Conventional Wisdom

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

-Marcus Aurelius

It's been a while since the last check-in — long enough that the whole program has changed shape since then.

What happened to the program

Last time, I was heading into a deload after 8 weeks of straight linear progression: same rep scheme every week, add weight, repeat until the joints complain. They complained, I deloaded, and I said I wasn't sure if I'd pre-program the next one or just go by feel again.

I ended up doing neither. Instead of going back to straight LP, I rebuilt the whole thing around RPE-based waves: one heavy top set for a Primary lift (currently 1x3 @8, with backdown sets), and a Secondary lift trained a notch lighter (1x3 @7, backdowns at ~90% of the top set). Every few weeks I tighten the wave a little — Secondaries have gone from 1x4@7 down to 1x3@7 as the accumulated fatigue caught up with me.

I also stopped treating the deload as a discrete "week off" and started treating joint health as a daily line item instead. Every day now, regardless of what's on the split, I do McGill Big 3 (curl-up, side plank, bird dog) for the abs/spine, and single-leg DB RDLs before squat and deadlift days specifically. Light shoulder and bicep work twice a week, kept deliberately easy. None of this is exciting, all of it is 10 minutes, and it's cheaper than another 3-week deload.

Current split (Block 4, started 6/19):

Day	Primary	Secondary
Mon	Bench	Incline DB Press
Tue	Squat	DB RDL
Thu	CG Long Pause Bench	OHP
Fri	Deadlift	Hack Squat

Progress

Squat, top single/triple:

• 4/26 (block start): 405x3
• 5/21: 445x2
• 6/24: 455x3
• 6/29: 465x2
• 7/8: 465x2 (repeat — same weight, same grind)

Bench (Pause Bench), top single/triple:

• 5/2: 295x3 @8
• 6/15: 315x2
• 7/3: 320x2 (missed groove a bit, was sore)
• 7/6: 315x3 (clean pauses — better set than the 320x2)

Deadlift is the one that looks like a stall but isn't. I hit 495x3 sumo on 5/16, then switched to conventional — it's simpler to set up, and noticeably easier on my hips, so I'm not going back even though it cost me short-term numbers. Conventional dropped to 455x3, climbed to 475x3, hit 495x3 by 6/27, and pulled 505x3 on 7/4 — clean, grip held. Two months to re-earn a weight I already had and then clear it, but that's less "plateau" and more "paying the setup tax" on a pattern I'd barely trained. The tuition's paid: conventional is now past where sumo left off.

Close grip bench plateaued around 285–305 the whole block and actually ticked down slightly when I switched to a 3-count pause variation in June — not worried about it, it's programmed as a Secondary specifically so I don't have to be precious about it.

Takeaways

A few things I didn't expect:

• RPE-autoregulation is just a better fit for me than fixed-weight LP. On a bad-sleep, low-energy day, "hit an 8" just means a lighter bar; on straight LP it would've meant a missed rep and a stalled program. The system absorbs bad days instead of recording them as failures.
• The joints have been quiet. Zero random tweaks since the last post, which I'm crediting entirely to the daily prehab work rather than anything about program structure.
• Switching lifts (conventional deadlift, pause bench variations) costs you real numbers up front, and that's fine. It reads as a stall in the log but it's actually just tuition.

Looking ahead

Conventional deadlift has already cleared where sumo left off, so now I just want to keep that line going. Squat's the one to watch — 465x2 two sessions running is the first hint the wave might need tightening there — but I want to see it and Bench climb for another block before I touch the structure. If it ain't broke.

Deep squats and no thoughts, Caden