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Nice! They are a cool looking pair of shoes. I love mine. Interested to see how you go in them.

Training
FS 2x110, 1x120, 1x130, 2x120, 3/4x110, 6x100 (PR)

BS 3x100, 6x110, 3x120, 4x115, 3x100

FS notes:
First shot with new WL shoes. I went down to a newly opened local gym to test them out because I haven't redone the flooring for my home gym yet and I don't wanna use the NR2s on the paved flooring in case it scruffs up the soles.

The gym was to unpredictably defy my attempts at a decent workout. To start with they have 20kg, 10kg plates and 5kg plates. And that's it. So if you're weak like me and you want to squat with 105, 112.5, 117.5, 125kg or 127.5kg you're out of luck.  ie no 2.5kg or 5kg jumps just 10kg lol. This is a big ass expensive gym that just opened btw. I dont know what you're supposed to do. So my warmup sequence which is usually 3x90, 2x105, 1x117.5, 1x125 became 3x90, 2x110, 1x120, 1x130. Not ideal, cause i'm not used to it. For my worksets I had planned on doing triples with 125kg and 115kg but i simply couldnt. Serves me right for not taking my own (1.25 and 2.5kg) plates right? I should know by now gyms are retarded and plan in advance.

- warning  rant below, skip if not interested..  --
I had to wait 20 minutes for some starting strengther bros do their quarter squats with 110kg first while I sat there like a pervert watching them them do their thing. Not even hating, cause i'm sure they'd be complaining about the weird as fuck guy who did shitty reverse squats in the deadlift cage with baby weights while they sat idly. I felt like a real piece of shit working up to my massive 130kg squat while ppl waited for me to leave so they could do their half squats with 90kg. The guy in the rack next to me was doing, no joke, decline bench press with 70kg. In the fucking 'deadlift rack'. Why is that even necessary i dunno. I keep saying deadlift rack cause a PT came and chased away 2 strengthers from the rack so that he could train his client with RDLs off the ground with awesome form. Why you have to do that in a power cage i dunno, but there you go.

Btw I think this whole 'you got to squat bro' movement is misguided. Most of these casual gym squatters would be better off using machines for leg strength. Hell I think i'm probably included in that category, squats done badly are way worse than machines done not-bad. 

I felt that my quads were being hit very hard, esp considering i did very little volume (or intensity for that matter). So that's a great sign that the shoes will help me with acquiring highly sought after athletic leg strength. I was also able to FS 130kg as well as I have with flatter shoes. I mean i was in no danger of repping it, because I was very weak today, but otherwise signs are good that the shoes are helping the areas I needed the most help.

Btw I did a lot of paused reps too, just because I was annoyed with the situation with the plates, to make the workout slightly less shit.

I've got post traumatic gym stress now. I'm gonna put on my old shoes and do some back squats when my heart rate goes back to normal.

BS notes:
Pretty ordinary session. But i noticed i have midfoot bar path on one rep?!. Not sure how that happened or what I did differently on the descent lol. interesting.

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I didn't get a chance to do mobility work today. Will def do it before friday's workout though. I feel as though i'm close to making a form breakthrough, i just need to get everything to align before it happens. Mobility, recovery, strength, motivation, shoes.

lol no 2.5kg plates? that's just bizarre.

Training
FS 1x117.5, 1x125, 1x132 (PR)
BS 5x120, 2x6x115, 3x117.5
FS 6x107.5(*), 4x107.5, 5x106

BP 7Fx84 (PR)

FS notes:
Plan was to work up to a heavy single PR and then do BS.

BS notes:
So i'm doing these with a plate under the heels. Slowly working back to my old PRs with flat shoes. I'm still a faggot though because my form is shit and I don't even give a shit anymore lulz.

FS 2 notes:
Heel elevated all sets. I failed to drop the safety pins 1 hole which confounded my 6PR attempt, I hit the pin on rep 4. Racked the bar, moved the pins down, then did the next 2 reps but of course that doesn't count as a 6 rep set. I tried again next set but my 4th rep was ugly enough that 6 was out of the question. For the 3rd set i decided to try my luck with 106 for a 6PR and i probably could have done a really ugly 6th but that's not a good habit to get into cause those ugly sets don't do much for gains. So my carelessness cost me a PR, it's ok, ill get it on wednesday.

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So-so workout to begin the week. But on the balance i'll take it, still better than the last 3 weeks of fucking around in the gym. Upper body to come later!

I feel as though I failed in my strength accumulation phase. I should have hit at least a 140kg FS and a 150kg BS. As in tested and video taped, not calculated bullshit. In theory a 130x3 FS should be a 140kg max and a 6x130kg BS should be a 150kg max. But the truth is I never came close to realising those maxes. I doubled 140kg on the BS and that's not close to 150kg max. Maybe off by 5kg or so but that's still a lot when i'm talking about the bare minimum I wanted to achieve. I rather would have liked a 160kg BS and a 150kg at the very least, my goal was even more lofty to do 150kg for 5 reps before starting my cut to 75kg bw.

But then again this wasn't about strength, i wanted to gain mass. And i think to that end I succeeded somewhat. If it was strength alone I sought could have done an ego friendly smolov stint.

I can do more though. I might maintain my bodyweight for a few weeks and finish the job before cutting. I am talking about front squatting 140kg. My BS should be 135-140kg for 5-6 reps too. That seems like a good place to finish a strength gain phase and begin a cut phase. That way if I drop 10kg of bodyweight, I can put that 10kg on the bar and stay just as strong, but a lot stronger relative to bodyweight. That will be worth something. As it stands, maintaining a shitty 130kg FS and a who-knows-what-mediocre BS is close to worthless to me.

And yes this is partially inspired by acole's thread and a need to be more competitive. I haven't dug very deep i'm ashamed to admit. I can get more out of the amount of muscle i've got. Just need to work harder and keep my form truer.

BW is 196 this morning of the 26th, would have liked to be sub 195 by 1st October, just so September wasn't a complete waste of time but we'll see what happens, there is still a few days left yet.

Training
FS 1x125, 1x130, 0Fx132.5, 5x112.5 (PR), 6x107 (PR)
BS 6x120, 5x119.5, 6x120B
BP 4x90 (PR), 5Fx86 (PR)
CU 7x90.5, 3x100, 3x95, 4x92.5

Salient workout notes:
All squats from here forwards will be done with weighlifting shoes, nike romaloes 2, unless otherwise indicated.

FS notes:
I came oh-so-close to locking out that 132.5, but i am too weak today. Yes I know I seem to say that every time but it's actually true, i'm going into these workouts ill prepared without having my recovery ducks in a row.

Anyway finally got that 112.5kg fiver which once seemed like a hard goal and has eluded me for what is probably 6 months? So even while weak and with horrible recovery i can still make long term PRs. But that's just because I haven't trained 5s for ages and i'm stronger now so it's not exactly a great achievement. I should be doing 5s with 120kg really.

BS notes:
Blah, shitty form. Actually the video looked fine. I tried a belt for the 3rd set, and it was suprsingly easy. Does that mean I could do with much stronger abs? Or does it mean my core is just fatigued. Or does it mean an increase of IAP just made light work of the set. Who knows but i should experiment more to see if I can derive a strength benefit from a belt.

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In addition to belt on BS, i should experiment with it on FS too. Maybe after doing my last warmup set of 130kg, i should put on a belt for heavy max single? Will explore.