September 7, 2026 – Week 2, Day 1

Dynamic Warm Up

EZ Curl Bar Pullover PNF Stretches/Offset Load Peterson Stepdowns (3”)/Paused Behind the Neck Strict Presses (3 seconds top of head)
22x10--45x15/15--45x10
22x10--45x15/15--45x10

Paused Tibialis Raises (2 seconds)/Calf Raises
bwx25/bwx25 (FHL)
bwx25/bwx25 (KOT)

Chaos Bands Pushups/Assisted Spanish Squats
bwx15/bwx45 seconds
bwx15/bwx45 seconds
bwx15/bwx45 seconds

One Arm Half Kneeling Dumbbell Strict Presses (3-0-3-1 tempo)/One Arm Half Kneeling Band Lat Pulldowns
40x10/10 – abx40/40 seconds
40x10/10 – abx40/40 seconds
40x10/10 – abx40/40 seconds

Band Pullaparts/Band Shoulder Dislocations
mbx15/mbx10
mbx15/mbx10

Stretching

Comments: I slept pretty heavy Saturday and that ended up being the case for Sunday and Monday. Pretty much compressed my days to being breakfast, whatever I needed to do before dinner and then dinner and evening alone. Walking felt good Sunday. Still not looking forward to going into the office for work tomorrow. My bruises from stone lifting in Scotland have essentially gone at this point. I do want to add thoughts with end of last prep. Squat was more or less figuring out what worked for me and the strength was there from prep. Log I feel like that went down over course of prep and that this was more just maintain. Deadlift I feel is finally on track now. Turf didn’t really help with going fast on yoke. Farmer’s had been a bit of fluke with the pick and wanting to pass out. Turf wasn’t thick enough training for the medley and need to expect shorter strap as default. More time with the dumbbells and work on getting reps rather than singles if those style pop up again. Nothing really on the loading medley, just have to work on getting my hamstrings/lower back to standard. I take no credit for the lead up training that had me conditioned, only for the deload and peak. Anyways, on to training. I started a little later compared to last week with the day off. Foam rolling starting things off. My abs (especially lower) were quite sore and I’m uncertain if from pull ups (as sometimes get that) or the kettlebell stuff from Saturday. Calves needed a fair amount as did upper back. Surprisingly not much was needed for hamstrings or quads. Neck rehab/mobility stuff felt like it should, could tell some things were tight but not overly so. No issues with glute activation or lower body mobility. Dead hang to finish things up. Could tell some stuff stiff/tight from past week session. For training, I hadn’t intended on changing what I did last week. I was going to keep things the same for these recovery/reload weeks and then actually try to push some things on Week 3. But some stuff was easier than other things and perhaps I could add something here or there to have a further stimulus. As with last week, the first cluster of exercises was PNF stretches with the EZ curl bar, Peterson stepdowns and paused btn presses. I did not add anything the pressing but I did to the other two. I felt adding a little more weight to the stretches was fine since my bar is like 10lbs under what a normal EZ curl bar is. These actually felt better this time around. The stepdowns, I didn’t want to increase the box height so elected to do weight. I was going to have the ssb on my back for these but decided to do a 45lbs plate in the offset side hand so there was more oblique work here. These weren’t so bad. My shoulders/triceps felt less wonky on the BTN press stuff this time around. I guess point is to do these more than one time to see adaption. It wouldn’t be good if this was something that took a month to figure out. From there ankle stuff with tib raises and calf raises. Gotten intimate with these in the last two months to get knee feeling better and try to get stuff working right in the ankles. The calf raise portions don’t feel that tough compared to the paused tib raises. Next pairing chaos band push ups and assisted Spanish squats. No changes on the push ups but did increase the time on the squats. These had been responsible for a fair bit of DOMS last week. Knees were a tad achy at the start but felt fine on subsequent sets. On to the next pairing of lifts. Tempo single arm half kneeling with band lat pulls (also since arm half kneeling). This had been the harder thing to get through last week in this session (with the previous set a somewhat close second). The only real change I was making here intentionally was to have 10 seconds added to the time for the lat pulls. But I figured it made more sense and I could move things along a bit if I did one set of pressing with the left and then the same side for the lat pulldowns and then switch to the right and do same before taking a rest. Rather than do a set and rest like 30-60 seconds. I think this worked out better and didn’t feel like it took as long. The dumbbell pressing felt better this week and less issues so I ended up doing 10 reps instead of 8 reps there. I could tell my lats were getting fatigued by the end of the pulls with the added time. A little break to put away stuff before finishing up with the last pairing for the session. Pull aparts and dislocations. My upper back, triceps and shoulders had been quite tensed at this point in the session last week and these had been tough to get through. Not so this week. I did slightly modify the pullaparts so that there was a slight row portion with the band tension. With that done, I got dinner started and took care of some house upkeep before eating and then eventually stretching.