The Walk Home Isn't in the Spreadsheet
A 14,324 kg leg session shows what tonnage misses: the bodyweight lunges supplied 22% of the reps and none of the recorded load. It was also the first session actually run in daylight — with no sleep data yet, and a second variable started the same day.
My own report after this session was five words: barely able to walk home.
The log has a tidier version. Twenty-three working sets, 325 reps, 14,324 kg. Five new entries on the PR board.
Both are true. The totals leave out how the walk felt.
Day 5 — the session
Second leg day of the week. Monday took quads; this one is posterior chain.
Walked to the gym and back.
That is 944 kg under Day 1’s 15,268 kg, the heaviest of the block — about 6.2% lower. Lower is the arithmetic. It does not mean the day was 6.2% easier: different exercises, different machines, different proximity to failure.
The effort numbers are the specific part. The Romanian deadlifts went at one to two reps in reserve, the curls at one. Those were close to failure. The rest carry no RIR, and I am not going to assign them one retroactively just because the walk home was bad.
22% of the reps, none of the load
The lunges are the interesting line.
Seventy-two of the session’s 325 reps — 22% of everything I did — and they contribute nothing to the 14,324 kg, because the log gives bodyweight-only work a dash instead of inventing a load for it.
That is a bookkeeping choice, not a statement about effort. And the obvious fix — multiply every lunge rep by bodyweight — would just introduce another rough proxy with its own assumptions: how much mass actually moves, how far it moves, and how the work splits between legs. A bigger total is not a better measurement.
The same session has a cleaner illustration. Cable crunches put up 1,980 kg. Hip thrusts put up 1,200 kg. By tonnage the crunches win by 65%, which is what happens when 60 reps at 33 kg meet 30 reps at 40 kg. The hip thrusts felt harder to me.
So tonnage stays in the log. With a consistent setup and range of motion it lets me compare logged load × reps across sessions. Across a mixed session it is a summary with a narrow meaning — and the walk home is the part that never enters it.
Five entries, one actual progression
The PR board picked up five lines today:
- Romanian deadlift — 80 kg
- 45° back extension — 81 kg
- Seated leg curl — 68 kg
- Hip abduction — 50 kg
- Hip thrust — 40 kg, up from 30 kg on Monday
Only the last one is a progression. The other four are first marks — the first time this block has recorded those movements at all.
This is the trap in any freshly structured block: better logging manufactures achievements, because fields that used to be empty now contain numbers. Four reference points and one documented load increase is the honest read, and it is still a good day.
The clock changed
In the previous post I suspected that late training was affecting my sleep, and decided to try early-afternoon sessions instead.
This was the first session actually run in daylight.
That is the entire result so far. I changed when I trained. I have no sleep outcome to attach to it — the ring has not synced since 2 September, so there are no numbers on this page tonight, and one good night afterwards would be an anecdote anyway.
What would help me look for a pattern: several weeks of session times against time to fall asleep, time awake during the night, total sleep and how rested the morning feels — compared between sessions of similar difficulty, with bedtime and wake time recorded, because changes in time in bed could also affect total sleep. Other factors would still limit the comparison.
The supplement I already owned
I started Universal Animal TNT+ today, because I already owned it. That explains the decision to use it. Already owning it is no evidence of benefit, and I am not claiming any.
Today still carried two changes at once: the session moved into daylight, and a new oral product started. If my sleep changes this week, I will not know whether either change contributed. That is my own fault for stacking them on the same day, and it is worth writing down now rather than discovering it later when the data happens to look flattering.
What today actually records
The loads, two RIR numbers, five board entries, one real progression, a timing change with no outcome attached, and a supplement whose effect is unmeasured.
The missing sleep data belongs next to all of it as an empty field, not as an assumption.
And the lunges will keep being the hardest part of the session that the spreadsheet scores as zero.
Week One Holds — the first full week of the block, and the decision to try earlier training that this session acts on.
Day Four. One Side Effect. — the session before this one, and what showed up afterwards.
Day One. Logged. — where the block started and what the first numbers looked like.
MONSTER 2.0 — The Shadow — the programme this is running inside.
