July 24, 2023 – Week 5, Day 1

One Arm Half Kneeling Dumbbell Strict Presses w/ Band Rows (3 second eccentrics)
10x4/4 (µb)
40x4/4 (mb)
70x10/10 (mmb)
70x10/10 (mmb)
70x10/10 (mmb)

Feet Up Swiss Bar Bench Presses/Chest Supported Dumbbell Rows
90x3/40’sx3
130x3/70’sx3
180x12/95’sx12
180x12/95’sx12
180x12/95’sx12

Landmine Bar Twists/Dumbbell Windmills
63x6/6 – 40x6/6
63x6/6 – 40x6/6
63x6/6 – 40x6/6

Stretching
 
Comments: Weekend was somewhat productive to recoup. I knew that I’d not have the ideal week having to come into the office for the day on Tuesday (disrupts meals, work and exercise schedule) so I made sure to not only do light yard work on Sunday but also fit in a walk to make up for Tuesday likely not having anything besides job. But was feeling pretty good besides just general soreness from training last week. This may very well be the last “off season” week before Nats prep goes into a higher gear. Starting things off with tempo and band row overhead pressing. Plan was slightly higher RPE (3x8-10 with 3RIR) and my hope was my shoulders and elbows feeling less out of it. My thinking was to try and do the 70lbs again and make them feel easier and get more reps. Another thought was to scale the band row part of things so that I was actually doing something with that beyond distraction. So equivalent band tension related to the weight being pressed. Also a few more reps warming up. This seemed to go much better compared to last week. I started to notice that sensation I get deep in the shoulders and elbows on tempo work where it feels really warm and I feel like I’m producing a lot of body heat. Like slow cooking those joints. I don’t recall this sensation when doing lower body stuff with tempo, I think only overhead pressing. But I know that I’m getting good work on this style of work when I feel that. Or at least I tell myself. I felt comfortable enough to go for 3x10 here. And that seemed doable and keeping it at the right RPE. I will say that I was definitely not leaving 3RIR guaranteed on that last set as fatigue set in. More that fatigue in the stability and when that happens, locking out the arm becomes a lot tougher too. But I don’t think it was too much. I had reps left at least and I didn’t miss any reps. Supersets after that. Feet up swiss bar bench press paired with chest supported dumbbell rows with no acceleration reps. I was initially thinking based off how things felt last time to do 10lbs more for the pressing and try to do 3x10-12 and same weight for the rows. Mostly because I felt the pressing I had room to improve and the rows had been a bit tougher than I would’ve liked and I had pushed the grip/rowing a bit this past week with the b-stance rdls and the misload on the bird dogs. With the benching, I also felt since I was increasing the weight each set last time that I should see how I felt with the same weight all sets with more weight, similar to how I did things with the trap bar stuff Saturday. But I guess I decided to go up in weight on the rows and if felt like a bit much, just do 3x10. So benching to start it felt ok, but not so easy I wanted to do increase each set. Rows surprisingly felt easier than 7lbs less last week. Second set of bench had me regretting I didn’t increase weight as it felt so easy but by the third set fatigue was starting to hit and it was about where it needed to be at that point. Rows were about as they were overall compared to last week just slightly easier.  The landmine bar twists to start and then into windmills to finish out the session. Same guidelines as last time but I felt I needed to increase the weight so that I wasn’t having stuff feel too easy on the bar twists. I also didn’t want to keep things the same weight on the windmills. But it was either use a dumbbell or go outside to safely use the kettlebell handle for overhead stuff. I figured I’d just use dumbbell. I feel I picked appropriately for both this time around. Dumbbell is definitely tougher than kettlebell on windmills. Even though I had this feeling tougher compared to last week, I was still feeling pretty good and was getting into the music so the last set actually was moving pretty darn easily. Put stuff away and cooked dinner before stretching. Have to get to bed early because of stupid reasons of going into the office for another unproductive day.