Week one back under the bar

Back squat, bench, deadlift, three days a week, starting well under what I could do six months ago. That’s the whole plan, and the annoying part isn’t the program — it’s accepting the starting weight.

A few honest notes from week one:

• Squat depth was the first thing to go when I stopped training regularly. Bar speed out of the hole is the tell — if it stalls, the weight was never really appropriate to begin with.
• Bench felt fine. Shoulders remembered the groove faster than legs remembered the squat.
• Deadlift day I cut short. Lower back was communicating clearly and I listened, which is new behavior for me.

The actual difficulty this week wasn’t physical. It was resisting the urge to jump the weight back up to where my ego thinks it should be. Writing the numbers down here is partly so I can’t quietly round up later.