I want to take a moment here and comment on something.

These "Mesocycles" which I am doing are not my own concoction. Eric has played a HUGE role in finalizing the exercise selection, volume, etc. This is NOT my own work. He's guided me right from the beginning.

So, in light of this, you guys are more than welcome to ask questions and make suggestions (and I think Eric would maybe even like a discussion of sorts) but this is not MY work alone. This stuff is methodically dissected and inspected by Eric before I put it into play.

i've seen vids of them before....i just want to see you in those videos :)

muaahahahahhaha I hope this isn't some sort of a fetish

:biglaugh:

Thanks to Anuj but he is overstating my involvement a bit at this point.

I know I made some suggestions as to changes but I can't even remember what that was at this point :D.

ahahhahahhahaha....Its ok if you dont remember them....Good news is that I do ;)

:)

Beginning Thoughts:

So its a new mesocycle :)

I have been eating a lot of junk food. Over the last 3 days I have consumed 4 12" Cheese Pizza's with Extra Cheese. Complete junk.

Workout:

Deficit Deadlifts:
315 lbs x 3 reps x 5 sets
185 lbs x 6 reps x 2 sets
These were very hard and I scraped my shins many times. They're sore as hell right now.

Banded Speed Deadlifts:
@ 53% = 205 lbs x 2 reps x 5 sets
To save time I decided to do doubles and I needed a change. For the last 6 months all speed work for deadlifts has involved singles and I figured its time to switch things up.

Front Box Squats:
225 lbs x 3 reps
My hips were tired and I did not use my knee sleeves or anything. So I found this exercise a bit difficult.

Flat Dumbbell Press:
60 lbs x 12 reps x 2 sets
This was surprisingly pretty difficult to do.

Head Supported Rows:
35 lbs x 12 reps x 2 sets

Overhead Plate Side-bends:
10 lbs x 10 reps x 2 sets

Videos:

Deficit Deadlifts, Speed Deadlifts and Front Box Squat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD8XeryMrVM

Overall Impression:

I hope everyone has had a good week. Have a fun weekend, y'all! :)

You are losing your hip drive on the deficit deads. You seem to be finishing with your back, mostly.

Front Box squats were probably heavier than necessary.

I agree with E on the deads. Your movements were two distinct parts: legs straighten, hips straighten. Nice weight for deficit deads though.

IW

Ok I will try to focus more on hip drive next week. I think all this oh squatting, etc is wearing my hips down. When I was doing the deficit deads I couldn't seem to "connect" to hips as much, but I presumed that because I am doing deficit deadlifts I was encountering this problem.

In any case, since in this mesocycle I am also going to be doing quite a bit of squatting and rack deadlifting in addition to deficit deadlifting, I will be omitting the extra workout this week just to see if this helps. If it does, and my hips kick in next deadlift session, I will balance out some of the other exercises so that I can still do OH squats but not overdo them at the same time.

I am getting my vids to today's MP session...

Thanks for the critique, Eric and IW. I will work on my hip drive before it becomes into a bad habit.

If you want to 'connect' to the hips then slow down a bit. You want quality then you need to show respect to every rep. I don't mean playing around for 10 minutes trying to get ready before initiation the lift like you see some people doing.

I'd like you to do the hip extensor test. You lie down in a prone position (belly down) and lift one foot up. The glutes should fire first. Not the hamstrings.

Your shoulders need to come forward of the bar a bit more. You are not using quite the same set-up techniques between your regular and deficit deads.

P.S. Your humeri are internally rotated.