First, I added a 6th training day to my rotation which will be front squats and I will discuss later.  For the record, no I am not training 6x a week, but I have 6 training days that I rotate through.  Remember how I harp on 10/20/Life not being a program, but a set of principles? Second, the trap bar deadlift is a movement that I haven’t done in years and when using the low handles, the it is very effective building the mid/ upper back, which is a weakness for me.  We will see how this all plays out.

Squat

1. 4211 TempoCambered Bar Squat – 5×5@365
2. Piston Hatfield Squat – 3×20@275
3. GHR – 3×10
4. Reverse Lunge from deficit – 3x10ea
5. KB Swing – 10×10 EMOM
6. Stir the pot – 200reps

Deadlift

1. Trap Bar DL – 4×8@455
2. Snatch Grip RDL – 5×10@275
3. Pull-ups – 4×8
4. Seal Row – 5×10
5. Cable Low Row /ss DB Shrugs /ss Band Pull Apart – 4×15/20/25
6. GHR Sit-Ups – 3×15

Warm-Up

1. Daily
   1. Bottoms-Up Carry – 5 trips/arm
   2. McGill Big-3
2. Lower
   1. Sprinter Pose to RDL to Hip Airplane – 2x10ea
   2. Multi directional lunges – 2x10ea
   3. Tactical Frog with internal rotations – 2x10ea
   4. Goblet Squats – 3-5×10