Today's my first day back in the powerhouse after a week's R&R and a couple of easy (ok, one very easy and one very hard, but they average out at easy!) rides.  New routine today to concentrate on power.

A ramped up warmup set of deeper (thighs parellel to ground, ish) squats, and then 3 x 10 @ 110kg with 90s recovery.  That's 90kg less than last week's 3 x 5 at 200kg (2 mins recovery), but they were partial squats and done reasonably slowly.  This lot are deeper full squats and the lifting phase is to be done as quickly as I can - I should end up almost jumping at the end of the lift phase.  The bar does get a little airborne at the top so the wise lifter has to be careful not to move much or throw it around.  Not bad, I did the 110kg lifts reasonably well, I certainly felt the deeper lifts.

After that, some deadlifts, again done quickly in the lift, light weight, 3 x 10 at 70kg with 90s recovery.  I haven't done deadlifts for a month or so, when I was concentrating on strength with the squats the deads were dropped out of the program.  They're back in now and I can feel them.   My office is up the stairs at aboc HQ and walking up afterwards is quite special. 

I rounded out the session with bench (10 x 70kg, 5 x 80kg, 12 x 70kg) as a little variety - I'd stagnated on bench but wasn't terribly worried, it's not vital to have a big upper body, just need enough to keep my hips in place, and pulldowns (wide, 15 x some weight I don't care so much to count) and some seated rows.  I should be doing bent over rows but don't have a heavy enough dumbell set up yet.

Tonight's a very easy ride on the roady in to the city (boys night this week is at Chez Grace in Clifton Hill) and back out again tomorrow morning, then I'll do some high cadence stuff on Friday evening, and I've been asked to testride and review an Azzurri roady over the weekend.  It's a cheapy generic carbon frame, but it might ride ok, I won't know 'til I ride it.  Their (Azzurri) carbon track frame looks quite well sorted, their rear axle dropouts are maybe prone to the same problem that the Apollo/Raceline Record has, but the one I looked at was a prototype and had what looked like a glued in stainless steel rear dropout.

Sunday will be another sprint-fest at DISC, I'll have to start doing some races/leadouts with the lads to push us up a notch in the committment department.

I've been reading this :

new rules of lifting

and it's quite good - it doesn't talk about power much, so I've got this one to read next :

Explosive Lifting for Sports

Next weekend is my Level 1 S&C course. Power on!