Haha, yeah I knew what you meant.

I chose rack pulls because they're the most viable alternative to dead lifts. I'm still not confident enough to do dead lifts...rack pulls hurt enough. But it's something that hits a bunch of minor muscles that are otherwise neglected in my workout. I had several sore muscles in weird places after doing them anyway, so I know they did a lot of good. I pulled the workout off of the DFT 5X5 sticky. The bar is only 6 inches higher than a conventional dead lift.

Doing the 5X5 has noticeably increased my strength. I'm loving it. But for all of the increases, I've noticed several areas that I need to concentrate on more. I am going to the 3X3 after next week for a couple of weeks. I think after that I'll take it easy for a week or two and concentrate on a couple of exercises, and then start the 5X5 over again. I'm at 99% on bench, 90% on squats, 99.9% on shoulder press, and 85% at rack pulls. I could probably go to 3X3 next week, but I want to be sure I've gotten everything I can out of the 5X5. After resting this weekend, I might surprise myself on Monday.

Is that pretty sound logic? It's my first time doing a 5X5, so I want to make sure I'm doing things right. I think next week will be my 4th week of 5X5 and I'm solid right now.