Soft Focus

5/6 lift squat 5x245 close-grip bench press 4ishx225 plus pull-ups +55lbs and 3x170lb atlas stone pickups

Once again, my squats are sliding thanks to some sporadic workouts and being sick.  I'm not eating enough quality calories either.  Due to my busy work schedule today my lifting partner had to go it alone and he was kind enough to roll in the atlas stone from the garage.  I figured I couldn't let him have all the fun, so I did the same auxiliaries with it tonight.  Talk about a beast, admittedly it takes very good technique to move it, but once it's on your chest trying to extend or walk with it is serious fun.  I tried to simulate lifting it to a high platform, so I would pick it up to chest height and arch my upper back to get it as high in the air as possible before returning it to the ground.  On the last lift I did a short walk to the other end of the mats.  Wow, it is really hard to breath when you are death gripping a giant concrete ball into your chest.

I got greedy on the bench and tried to move up 20lbs, which was more like 2.75 and 1.5 reps, as I get the bar well above the rack points but I struggle with locking out my triceps when using the close-grip.  Once again, another poor performance due to sporadic training... My body seems to be craving routine, structure and moderated intensity.  I need to start building again and get out of this mix of travel, improvised training and excess intensity.  Yet here I sit committed to do Philosopher's Way with the +1.  I really really really need to run this as a recovery controlled run.  I'm still coughing up crud and I feel like I wouldn't be getting out of bed but for the antibiotics.  Oh well.  enough whining for one night :-)