November 11, 2022 – Week 3, Day 3

Swiss Bar Incline Bench Presses (5-1-1-0 tempo)
40x4
60x4
80x4
100x4
120x8
130x8
140x8

One Arm Standing/Braced Dumbbell Rows (3-3-1-0 tempo)
62x3/3
82x3/3
100x10/10
100x10/10
100x10/10

Push Ups on Kettlebells
bwx5
bw+20x15
bw+20x15
bw+20x15

Paused Band Face Pulls (2 seconds)
lbx20
lbx20
lbx20

Seated Incline Dumbbell Curls w/ Fat Gripz Extremes (3-1-1-0 tempo)
6’sx6
16’sx12
17’sx12
18’sx12

Stretching
 
Comments: November is one of those weird months in that it has a lot holidays pretty close together. Which can make things as hectic at work as December and January. Especially coupled with a seasonal program becoming open at that time which is emergency based. Trying to keep things afloat but can only do so much. Also a little concerned with the left elbow as it seems a bit more puffy than it has been since returning to training. Still not nearly as bad as it was when I had to go get it drained but still concerning. Not painful but just keeping (fixating) on what was said about if it fills up (the bursa) in less than a month, surgery would most likely be needed to remove it. I don’t like thinking about that. Temperature fluctuating daily could also be impacting things as far as my joints and such. I know I get a little “water on the knee” but it’s not nearly as noticeable as the elbow situation. Maybe because I already have large knee joints from Osgood-Schlatters and I’ve had bursitis in the right knee when I wrestled in junior high. Having off work let me sleep in and hopefully that was restorative. Still elbow seemed puffier but less so than the day before. Seems to be more so the day following training rather during training. Maybe this just ends up being a thing I have going forward. Hurricane down south means a lot of rain up here. Rarely do I see the weather predictions list 100% chance of rain but they did for today. This workout seemed to resemble a bit more in line with what I usually see as the workouts for training when a 4 day week with more focus on upper vs lower rather than the full body they’ve been so far. I could do all of today’s workout in the garage but I was kind of hoping to use the outside rack for the first exercise. Reason being I think was kind of knowing that the new bar should fit in that one and wasn’t sure about my older floppy rack. Finally got a new swiss bar after not having one since I switched to home gym in 2020. I mean I guess I still have on that I donated to the gym I used to go to but it wasn’t worth pulling it. So plan was swiss bar incline bench. Or really any incline benching that didn’t bother my neck/shoulders. I know log is good but tricky to setup and ROM is shorter. Incline not great if I use my axle clean and press grip. And I seem to struggle a good bit with straight bar on incline. So I wanted to do full ROM with same grip as log and see if that worked. Would be a $170 question to answer. These were to be working up to 3x6-8 with plenty RIRs and tempo. Similar to the b-stance rdls in that 3-5 for the eccentrics. Of course doing the 5 seconds. I was initially thinking about 135lbs would be what I should be using here. Bar odd weight so added fractional plates to get it to be 40lbs. Break in the rain to get this done. First set didn’t feel the best using the wide grip. It’s the wide handles but really it is about the width of a log handles give or take an 1”. That last bit of ROM wasn’t feeling great so I moved to the middle handles. That worked great. This is just to do an exercise, not necessarily a log. We know log is fine at that width and to 6” above chest. However, that initial discomfort did make me a bit more conservative with my plans here. I did 20lbs jumps instead of 30lbs but did start to feel good as I got up in weight. I decided since I could always increase weight, that I’d do 120lbs for the first set with the plan to add weight each set if feeling good. Hard to tell with fatigue from these long eccentric sets for this many reps. Definitely feeling like each set was getting tougher but ended up averaging about the bar plus 90lbs which is where I felt I would be at here. Finished up with the outside and moved stuff in just as it was starting to rain a little bit. Garage for the rest of the workout. First thing was a one arm row variation. More upright style and bracing with posting up the non-lifting arm on my incline bench and taking a power stance for added stability. I was thinking I could do a good bit more than the birddog rows with added stability. Even with the planned tempo of 3 seconds holds and 3 second lowering. I was thinking like 116lbs or so but realized I needed to leave a good bit of reps on these like most things and plan was to do 102lbs. However, I realized it was feeling tougher than I liked and went with 100lbs. Honestly, I probably should’ve gone with like 90lbs or something on these as the tempo work really fatigued me. Left side takes a bit to feel comfortable with the tendonitis but seems stronger now. Right side has no issues at the start but seems to fatigue quicker. I feel that I was able to keep to the planned effort level for the first set both sides and the second set the right but definitely was pushing it by the second half. Especially the last set for the right side. Oh well. Push ups again. No tempo this time and plan was to use the same variation I did last week for my choice. Shoulders didn’t feel as bad compared to last week. I was thinking more weight but seeing as I was to leave more RIR compared to last week, I just went with the same weight as last time. Which seemed to work out well enough. It was feeling too easy the first set until the last rep when I started to feel fatigue in the triceps. Fatigue on these has a funny way of catching up. Things fatigue and balance gets trickier. Last set I got a little off balance on the right side and had the kettlebell rock a little so had to collect myself and then get the last 3 reps for that set. Almost done with the workout. Band face pulls back again. Plan was lot of RIRs and doing 3x15-20 with 1-2ct holds. I felt that longer holds and higher reps were the ticket for today. Haven’t had to push these much in the last bit so I went with a lighter band tension that I knew would probably end up tougher than it should. That upper back fatigue happens quick. Definitely was easy enough the first rep for sure and fatigue made things tough for the last set. But I felt it was ok for that set. Last thing was direct biceps work. Not upset about that, I was actually interested in it because it was tempo work (shocker) and was looking at more prehab health. Also indicated to use my Fat Gripz on the dumbbells. Doing isometric and tempo stuff for my forearms with wrist extensions and flexion and imagining holding something like a can of beans has provided some relief when tendonitis symptoms have flared up. I wasn’t expecting a lot of weight on these with no true direct biceps work isolation movements in a long time (I don’t feel like the band curls count) and just how my biceps seem to fatigue quickly with stuff involving tempo. I did a little sneaky pushing up the weight by using the fractional plates to add 1lbs a set here. Put stuff away and stretched before icing my left elbow.