Jungledoc wrote: There is no best rest time for for everyone, it's very individual. You need to find this yourself. Especially in doing heavy singles for max, you need to rest as much as you need to rest, 6, 8, 10 minutes, whatever.
Not to sound contradicting, only to get clarification, most everything I've read says upwards of 5 minutes. I just want to be sure I'm not losing anything with longer rest periods and will get the most out of my workouts. Before, I could catch my breath within a few minutes then I would force myself to wait another minute or two in order to ensure I would get my next lift; this has worked for me. Now, I question how long that wait should be. Are there any pointers as to know when you've rested long enough?
Jungledoc wrote: If hitting a new PR leaves you needing to reset, then you shouldn't be maxing, IMHO. After a PR, a bit of rest in appropriate, but you need to go on with your progressive training without losing a lot of time. I've made the mistake several times of resetting after a PR, and it takes me a long time to get back to where I was. I think that if you manage your fatigue and your rest adequately, you'll be able to pick up on your training, after maybe one training microcycle (?a week?) of relative rest.
Here is a summary of where I am:
I just reset my MP's as I attempted 110 for 3 workouts and was unable to obtain 3x5. I just cleared 112.5 last session, so I have successfully reached a sticking point, reset and have progressed beyond that sticking point.
Pendlays - I am progressing nicely. I find myself repeating the same weight once before moving up.
Bench - I attempted 185 at least twice maybe three times and then backed up to 165 and now at 175.
Squat - When I first attempted 275, I felt my form wasn't quite right, so I recorded it. I saw that I wasn't going far enough down. I put aerobic steps in place to ensure proper depth and then did a session of lifting to determine what weight to use. I lift x5 until I hit a weight (265) that was hard, I backed it up to 255 and worked from there. 265 was extremely tough, and instead of doing this weight again, I attempted to go up to 275. First session was okay with 5,4,1 but the second session was 3x2.
Deadlift - moving along nicely. I think I attempted 335 when I was set to lift 325. Last session I lifted 325 without any problems and moving up to 335.
As you can see, all lifts are at PR's now, so any advise, constructive comments would be greatly appreciated for my continued progress. With hitting PR's should I shift to a weekly progression rather than a daily progression? - something like H-L-M? I'm not looking to change anything if unnecessary; just looking at maintaining linear progress. I don't plan on resetting unless it becomes a sticking point as I did with MP's and BP's. I just need to know how to handle the extreme weight of the squat :D.
Will you explain microcycle?
In addition to increasing the weight, are there other metrics or measurements I can take to monitor gains / progress?