Lexen Xtreme Training Tips

Full gym today, with all 3 monolifts going.

Squat
Group 1: Volgelpohl, Wenning, Fought, and some new guy named Greg Panora or something like that.
These guys used the shortened monster chains and took doubles onto a box, working on stability, tightness, and staying under control.  Working sets were 2 plates and 3 55lb chains per side.  We do these every once in awhile, finally got some video to show what I’m talking about.  Notice how under control Greg is during descent and when coming up, including Matt having him pause for a 3 count at the top.   This keeps the chains from swinging and knocking you on your ass.   Jeremiah, who is a very fast descender, had a lot of trouble with these the first time he did them until he adjusted.  We find them to be very effective for stability as a nice contrast to squatting against bands, where you’re pretty much locked into a groove, so we rotate these in once in awhile.

Group 2: Dague, Strong, Chewy, Schwab, Johnston
Circa Max Week 1 for these guys, which meant 2 pairs of brand new blue bands, which adds 440 lbs or so  in tension at the top.  Dague, being the old guy of the group, took longer to warmup, so who knows how many warmup sets he counted as work sets, but he finished with 335 + the bands.   Nate Strong, still only a few weeks past the Pro-Am, is back at it and looking strong, taking 335 + the bands for 5 sets of doubles.  Chewy took 7 sets at 335 + bands, while Johnston and Schwab took 7 work sets with 385 + bands for doubles then finished with 425 + bands for a single.  Next week we add MORE band tension with the same bar weight.

Group 3: Henry, Gretsky, Fleming, Gualtieri, Murph
I unfortunately don’t have many details of what they did, but they went with lightened method of box squatting with monster mini-bands hanging from the top, for sets of doubles.  This allows us to work on form and deload the weight in the hole while still getting some heavy-ish work in at the top.

Deadlift
Group 1 finished earlier than the other groups, so they got a jump and did pin pulls from pin 3, with Fought, Wenning, and Panora working into the upper 700′s and cracking 800 with the last set.

Group 2 went with speed pulls from the floor against doubled mini-bands, 5 work sets of triples.

Group 3 worked up to a near max with plates elevated onto 4 mats

Accessory work
As usual, most broke off into smaller groups for accessory work, with most doing reverse hypers and some abdominal work.