Squat Monday: Goodbye to Good Mornings

Squats w/cambered bar
10 reps @ 30 kgs
8 reps @ 70 kgs
5 reps @ 110 kgs
3 reps @ 150 kgs

Upper back lockouts
12 reps @ 110 kgs
12 reps @ 130 kgs
12 reps @ 140 kgs
8 reps @ 150 kgs

Pull-ups
6 reps @ BW equal to best effort

There's going to be some changes to Squat Monday from here on out. These won't be the only changes to my overall program; in the next few weeks, I will be integrating myself into Dan's cube program. To an extent, the changes to squat monday are necessary. If they weren't I wouldn't be doing them... I love heavy fucking Good Mornings.

Heavy GMs are not going to work now that I'm back, fully functioning, and prepping for Strongman again. The sessions I do on the weekends pretty much always involve some heavy lower back work, and that combined with deadlifting thursday nights is pretty much all my back can take. For now, at least.

I'm very happy that my knee is pretty much back to normal and my hip injury (which I will have more info on this Thursday) doesn't prevent me from doing most other lifts and events. But no matter what it might be (stones, yoke, picks, or a bar), there's a distinct point where I just cannot keep lifting it. I want to be able to put 100% into each afternoon of events training. So Good mornings just have to go.

But the new stuff is pretty cool. These 'upper back lockouts'* (working title) were, apparently, invented by Daniel Macri. They are kinda like a rack pull, only you don't lower the bar to the rack. Instead you just relax your shoulders and pivot your middle and upper back slightly forward, then pull back as though completing a deadlift. Repeating this for high reps is doing good things for my grip strength, it will assist with upper back strength, and will not hit anything too hard that I need later in the week.

And can you believe 6 pull-ups is pretty much my best effort?? And that's with a right arm and shoulder that's still only about 60% of it's previous strength, by my crude estimation. I'll be doing a set of 10 pretty soon I reckon.

*Dan had other ideas for the name of this new exercise, such as 'suck lotsout' and 'Daniel shrugs' and 'Abaddon isahomo shrugs'. I like 'upper back lockouts' best so far.