March 9, 2026 – Week 4, Day 1

Dynamic Warm Up

Dumbbell Push Presses (4-1-0-1 tempo)
40’sx6
80’sx4
80’sx4
80’sx4
80’sx4
80’sx4

Paused Axle Floor Presses (2 seconds at lockout)
76x6
116x5
156x4
206x3
256x2
266x2
276x2
286x2

Internal Rotation Dumbbell Flyes/Single Arm Dumbbell Triceps Extensions (0-1-0-1 tempo)
10’sx12 – 6x6/6
40’sx8 – 26x8/8
40’sx8 – 26x8/8
40’sx8 – 26x8/8
40’sx8 – 26x8/8

Banded Close Grip Push Ups/Paused Band Cross Face Pulls
bw+lbx20/(2)mb’sx15
bw+lbx20/(2)mb’sx15
bw+lbx20/(2)mb’sx15

Stretching

Comments: Lost an hour with DLS starting up again. It has only been recently as far as working that I’ve started taking time off work when the hour is lost and the hour is gained. I need more than a day to adjust to the change. Kind of why I try to not adapt to the time zone changes if within reason and not staying too long (like when I was in Washington last year and Arizona this year). Sunday was spent getting some things cleaned up around the house and recovering with plan for Monday to be some of that plus training. Still have some stiffness in the right mid back area but tolerable. Taking off work meant I could train during the day Monday. Sunday I got in a walk and weight is down a little (under 258lbs). It had been low 50’s end of day Saturday and then high 60’s Sunday and now low 70’s today. Soft tissue work starting things off. Initially thinking I didn’t need much here but then hit an area in my calves near the top that needed a lot. More so the right vs the left. And then a lot was needed for my right quad (and not much for the left). The usual for hamstrings and upper back. Neck rehab stuff felt fine and needed. I kind of hoped it would get the mid back thing to go away but it didn’t do that on Saturday. It was needed as my chest felt tight at the start. Lower body stretching was ok followed by a dead hang. Time to train. Warm and the sun was out. As mentioned last time, I had to do the tempo dumbbell push pressing outside since needing to use the larger diameter plates to reach 80lbs. I could at least face away from my house on the patio so sun wouldn’t be directly in my eyes (like if I was taking stuff out of the rack). Plan was to do same as last week but an extra set with the 80’s. Joints felt a little achy with the 40’s so I did two extra reps to warm up there and that seemed to be enough to get the joints feeling fine. I was a little nervous about getting the dumbbells to shoulder efficiently and not having things feel so awkward. I think that I remembered enough how that first set had felt last week being rough and I didn’t have a repeat of that. I went sans hard belt again here. A bit better on power off the floor to rack the dumbbells this time around. I did have some balance issues at times but it was more just timing issue and occasionally getting sun in my eyes. I was trying to not have to control the dumbbells so much back to the ground but that didn’t really go to plan as they liked to bounce around. These felt fine and moved on to the garage stuff. As I was lifting in the middle of the day and this workout is the one that is the least taxing on my stomach, I figured that I’d take breaks to eat meals so that I would still be on my work schedule for tomorrow and keep my intake normal-ish. I’d start prepping but wait until the heavy stuff it done before partaking of nourishment. Axle floor presses followed. Still holding lockouts for 2 seconds each rep. This was a little different in that the notes said to do 255x4x2 and that if that felt too light that I could “ramp” up the weight. I had kind of already thought it would be too light with that weight if goal is something RPE 8 or more. Especially since the first few reps have been feeling easy on these. But didn’t want to jump to conclusion. Since somewhat decent weight here, I did 40-50lbs jumps so quarters and plates here to get to working weight. No twitchy triceps this time around. These were feeling pretty good warming up. 156lbs felt a little challenging compared to the previous jumps and the weight immediate after it. I don’t know why sometimes and odd jump just feels tougher. Unrack felt a little heavy with 256lbs but it moved easy so I decided I’d go the more aggressive ramping up of adding 10lbs per set here. I did want to get over what I’ve hit with axle pressing as of late (in the last year). 266lbs was fine. 276lbs first rep was easy but I think I got little distracted at some point (I had taken a bit longer to initiate the first lift) and lost some tightness and slightly out of groove but it was ok. 286lbs the first rep felt better than 276lbs did but the second rep had some of the same issues and was tougher. I’d need to get a lot more hyped up to justify more weight this session. But it was nice to get something heavier to press. I really do want to have my pressing back up in the 300lbs range again for overhead and various pressing variations like this. With the bigger movers for the session done, it was one to the supersets. And to eat one of the three small-ish meals. First meal packed away and it was time for the first superset of chest flyes with internal rotation and single arm triceps. No changes to the flyes from last week but notes were to do pauses at lockout and in the stretch for the triceps and decrease in weight suggested. Knowing how much of a stretch reflex I get with my limbs I knew I’d need to go the lighter route to survive on the triceps. Four sets vs three sets last week. There wasn’t any anxiousness with flyes as I knew I could do this whereas last week was an unknown with the weight and motion. Triceps I wasn’t sure how these would go even with the drop in weight as they were feeling pretty toast with just the empty dumbbell handle. But they seemed to handle the work well enough today. My left was definitely feeling more fatigue compared to the right this time around. Another break to eat another meal and on to the last thing of the session. Slight change to the last superset not in exercise but in position and execution. The banded close grip push ups still indicated as 10-20 reps per set but notes were to try and have the band a little lower on the back compared to last time. The face pulls with bands the reps decreased to 15 reps per set with indicating to pause at contraction and actively keeping the band stretched during the movement. It can be a bit tricky with the setup I have been using to get the pull apart aspect focus so I changed it up to have it be two bands and they are forming an “x” so always feeling like pulling in and actively have to pull apart at all times. I think that covered things there. I can’t use as much band tension and to fine tune it I needed to use the mini bands I had. I didn’t want to use a mini band on the push ups and have to setup things for the face pulls. I also didn’t want to use the monster mini band as it is not comfortable to do push ups with. So my hope was that I could at least get 3x12 with a light band. Turns out I was sandbagging a little. Or maybe my triceps are starting to recover enough as I got 20 reps on each set. I did push things a little harder than I’ve been doing on these with leaving RIR but I felt I was so close with that last set to that that I went for it. The different style face pull was interesting with keeping things wider even in the end range of stretch. With that done, I ate my last of three little meals before putting stuff away and then stretching.