Mass Method - Ignite - W1D5 - Lower Body

First day back at the rec center and I oversleep. That meant that I only had 30 minutes to get my lower body workout in by the time I got there. Luckily, squat racks were open. So, I skipped the program's warmup exercises in lieu of a quick bar weight warmup that included the following:

Bottom Range Squat Pulses
Forward and Back Barbell Lunges
Barbell Cossack Squats

From there I moved into Safety Bar Squats. These were supposed to be done ballistic style. So, no pause at the top or bottom of each rep. But, I went a little too heavy on my final set to maintain that steady rep cadence. However, I still got 12 reps.

Romanian deadlifts were next up. It's been a couple of weeks since I pulled 495 and my back feels pretty much back to normal. Regardless, I went slow and controlled on these just to be sure I didn't reinjure anything. They felt good even at my top set of 275x8.

To finish things off, I hit some Dumbbell Forward and Back Lunges and Dumbbell Cossack Squats. I only had about 5 minutes to get them in and the dumbbell racks were busy so I didn't bother recording any sets. With that said, I still wanted to give you an example of how @juddlienhard has you do them. There's a rotational element that he incorporates into each movement that I really love. It feels good to add some upper body mobility into a workout after the first two exercises rely heavily on upper body rigidity. For the lunges, you rotate towards the front leg. For the Cossack Squats you rotate towards the extended leg. In the video Judd uses a Zercher hold, I used a dumbbell. For rep counts, one rep is the forward and back motion. So, you're essentially doing two lunges for each rep. For Cossack Squats, I did something similar and counted one rep after doing a squat on each side.

It was a quick and dirty but effective leg workout. My lungs were a little tired from yesterday's run so I was definitely breathing hard after the hardest sets, but overall things felt good. Tomorrow's workout will be a speed and power workout. Should be fun!