Smolov update

Before I go into any detail with regards to recent happenings, here's a back dated log of sunday's training, and monday's easy press session, as well as the tentative plan looking ahead.

13th October 2013

Squats

143kg * 7 * 5

14th October 2013

(70 deg) Incline bench

worked up to 90 * 3, 1 wave

(40 deg) Incline Bench

worked up to 100 * 3, 1 wave

Close grip flat bench

worked up to 110 * 3, 1 wave

Pull ups

BW * 10 * 10

So what happened is this, on sunday's session, I strained my right lower back pretty badly. It happened on the last rep of the last set. I was focusing on the acceleration since the weight was light, and popped up as fast as I could. On the last rep, the bar actually left my traps and bounced back down and I immediately felt this really sharp pain in my lower right lumbar. This is the third time I've injured this area. This round doesn't seem AS bad as previously, although there is still a bluish bruising and some swelling. The muscle belly itself hurts when I extend or flex it, which essentially feels like I've been stabbed. As such, I can't continue smolov since I can't even rack the weight across my back at the moment without intense pain. Squatting and deadlifting are out for the moment, till I can rehab this shit back in shape.

As such, the tentative plan is this:

AGGRESSIVE rehab every day and basically be able to air squat without pain. This means aggressive stretching and rolling of the surrounding muscles, plus stretching of the lower back when the pain has subsided.

Once air squatting without pain works, I will start rehabbing with the squat movement, and gradually load it back up. Same with the deadlift.

As for traning, probably will do the wave loading for pressing that I used last time. Used it twice before and made pretty good strength gains on it. Plus I could run it 3 times a week without much of a problem. Here's the basic workout: Choose 3 exercises that run in progressively higher loading order, for example, I'm using the high incline, moderate incline and close grip bench. All sets are done as triples and the aim is to move the weight as fast as possible, focusing on acceleration. I work it up to a good and relatively fast 3RM weight, then I will wave it there. For example, in the high incline, I work up to 90kg as the top set. I then remove 5kg, and do 85kg for one set. I then increase the weight to 87.5kg for another set, then back to 90kg for one more, and lastly end off with 85kg. Thus one wave is (85, 87.5, 90, 85). I then go to the next exercise and start off with the weight from the previous top set, and then work up to the 3RM for that exercise, then do one wave with that weight. This is repeated for the third exercise. Every subsequent session I will add in another wave for each exercise, contingent upon how the weight feels. After I reach 3 waves for each exercise, I will just up the top weights for each exercise by 2.5kg. 

The pressing exercises I'm using currently involve no support from the lower back, and I'm benching with my feet up since it hurts to put my feet down. As my rehab progresses and the healing works, I will change the pressing exercises to the press, moderate incline bench, and flat close grip bench. Back work (more lat work at the moment) will be done every pressing session and probably on rehab days as well.

So there it is, the revised plan. Hopefully I don't lose too much strength on the squat and dead. Really sucks since my squat was just starting to take off. On a side note, I am contemplating starting the use of belt. Let's go!