October 5, 2026 – Week 6, Day 1

Dynamic Warm Up

Band Pec Flyes/Paused Band Pull-Aparts (3 seconds)
lb’sx20/µbx20
lb’sx20/µbx20

12” Log High Incline Bench Presses
90x10
105x8
120x6
135x5
150x4
165x3
180x14
Add 1 Second Pauses
153x14
153x14
Cluster Reps (30 seconds)
153x4+4+3+3

Pause Inverted Rows (1 second)
bw+20x8
bw+25x8
bw+31x8
bw+36x8

Lying Chain Triceps Extensions/Leaning Dumbbell Lateral Raises/Strap Band Face Pulls
11’sx5
22’sx4
33’sx3/12x3—3/lbx5
44’sx15/16x15—15/lbx15
44’sx15/16x15—15/lbx15
44’sx15/16x15—15/lbx15

Stretching

Comments: At about the point in training where I’m far enough from the past competition and far out from the next but have had consistent, progressive workouts and feel like I should be doing something. However, I’m still using light weights relatively speaking as not yet over 200lbs on any pressing or free squat and just did 300lbs on a set of deadlifts. But picking up sandbags didn’t feel terrible. Keep trusting what I’m doing. Weight up about 1lbs from last week (which was down 3lbs after being up 7lbs) so I may be stabilizing at the higher weight range closer to 120kgs bodyweight than 115kgs bodyweight. I did not feel like working as I went to bed Sunday evening. But here we are. There are mostly positives with the switch up to telework from commuting but it still requires some changes and my body likes to be adverse to those changes. But the better sleep schedule does wonders. A lot less stress. I had gotten in a walk Sunday and soft tissue work despite it being wet out. Quite a lovely fall day today. On to training right after work. Foam rolling starting things off. Calves needed it, especially in the lower part of the muscles near the ankles. Definitely more than the previous weeks as of late but not quite the level it had been before World’s. Hamstrings were fine, just a little tight/sore from Saturday. Quads needed a good bit on both sides. Much closer to even than usual. Upper back also needed a good bit of moving to feel good to go. Neck rehab/mobility stuff followed that and that was fine. No issues with glute activation or lower body mobility. Dead hang to finish things up and get a little more decompression before starting training. The start of session is roughly the same as it has been. The second half though is where the changes are happening. Band superset to starting things off with pec flyes and paused pull-aparts. I might have lost count on the first set of pec flyes as that felt more exhausting than the second set. Good to get a pump in the chest so as not just there for decoration. It might be why sandbag picks didn’t feel that bad Saturday. The pull aparts for the most part are fine with working the back contraction and stretching chest. But the thin band with the tension on it can dig into the palm of my hands. Part of this is getting stuff prefatigued for the pressing that follows as well as having that also be a lot of volume. High incline log following up. This particular session on the log incline was kind of a pivot and amalgam of sessions. Ideally, I’d have done another of the eccentric emphasis stuff and then go to no tempo modifications. But the weeks wouldn’t really work out and have stuff on different days and what not. Also knew that takes a beating doing the eccentric accentuated stuff and upper body takes longer to recover than my lower body from it. So the plan for the day was to work up in the pyramid fashion to my 10 rep set weight I did two weeks prior but with regular rep tempo. Leave 1-2RIR for the start of things. I wasn’t feeling great about it as I felt like my upper body was already fatigued from the reps leading up to that set as well as the push presses Saturday. But somehow what felt off at 5 reps ended up being closer to 15 reps. This was definitely in 1-2RIR range. So that was a bit of surprise there. Which then made the rest of the pressing tougher on me. The initial plan was to do 85% of that for three matching rep sets, which would be the same “down” weight as last week of 153lbs. So looking at 3x14. But I had the wise idea to add pauses on those down sets just because the plan going forward is going to be regular reps and then pause reps for this next block. I’m about 10% off what I was doing back in 2021 with the lower incline grade but this did manage to be 1 rep more than that time. The pauses killed me and I go through the one set before I knew this might be something too big to chew. Second set confirmed it and I had to decide on whether I called it earlier or I try to get 14 more reps out of this weight. I elected that the only way I’d get through them is breaking up into bits. So elected to do cluster reps with 30 seconds rest on the last set. My pressing muscles were definitely tired as I felt like I was going to miss some of these reps. But got it done. Obviously won’t be this aggressive once switch to contest prep and focus on log. But getting swole in the upper body and feeling good. Into the garage for the rest of the session. Dropping the dumbbell rows and going with my preferred inverted ring rows. These just feel good for me. But I had wanted to do the dumbbell ones beforehand to get in some work. Plan was to do just 4x8 at RPE 7.5. Which could’ve been bodyweight. But I figured that would probably be too easy and did 20lbs added and did more than just a slight pause here. I did feel some fatigue as I did more of these but felt pretty darn good so went up each set by a little. Next week is to be the same and I’m not sure if I will try to push weights up each set again or find something decent for straight sets. The last thing was the conditioning aspect of the session. Not in the same sense as those chaos bradford presses but would make good use of the conditioning gains from there. Essentially a triset of triceps, shoulders and upper back and likely will be used going forward. Extension based triceps I tend to have a history with and I wanted to see how a chain version would go and feel. Took a bit to figure out and I wasn’t expecting to need so much chain weight to find something that fit the bill of RPE 7 for 3x15. I just recall from past experience that triceps endurance peters out. I can likely do more but these felt pretty gentle on the elbows. The other two things I was more familiar with. Leaning dumbbell lateral raises and variations of face pulls. I feel I got those more at the right effort level. Left side my elbow didn’t care for the movement with the laterals but that is more just the strain from the torque. It is tolerable. But seems things worked out here. Put stuff away and ate dinner before stretching.