First Time Doing 5/3/1 Squats In A Half A Year

I took a break from my strength last December when my sister was visiting. I wanted to max out after that, but then one thing led to another, and I did not do that. The intention was there to restart it in January to get a benchmark, but my mind wasn’t into it with planning our trip to see her.

I had every intention of getting back to lifting after that trip, but as I have mentioned here and there this year, shit has hit the fan in multiple ways and over and over. That trip was significant to me and took priority in my head over everything else.

I woke up this morning tired because I was up late watching the Flyers heartbreaking loss in overtime last night. My head is very stuffy like it gets this time of the year, but I decided enough is enough. Today is the day I get back under the bar for some moderately heavy squats. Fuck anything else that might interfere.

While browsing on my tablet, I started really thinking about how I was going to approach this after such a long hiatus. It did not feel like a good idea to get a heavy single. I ended up deciding I would try to guess a training max for this cycle that would give me challenging but doable weights each week.

The bar felt heavier than the weight normally would, but I would have been confused if it didn’t. I have not really been doing much back squatting. Just a few times in WODs, and that was at a fairly light weight.

I took my time slowly working my way up through the programmed sets. Paying very close attention to how my body felt during and after the sets. I know my squats lately with the dumbbell have been slightly different mechanically, and that continued with this. They felt good, though.

The final set called for 5+ reps at 240 pounds. I stopped at 5. That was my plan, though. No matter how great it might feel, I am stopping at the minimum this cycle just to get some reps in. They felt heavy but great. Mechanics felt spot-on too. I wanted to video that set but completely forgot to set up my phone. I was happy with the squats and how they felt during and after. Let’s see how tired my legs are later.

Now hopefully I can stick to this first cycle with consistency. Now. The hardest part is just getting started. I don’t know what life will throw at me next. I hope that it isn’t too disruptive for me to do my strength.

I did miss lifting, but I didn’t feel I had the right focus to do it safely. It has been stated a million times in the past, and it is still true. I am not doing this to get hurt. It is good for me physically and especially mentally. Heavy sets really calm my brain noise. It brings me a deep inner peace, which is something I have struggled with my whole life. The physical benefits are a nice secondary bonus.

Later this morning I decided that I wanted to get a short but intense WOD in. They had one from a while back that was rounds of 8 hang power snatches and 8 back squats with the bar. I chose to go with the empty barbell since I haven’t done snatches much recently, and I did those heavier back squats this morning. The light weight would allow me to hit it like a sprint, and that is what I did. It really spiked the heart rate and got me breathing. It felt great! I knocked off a good minute from my score the last time I did it and felt like I held back some today. It felt great to hit a WOD so hard today.

Music for the lifting and the WOD was Illogicist.