Wednesday afternoon, did 3x3x205 bench press, felt pretty good. 3x3 is a nice workset routine, I oftentimes like it better than 3x5. I didn't go for a 1RM because I wanted to be cautious after last week's extreme soreness.
Then for the overhead press, I tried to follow the advice in this video,
which was embedded in one of Sid's links:
http://saptstrength.com/2011/11/07/to-overhead-press-or-not-to-overhead-press/
I took my grip in to about what it is for the deadlift, in the middle of the knurled area inside the smooth lines. I also tried to keep my elbows out in front. It was close to the power clean rack position. I think this more compacted, elbows-out grip helped my shoulder most on the eccentric phase of the lift. I started out at 75 pounds but everything felt good so I went up and did 3x5x95. Felt really good and today I'm not too sore, so maybe next week I'll try 105.
Then I tried Sid's suggestion to do landmine presses. At first, I tried them in a half-kneeling position, but it was awkward getting the bar off the floor this way. Then I tried it standing up, but it was too much like an incline bench press. So I went back down to the floor but placed the bar and plates on top of the bench to start off with. This felt pretty good. It's still a bit like a single-arm incline bench press though, which might not be a bad thing, but I wonder how useful it is to add this to the flat bench press and seated overhead press. Seems a little redundant, but I'll try it again next week and see how it goes.
Then I did my squats. This was the second week in a row that I did them last, after the upper body stuff, and for some reason I like it like this. After a quick warm-up at 95, I tried 135, and the full, ass-to-grass squats felt pretty good, so I brought it up to 3x3x185, still ass-to-grass. At this weight I noticed I started to hip drive a bit more, but without turning it into a good morning squat as Abide says. It felt like what it looks like in Abide's Klokov video. So that was nice. I also found myself adopting a thumbless grip by the second set or so, without thinking about it. That was cool. I guess I'm gaining some shoulder mobility. My grip is starting to look like Rippetoe's recommendation, and the bar placement on my back is feeling pretty automatic now. In general, everything felt really good. I think I'm ready to start pushing the squats a bit more, and I'm wondering if I should start doing them twice a week. Something like this:
Mon
Deadlift (full effort)
Upper Body Pulls (medium effort)
Wed
Squat (medium effort)
Upper Body Pushes (full effort)
Fri
Squat (full effort) & Power Clean (medium effort)
Upper Body Pulls (full effort)
or
Mon
Squat (full effort)
Upper Body Pulls (medium effort)
Wed
Deadlift (full effort)
Upper Body Pushes (full effort)
Fri
Squat (medium effort) & Power Clean (medium effort)
Upper Body Pulls (full effort)
In any case, looking forward to this afternoon's run down by the river. As I noted in the mileage forum, I think I've completely given up worrying about whether the st interferes with the running. Reading RDL's explanation just now helped solidify this intuition:
http://www.rdlfitness.com/energy-systems-training/