Starting to complicate things

In my determination to give the 20-rep squat a fair chance, I stuck to that plan on Saturday, performing two sets of 20 reps at 125 and finishing with a set of 17 at 125. Yes, I probably could have pushed out those last few reps, but my counter/coach (my 14-year-old daughter) didn't know enough to yell at me and call me a wuss when I started to rack the bar at 17.

I followed up the squats with three sets on the vertical leg press at 355 and five sets of 15 x 15 on the standing leg curl.

Not a bad workout, all things considered. What I've learned about the 20-rep squat is this: If you want to do something that will really kick you in the pants, the 20-rep squat is it. I had to call my daughter in to count reps for me because by the time I got to that third set, I was having to pause and take multiple breaths between each rep. Focusing on my breathing and form became so difficult that I just plain couldn't concentrate on counting reps.

Her post-set critique was, "You did really well on those first ten."

I think that's a good motivator.

The only problem is, I feel like I need to do more. I know that I'm going to have to work my way up to doing some serious 20-rep squatting, but one day a week just doesn't feel like enough. I've started doing one 20-rep squat at the end of other workouts and on off days as well. I'd like to be able to do four sets of 20 in the next squat workout this coming Friday. I would be happy if in the next week I could do 20 reps at 135. That would feel like a big step forward for me. If I can add 5-10 lbs. steadily each week, then I'm confident that I can keep doing it and go past 200 lbs. That would be pretty amazing, considering just two weeks ago it was all I could do to get five reps at 215.

In the meantime, I'm getting that itch again to do some off-the-barbell-path exercises. Today I did one set of farmer's walk with 65-lb. dumbbells. My original intent was to do three sets, but then I remembered that I'd originally planned on doing this on Saturday after having done my squat workout on Friday. But I skipped the Friday workout to see The Avengers and made it up on Saturday. I stopped after the one set because I didn't want it to have an impact on Monday's workout. I want to have at least a day of rest before I do a regular workout after doing something like farmer's walk.

And therein lies my current conundrum: How do I continue to follow the Wendler 5/3/1 plan but also work in stuff like farmer's walk and tire flips. Yeah, I want to start doing tire flips too. I just need to start asking around to see if I can find a discarded tractor tire somewhere. I live in semi-rural, suburban area, so tractor tires shouldn't be too hard to find.

One option I'm considering is substituting the strongman movements in place of the current assistance work I'm doing. The drawback to that is that the assistance work is supposed to be lighter, higher-rep sets to supplement the main workout, which employs one of the big four primary barbell movements: overhead press, deadlift, squat, bench press. But farmer's walk and tire flips are pretty taxing. I can't exactly call them "assistance work."

That leads me to lean in the direction of adding a fifth workout day to my schedule on Saturdays. An hour of farmer's walk and tire flips on Saturdays ought to be a pretty challenging workout. And I would have all of Sunday to recuperate. The concern there is that it could interfere with my recovery from the 20-rep squat workout on Friday. I guess I'll just have to eat more and try to get to bed extra early Friday night.

And I'm ready to try some new assistance movements, but I want to go through an entire four-week cycle before I start swapping. I'm still undecided as to what exactly these will be, but I know that bent-over row and shrugs will be two of them. I love Kroc rows, but I don't consider them to be a substitute for bent-over barbell rows. I feel like I could really do without the hanging leg raises. Sure, it's good ab work, but of all the exercises I do, it's the one I think I value the least.

Well, off to see about finding a humongous tire somewhere ...