Bench Press: 250*1 275*1 290*1 300*fucked up unracking
Pendlay Rows: 135*3 185*3 205*2 225*1
Push Press: 225*1 235*1
Sternum Pullups: 8, 5, 5
Farmers Walks: 90*50 100*50
Somehow caught lower pins when lowering the weight on the 300 attempt. No idea how I fucked that up. Did some farmers walks, I keep saying I want to work in more carries, I really need to get on that. It's a gap in my training right now, and I don't like that. Numbers indicate steps taken with the DBs.
Bench Press, Paused, No Arch: 225*1 240*1 250*1 265*1
Pendlay Rows: 135*3 185*3 205*2
Seated Press: 135*3 155*3 175*2
Sternum Pullups: 25*3 25*2 25*2
DB Reverse Flyes: 25*6 25*5
Great session, benching felt good. Threw in some Pendlay rows as well. Going to go back to Push Presses now that my shoulder feels much better than it did about 5 weeks ago.
Still at 300 barely on benching. My neck was pretty stiff on push pressing. It's one of those neck muscles that goes down into your upper back. Nothing serious, just didn't want to go much higher and exasperate whatever it was.
Bench Press (No Arch, Paused Reps): 225*2 255*1 275*1 285*1
Pullups: 75*2 75*1 75*1 75*1,1
Push Press: 225*1 240*1 250*X
Pendlay Rows: 165*4 185*4 205*2 215*1
DB Reverse Laterals: 15*9 25*6
Easing back into pullups as well, felt pretty good here, as long as I didn't let my shoulder blades get yanked then the rest of the shoulder felt fine. Continue to accumulate strength on Pendlays.
Trying to rest right shoulder a bit here, it's realllly close to being back to normal, it's hard for me to rest it though, I hate taking time off if something isn't completely destroyed. Even push press I took it easy with.
Good times! Happy with the 275 with no arch, AND paused reps. Really just a good session for strength, got 185 and the 205 on pendlays, and this is with form absolutely locked in. Back didn't come up an inch from parallel. Push press felt good too. Left elbow was getting tight by the time i got to pullups.
shoulder is just...awful. Let this be a lesson to anyone reading this: If you think a minor injury is healed, test out the body part first before throwing yourself into something. I'm probably going to skip upper body day this coming Monday and let this thing heal for real. Shoulder hurt on pullups even. I don't think it's anything major, just should have rested it more.
Ab bracing everywhere! It even helps on benching in transferring power from ground to bar. Was VERY happy with 320, kind of a 'everything clicked' lift. Rotated in Pendlays, I like them more on heavier days than light ones. I'm starting to find that a lot of exercises are better suited to me personally on either light or heavy days; t-bar rows on heavy, cable rows on light for instance. Maybe go the opposite every now and then to shock my body, but by and large certain things just fit. Threw some unilateral bb t-bar rows in since I've been neglecting them.
Good session, was exhausted on the push presses. Tried a few different things for core work today, the arm-forward pupp I just put an arm straight out in front of me like I was doing a bird-dog.
Last time I did 230*9 on bench and 225*7, I mean when you get higher on reps there's more variation. I was actually pretty low on energy today, not sure why. I did well on push pressing though, I need to up the weight next week. Everything else went fine. Starting to fall into a pattern with exercise selection; pendlay rows on the light upper body days, etc. Not a bad session at all.
Not a bad session, after doing the lighter weight stuff it's a breeze doing the heavy workouts, my rest time between sets is about 30% shorter. Pendlays I feel like are better suited to light/medium weight. Too much temptation to start bucking back on them when they're heavy, which defeats the purpose. Tried thick-rope pullups...much harder than with thinner rope. Also, on push pressing, my forearm gave out completely so I had to drop it after lockout. Hence the note.
The reps on bench press besides 295 were really smooth. Guess fears of losing strength from heavy benching every other week were exaggerated. The 295 was dirty, but whatever. I was going a bit lower on my chest too than I usually go, I've wanted to get into that habit for years, I think I'm going to use my next session with the light weights as an opportunity to pattern that. Pendlay rows aren't a really good choice here I don't think, probably regular BB rows are more suited to the heavy workouts. The new ropes at the gym are really thick, could barely grip them. Pause. Good session, quick too! I'm noticing the heavy workouts go by faster since the light workouts are so taxing on my recovery this stuff feels like a breeze.
Medium (standard) Grip Bench Press: 225*5 245*1 265*1 225*1
Pendlay Rows: 185*6 205*4 215*3
Push Press: 225*1 235*1 245*X
Neutral Grip Pullups: 85*3 85*3 85*2
Mini-banded landmine laterals: 45*3
Landmine Laterals: 45*10
DB Incline Bench: 105*6 105*3
45 minutes
When I bench press usually I take a super-wide grip; my chest was underdeveloped for a long time and I had to compensate, just sort of got used to it. Wanted to try standard grip, keeping elbows tucked, etc. WOW was not ready for that kind of stress on my triceps. Not a bad thing, just kind of got ambushed. Rotated in Pendlay rows. I'm thinking I'm going to start doing something a tad different with my benching that I lead off with; similar to what I do with my rows. Every other week I'll do regular flat benching, but then I'll rotate in other forms; close-grip, db, etc. I was scared rotating rows so much, which I do even more frequently would result in a back that was lagging if I wasn't doing BB rows each week, but that has not been the case. Narrowly missed 245 on PP, think I was gassed from the benching
Tried band resisted landmine laterals; here's Ben Bruno demonstration. WOW are these tough. I don't usually do them for strength, so the added resistance from the band overwhelmed me.
Vacation was fine I guess. Got food poisoning on plane ride home yesterday. Don't feel too weak now though. Hard to keep food down though. whatever. Threw upper body here too since I didn't want to miss it two straight weeks.
Didn't feel like doing a cluster set here, just tooled around a bit with benching, got to 310. I really like Pendlay rows, probably going to drop the weight a bit on the 3rd set, these are really an exercise where any degradation on form defeats the purpose really. Push pressing went well, as did neutral grip pullups. Pulled back on the landmine lateral weight a tad as well, since I'm going more for high reps on them. Good session
Odd. Started the cluster with 275, was way too light, so went to 295 and got crushed, back to 275 which was too light, bumped to 285, worked back to 295, got it for a few, then rolled back to 285 for a couple more. Will probably just do 285 next week. No idea what happened there. On the regular bench pressing, my pinky was just inside the knurling (or possibly my index, I'm not sure. I wrote it wrong in my log-book). This for me is pretty far in. I actually snatch and bench with the same width grip. Rest of session went good, somehow I pulled the heck out of a muscle in my neck on the NG pullups, so I abbreviated the landmines & db incline work.
