March 23, 2023 – Week 2, Day 3

Kettlebell Arm Bars
15x5/5
15x5/5

Close Grip Axle Floor Presses
36x3
66x3
96x3
126x3
156x3
186x3
216x3
246x3
276x8
248x8

Dumbbell Z Presses (2 second holds)
10’sx5
26’sx5
40’sx5
56’sx13

One Arm Band Rows (30 seconds)
sb+mbx23/23
sb+mbx24/24

Band Y Raise Holds
mbx30 seconds
mbx30 seconds

Stretching
 
Comments: I think I’m not stressing the medical stuff as much now after coming to the conclusion that the issue has probably been present for decades and just not screened. As nothing I can do about it until I meet with the doctor and see what they think and plan. Been seeing people training heavy stones and circus dumbbell and I feel like I had more to prove on those at the contest but again, it has passed and it is on to the next thing. Need to be ready for what is being contested. I wasn’t expecting much from this session. The good was the upper back stuff seemed to have been mostly resolved. But I knew that there was probably going to be a drop in pressing just from how things have felt when doing consecutive workouts pushing the weight vs waving and just how the fatigue factor had felt with the pulls the day before. Starting things off with the kettlebell arm bars. Same as it was last week. I see no reason to increase the weight on these. Movement was feeling smoother but my left shoulder wasn’t too pleased with the end motion. Could be from contest still with trying to get reps as well as doing stone to shoulder to that side. That does seem to always be a risk with those kinds of events. But it seems more and ache than outright soreness/stiffness. Just have to keep an eye on it. Felt like nothing for the right shoulder. The movement is fine besides the stretch in the shoulder for the left this time around. From there it was on to pressing. Close grip axle floor press. Supposed to stick with this variation a bit. I wasn’t sure how these would go. Maybe they’d be good. Plan was to work up to a top set of 8-10 with 2-3RIR working up in triples. I think my concern was that it seemed that repeating weeks on bigger pressing stuff hasn’t been doing so well for me without alternating and even then, the percentage seems to need to be decreased substantially or the exercise changed up a good bit to keep from having stuff feel like crap. But doing what is written for now. Or at least trying to. So working up in 30lbs jumps and stuff was feeling pretty good. So 10lbs and aim really was to just do 8 reps with it regardless to try and get to a more appropriate RIR situation since I know I went a little heavy last week on this session. And I’d be having to pay for that a little to get so I don’t lose out. Wrist wasn’t bothering me nearly as much as I was working up in weight. Top set and I felt ready. But it just seemed heavy and my left elbow was feeling a little achy. It was supposed to be a “comfortable” rep set and it definitely wasn’t. It was closer to 1-2RIR at best. So with the matching set, I went with the bigger drop in weight and even with the rest, it felt very much the same as that previous set. Last week I had been able to recover pretty good and leave a lot of RIR. Just making notes that may need to alter things like they had been in the later part of the last training cycle that did seem to get the circus dumbbell back on track. The axle floor pressing was really the only thing that I was worried would be like that. Z presses with dumbbells after that. Mistakes were made last time haha. So I planned to get it right. I took too big of jumps and went for a weight I shouldn’t have been considering with the planned effort/rep range. Made myself do several jumps of sets of 5 and make sure that I was shouldering the weight in a more efficient manner. I would’ve liked to get 15 reps here with the planned RIR (2-3) but knew I had to stop short of that. At least this time it was within the right rep range and effort. These get quite exhausting with the held lockouts for the traps. From there it was on to band stuff. Same as last week with both exercises being for 30 second sets. One arm band rows again. I decided to increase the band tension slightly as it was getting too easy and it would be more of me rushing to get more reps rather than it being a good movement quality. Seems adding band tension didn’t really do much as I got more reps this time around haha. Band y raise holds to finish off the night. Increased the band tension to a mini band and that seemed to get things in the right effort range. These do tend to feel good on the shoulders when they feel like they have been. While waiting for my roast to finish, I put away stuff and got some of the new piece of equipment put together before calling it and saving the rest for tomorrow after work. Stretched after dinner. Hopefully the shoulder issue goes away so I can just focus.