Saturday, September 24, 2022

September 23, 2022 – Week 7, Day 3

Axle Push Presses
46x2
76x2
106x2
136x2
166x2
196x1
226x1
256x1
256x1
256x1
256x1

Axle Strict Presses w/ bands (+22lbs bottom/+40lbs top)
26x2
56x2
86x2
116x2
146x2
146x2
146x2
146x2
146x2

Paused Banded Face Pulls (low anchor point, 3 seconds)
lbx12
lbx12
lbx12

Single Arm Overhead Band Triceps Extensions
lbx20/20
lbx20/20

Stretching
  
Comments: I was not expecting the best effort here today and considering that on Monday I felt like just straight up giving up on competing with how bad I felt, anything that didn’t have me feeling disgust was going to be a win. Granted I wanted everything to be feeling great and not have skipped a beat but that seems to only really be for my lower body training. My upper body seems to still be not fully recovered (or recovered enough to keep progressing linearly like everything else has). Probably didn’t help having those wandering aches and pains upon waking and throughout the day. Axle push press to start things off. Really want to just take a break from this with how frustrating it has been but it just has been the event for the big shows this year and looks like that is continuing into next year. No cleans this week for the pressing. Just out of the rack. Work up in doubles to about 60% and then switch to singles. Work up to top weight for 4 singles. Now as far as the weight goes, it was to be something that felt like my last warm-up before a working set. Suggested was 255-275lbs. I was feeling decent enough warming up and was thinking I could do the top end but I had planned things for the lower end with my luck. And lower end is where I stayed. Usually, the first rep of a working set for me on axle out of the rack feels stupid heavy. I’ve gotten used to that and learned to not panic. So that wasn’t unexpected. It did feel like 30lbs heavier on my shoulders. This actually felt heavier than 326lbs had felt last week. So not exactly feeling fast and powerful. But the form was better than it was with my EMOM speed stuff from Monday. I had issues with reracking the weight on the first and second set. Second set I feel was my best. The weight didn’t feel any lighter as I went so that was annoying but also a sign that things aren’t back to normal and still need to recover. Next was strict presses with the axle against bands. Plan was to use 50-60% with 10-15% band tension for 5x2. Move things fast and speedy. I didn’t have my numbers for this setup with micro bands and wasn’t having luck locating when I last did them so I just used the same band tension setup I’ve been using for both push press and strict pressing for the mini bands. Since that was a little bit more than 15%, I made sure to lower the weight from 60% to make up for that. These weren’t great. Similar to push press, working up these felt fine with the 30lbs jumps. I had mentioned that things had felt fine working up last week with the axle clean and push press and with benching on Monday. But then I get to weight and it just feels too damn tough. I hadn’t come at this exercise or weight like it would be needing 100% effort when I approached and it got stuck at my forehead and I dropped it and took a moment to collect myself. I had expected it to go up nice and smooth and not have it get a sticking point. Seeing as how this wasn’t going to be a walk in the park, I refocused and got through it. Reps seemed to be better on the second rep of each set compared to the first. I was not a fan of how these felt. I’ve done 60lbs more on these for a top set before. So this was yet another reminder that things have kind of gone off the rails for my upper body training. Now I’m just worried I don’t have enough time to get things recovered by competition so that I don’t bomb the opener with how things are feeling. This will continue to vex me and it seems like it will be tough to really have any training towards axle at this point that will not take away from what I can do right now. Ugh. Hopefully this workout was a bit of a deload (with the next pressing session being even less to hopefully get things on track) to stimulate and recover. From there it was the band stuff to end the workout. Face pull variation again. Same as last time with 3x10-12 with holds. I decided after last week that attempting to mimic an axle wasn’t worth the hassle. The Fat Gripz were bothering my wrists and I felt feeling muscles work rather than irritate joints or ligaments made more sense. Especially since I’m trying to get my joints to stop feeling crappy right now. So with the Fat Gripz removed, I felt that I needed to increase the band tension up a good bit since I’d not be having it disadvantaged with grip. 3 second holds and lower anchor point so still same motion and stress. Last thing was the band triceps. Single arm overhead. No stretch like last week but advised to do full ROM and get a stretch each rep. I took that to mean not just rapid fire reps to get reps and to control it. So made things a little tougher but still fine with the bands I had. Put stuff away and ate a roast before stretching.


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