Deadcember 2019 was my third year in a row of doing the Pen and Paper Strength app's Deadcember programming by Sorinex. Daniel McKim has programmed the month long mini peaking cycle for two years running and I am a huge fan of these fun and productive mesocycles. The best part is the workout is posted on Instagram at 2:00 PM the day before the workout so you feel like a kid on Christmas waiting for the prescribed training to be posted. The Sorinex_Deadcember page also promotes an encouraging lifting community worldwide that is united in their pursuit of a new PR regardless of where they are in their training career. Just a great cause all the way around.
Deadcember programming focuses on all of the muscle groups associated with pulling big weight off of the floor. Along with deadlifting in some capacity 5 days per week for the month of December. The varying intensity of the workouts allows for recovery time, and the assistance movements involve a lot of shrugs, upper back work, hamstring curls/GHR, bicep curls, and abs of course. My first year I pulled 545 and it was the ugliest pull of my life, last year I pulled 550 clean and dropped 565 before a true lockout, and I was barely able to budge 585 off of the floor.
This year I was coming off of a hamstring tear I sustained in June in the final stages of meet prep, (best thing that ever happened to my training, and I will talk about the "gift of injury" at another time) but setting a squat PR of 565 in sleeves back in October helped me mentally be in the mode of pulling big weight. This year I felt decent throughout the training cycle, I have a love/hate relationship with 6:00AM training and I feel like everything feels heavier than it should. I had good training sessions leading up to the "PR Party" and I pulled 535 during an early workout with relative ease so I mentally felt good about it. I came in on the 30th at 9:00 AM and started my normal warmup routine and added in a few box jumps and planks to help me prime my body to pull heavy.
I hit sets at 135,225,275,315 for a few reps a piece 5-3-3-3 then moved to 365 for a double, and singles at 405, 455, 495, 545, then pulled a clean PR of 565 and it moved very smooth. I slapped 585 on the bar, strapped up, and pulled hard on 585. It broke off the floor well and moved up my shins and past my knees decent, as soon as it crossed my knee caps the bar started whipping due to the weight shaking up and down and I stalled a couple inches from lockout and fought it (I would've been satisfied with a hitched rep honestly) and I couldn't move it another inch. My hands might've been a bit too close on the bar and it could've prevented me from pushing my hips through but the world may never know...I bit off a bit more than I could chew, but I still hit a 15lb PR and it highlighted some technical issues in my pull and some areas of weakness that I can address over the next couple of training cycles.
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