Thursday is generally my Deadlift training day. I say generally even though in this training cycle I have not missed one Deadlift session. All the same I did miss this past Thursday. Throughout the day I was exceptionally tired. I think maybe my Central Nervous System (CNS) was over taxed from all the heavier weights I have been throwing around. I am peaking on my training cycle and that involves doing much higher weights for lower rep ranges (I am currently doing 2 sets of 3 reps on Bench, Squat, and Behind the Neck press, and 1 set of 2 reps on deadlift).
Typically when I get home from work on a training day I will sit down on my couch and take my supplements and get in some fluids and caffeine before working out. On Thursday I plopped down on my sofa and just sat there for a bit watching some television. As I sat there I felt my eyelids getting heavier and heavier and eventually said to myself, "I will just take a quick power nap and wake up and train." No big deal since I train by myself on Thursdays so I am not holding up any training partners.
The quick power nap turned into sleeping until 9 P.M. At this point I debated whether or not I wanted to still push through a grueling workout or use my off day (Friday) to catch up on the workout. I decided that I would rather wait one day and have a good workout than try to push myself already in a fatigued state and have a sub par workout. There is a fine line between knowing when to back off and just being lazy. There has been plenty of times I have walked into the gym feeling like shit but ended up having one of the best workouts ever. Other times I have went in feeling like a million bucks but bombed on all my lifts and left disappointed. However in this circumstance I feel I made the right decision because there is a vast difference between feeling bad and feeling that your CNS is fried. It took me a while to know the difference but eventually if you push yourself to the limit over and over again you will know how and when to back off.
To that end I decided to hold off and train on Friday. Typically Friday is an off day so I either do some general conditioning work or more often at this phase of the training I do nothing to allow myself to recovery. Since Thursday filled that role this week I decided to push this workout relatively hard.
I started off by doing conventional deadlifts. As I am getting near peaking I am deadlifting conventional style again so my body adjusts from all the sumo training I have been doing. I did conventional last week but my form was definitely off from having done only sumo for 2 months. This week I definitely felt back in my grove and the weight moved a lot easier than before. I did all these sets off a 2 inch pad (which increases the range of motion by 2 inches thus making the lift much harder. Once you reach maximal weights 2 extra inches in the Range of Motion (ROM) makes a very big difference in weights lifted).
I ramped up slowly and ended up performing a heavy set of 2 reps. I did the same weight as I did last week but last week I was only able to perform one rep. Again this shows an improvement over the previous week which is always a good thing.
The next exercise I performed was straight legged deadlifts. I did 3 sets of 10 reps with 10 more pounds than I used last week. These are very difficult to perform, not to mention a few weeks back I smacked my nuts with the bar on the way up which makes me a bit cautious now doing them.
The last lift I performed was bent over rows with dumbells. I did 2 sets of 12 reps with 10 more pounds than last week, then did 1 set of 8 reps with 20 more pounds than that.
That was it. Deadlifts are a very taxing lift and involve so much of your body that once you work up to very heavy weights you do not need to do many additional lifts. Normally I would do a bit more but I was kind of pressed for time and since everything went great I did not feel guilty for cutting it a bit short.
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