@Lee - yeah with the squats I used to be an ass to heels squatter but I have been switching that to more of a wider stance parallel squat lately. The only problem is there isn't as much an effect on the quads, and I despise front squats, which is why I am looking at doing weighted step ups. It also seems more stable than doing lunges and you can adjust depth more as well. I'll let you know the results for running in a month. I am going to push a regular trail i run and time it and do it again next month to see.
Overall I am trying to eliminate all conditioning and plyo's other than running. Hopefuly it'll help the aches go away. Now I am very leary about doing sprints with the PF. It sucks cause I enjoyed those.
I'll let you know how the ladders go, I am still reworking the plan. I do think switching to every other day is a good idea with your workout though. It is tough lifting every day unless you do some type of easy abbreviated work out like 2 sets of 5 every day.
Your deadlift is getting up there I see! Nice work. How's the trap bar working?
Funny, I used to only do half and quarter squats, with much more weight, back in my karate days. It's good to have good, strong thighs to take the low kicks. But as I get older and stiffer, I like the full squats (which you talked me into!) for maintaining some flexibility/mobility. I've also been using furniture glides to get back into stretching out on the floor. I'd like to be able to do the splits again, if possible.
I'm with you I've never liked lunges, but I do them more for flexibility than strength. I've thought about switching them over to my plyo/mobiltiy day, but I like the idea of keeping all weighted lower body exercises in one workout. I'm a bit of a formalist that way.
When I was lifting every day, I did space out the three heaviest days Mon/Wed/Fri, and I do think there's benefit to 'overtraining' anaerobically once in a while, but by the second or third week of it I was starting to burn out. Maybe I could do the six times a week routine once every four weeks or so. We'll see. One nice thing about spreading the lifting out over six days is that each workout only takes 30-40 minutes, instead 60-80 minutes with the 3x week plan.
The trap lifts are great! That's how I start my lower body st session. I'm keeping it at 255 because it seems like my upper back is still adapting to this new way of doing dead lifts. I do 8-10 reps, which is high, for me, for such a heavy lift, but I don't want to raise the weight until I'm sure my upper back can take it. Then I do some shrugs and my power cleans before moving back to the barbell deadlift, which seems to use the lower back more, the upper back less. It's true I'm up to 325 now, but just barely. It's one of the few instances, along with the bench press, where I allow myself a single-rep effort, because I feel pretty confident about my form and conditioning on these exercises. If I can eventually add another 50-100 pounds to the deadlifts and do 3-5 reps, I'll be plenty happy. At a certain point, I'll probably just do maintenance, and not get any stronger, but right now it's interesting trying to see what this middle-aged body is still capable of.
But my real emphasis is on the running. As I've said before, I've only run consistently once before, for almost three years 10 years ago in Chicago, so I'm interested in seeing what I can do. Right now the goal is to run an hour at 8mm pace. Then I might think about working on distance again, but I don't know if I have the patience to run much more than 90-120 minutes at a time. That seems about enough, at least for urban running. More than 10-12 miles and I'd be kind of wiped for the rest of the day, but if I could do a beautiful trail I might reconsider.
As for the plyo / conditioning stuff, I'm surprised you think it has contributed to your PF and other aches. Although I've been really inconsistent in doing my plyo and mobility exercises, I think they generally help keep the repetitive stress of running at bay.
Whew, I'm writing a lot here today. I'm processing a bunch of music and audio stuff, so lots of down time waiting for things to happen . . .