March 20, 2018 – Week 6, Day 1

5 Minutes Precor AMT

Leaning Calf Raises
BWx30

Sumo Box Touches (12” Box)
BWx15

16” Box Squats
BWx15

Regular Box Touches (12” Box)
BWx15

Band Rows
MMBx20

Push-ups
BWx10

Hip Airplanes (supported)
BWx5/5

Biceps Stretches
20 Seconds
20 Seconds

Reverse Band Seated 12” Log Presses (no back support)
Dumbbells
20’sx15
Log (no bands)
90x10
Added Bands (175lbs assistance)
230x1
270x1
290x1
310x1
330x1
350x1
370x1

Pulldowns
60x15
110x8
135x8
160x8
185x8
210x8

Close Grip Dead Floor Presses
135x3
185x3
235x3
285x3
335x3
269x5

Stretching

Comments: Definitely needed the massage session. Right leg, hip and arm tense and left side of my lower back tense. Got another one scheduled for the week of the contest. First day of spring and another snow storm. Luckily it wasn’t sticking to the roads so the gym was opened as it was going to be worse the next day. Warmed up on the AMT. Heart rate peaked at 163bpm. Right knee is still a little tender but I think it is feeling better after the massage to get the other muscles to stop pulling. Calf raise work after that. Tight but easy. Right calf definitely felt a little less tight. Box touches with a wide stance after that. Some knee aches. Hamstrings tight. No pain on box squats but knee really really achy. Then regular stance box touches. Felt about as good as the wide style. Maybe I was getting warm but not as much knee issues with is usually the opposite. Band rows after that and they were super easy. Push-ups were also good. No achy shoulder. Hip airplanes were pretty easy. Did an extra rep as some of the earlier reps didn’t feel like anything and wanted to make sure I was getting the hips to fire right. Biceps stretch after that. Ok here. Weights after that. Pretty big change here from the previous half of this training cycle in that not doing log push presses out of the rack. Not sure if this is a change due to my knee acting up last week or if this was always the plan. New exercise for me with doing seated log press with reverse bands. I like the no back support style for better carryover to my press since my torso moves with the lift. Warm-ups were higher reps without the bands as I figured with the planned band assistance needed that it would take a lot of weight to really feel like anything. It took a bit of time to figure out the setup and that usually is the case trying out new band stuff. I had meant to try this on a rest day. Goal for assistance was 140-180lbs. I had brought my average bands as I thought that would be enough but it wasn’t. Even when I had the bands go around the log rather than on the loading pins. Good thing I brought my monster minis too. Finally ready to go. 230lbs flew up like nothing so I put on two plates a side. I didn’t want to put too much at the start as I think the benefit of the frequent pressing has been the number of sets of singles working up. 20lbs jumps here. This got heavy fast as the ratio of band to straight weight shrunk. 350lbs still went up pretty smooth but I felt I had more. It was a gamble going for 370lbs but it went up. Not a true max but pretty close. Then on to the pulldowns. Same as it has been with light warm-up and five work up sets. This time just sets of eight reps. With the drop in reps, it can be tempting to bump up the weight a bit but I did just 10lbs more. Felt good. Only rep that felt off was the second to last rep of my last set that felt a little like it was overstressing the biceps. Otherwise, no feelings of dread like I’ve had on some sessions with this. Still 40lbs shy of my best in training since coming back but I feel my back is getting stronger on these with the controlled style. Dead floor presses with a close grip to finish out the day. Sets of three to a decent top triple and then a back off set of five with no grinding reps. I overestimated my abilities based off of how easy benching was last week. I set an overly optimistic top set to aim for and started with 135lbs off the bat. Probably should’ve done another warm-up set. Just adding 25lbs weights each side each set until 235lbs. Then since I wanted to rest a little more I switched to the 75lbs plates for the next set. Felt tough but not so much so that I felt the next set wouldn’t happen. 100lbs plates swapped on now. Definitely tough. Misgrooved the last rep and had to air hump it up to finish the lift. Burning the candle a little too close to wick here. I was going to do 275lbs for the down set but did a bit less just to be safe after that effort. Camera didn’t record this set but it also felt tough. But no grinders. Just slow. Home to stretch, recover and eat and hopefully sleep well.