As I stated in my last post, if my upcoming workout went well for squats I was planning to test the following week. Luckily for me it went well, the 3x3 on squats with 315 (a 20 lb increase from the week prior) went great and i even hit a single with 345 prior and it also moved well!

So following this heavy training day I deloaded the following two squat and bench sessions and planned to see where my lifts were at this point in my training. With a solid cycle of squats under my belt and the momentum going forwards nicely I was hoping for a conservative single around 355. As for bench and deadlift...I really had no idea where either of them stood. They have both been moving along pretty normally but I haven't really been pushing them so they are behind where my squat is at currently in my programming.

I did make a YouTube video for this test day, so if you would like to see my lifts and see how the day went CLICK HERE or click on the picture below. 

If you don't wish to watch the video :( I will tell you how the day went. 

Starting with squats, my previous all time PR is 365lbs for reference and at my last meet I squatted 350lbs. So going into the day I was hoping to fall somewhere in between. I have been battling a little bit of knee issues this training block on squats and deadlifts but it been feeling good enough not great recently. Warming up everything felt about normal, a little knee pain in the bottom of my squats but they were moving fast and the bar felt light on my back! Threw on my belt at 315 and it moved like butter and the knee pain was either gone or at least I had forgotten about it at that point. Jumped from there to 335 then to 350, both of those moved really well and smooth overall. From there I decided to make the jump to 365 and try and tie my all time PR! And that is exactly what I did, with a solid rep I had to make decision to call it a day with a 365 squat or try and jump 10 lbs to 375. Thankfully my buddy Jacob and I made the call to give 375 a shot, because it honestly moved better than the 365! 

Next up was the bench press, like I said haven't really been pushing bench so just curious as to where it stands. Worked my way up normally 135-185-205-225-245 everything was feeling good. Decided to be pretty bold with my jumps since I wasn't really concerned with missing a weight and being left with a bad number for the day like I would be in a meet. from 245 I jumped to 265 and was able to hit it fairly easily...but after getting up from the bench my left tricep felt a little off and stiff. I don't know if I didn't warm up adequately or my body just wasn't primed for heavier weight but I defiantly did something a little off. Even with that being said I still decided to throw on 275 and see what would happen. And I was able to get the 275 and not do any further damage to my arm.

Lastly is the deadlifts of course, and switching between sumo and conventional for the last month or so I really wasn't expecting much here. In the end I was able to work up to 475 conventional with a hook grip. Since that was easy enough but i wasn't really satisfied I decided to try and pull 475 sumo right after. So I went ahead and pulled an ugly 475 mixed grip sumo...and then, while the same song was playing, pulled it again for a third time sumo with a hook grip. 

So overall I was very happy with my test day, hitting 375/275/475 for a total of 1125 lb on the day weighing in at 150 lbs! 

Stay tuned for the next blog to see where my training is going from here. Or checkout the end of my YouTube video for a glimpse!!