Still on track

Number of workouts this month: 6/22

I'm still making good progress on my goals this month. Today I missed my first workout so far, because I was just dead tired. I went to bed early got 8.5 hours of sleep, and was just dragging, so I went back to sleep for 2 more hours instead of hitting the gym. Oh well, it wasn't for being lazy, I was just listening to my body and my body was telling me it needed more rest. I felt fine when I got up after the additional sleep. I did a gnarly Olympic lifting workout on Saturday, so I think I just needed a little bit more to recover effectively. From now on I'll make sure to take a nap and eat a little extra food after my longer, more intense workouts on Saturdays. I should be able to still stay on track for the 22 workouts this month, but I don't have any more leeway with that now.

Saturday I clean and jerked up to 245, then 8 singles at 205 (on the minute). Did some Romanian deadlifts (3x5@175 from a 5" deficit) and some clean pulls (3x3@225). Then I hit the front squats hard. The goal was to hit a heavy single, then work on volume at 80%, but since I haven't front squatted heavy in a while I wanted to see what my true max was. So I worked up, slowly, to 305, which I nailed, but 315 was too much and I had to dump it. Seeing as my best-ever front squat was 310, back in December 2011 (after an 8-week Wendler cycle), I was pretty happy with where I'm at. After the max I did some reps at 275 and called it a day.

I'm focusing on the front squat this month (and for at least a month after) because they feel so much better than the back squat for my body. My hip and back don't hurt after a heavy front squat session like they tend to with the back squat, and I feel safer going heavy since they're easier to bail on. I figure as long as I continue working my posterior chain with heavy RDLs and kettlebell swings I should be able to actually make some good progress without hurting myself (and who knows, it might actually translate over to my back squat).

I weighed myself late last week, just for shiggles, and was down to 223 which is pretty good, especially since I started loading creatine (10g/day) consistently this month, which usually adds a few pounds. My diet's been decent over the weekend; I had one cheat meal, and a decent amount of beers, but I tried to keep the calories in check and did a pretty good job. As long as I don't set myself back on the weekends, and make progress during the week, I'll be fine for a while. I know as my body fat gets lower I'll have to get a bit more strict, so I'm doing so gradually so that by that time I'll already have the good habits in place.