May 26, 2025 – Week 1, Day 1

 Dynamic Warm Up

Axle Push Presses
42x5
72x3
102x2
132x2
162x5
162x5
162x5
162x5
162x5
162x5
162x5
162x5
162x5
162x5

Dips
bwx5
bw+25x3
bw+50x2
bw+75x8
bw+75x12

Pull-ups
bwx12
bwx12
bwx8

12” Log Seated Overhead Lockouts (6” ROM)
140x3
190x3
240x6
270x6
300x6

Leaning Dumbbell Lateral Raises/Paused Half Kneeling Band Face Pulls
24x15—15/abx15
24x15—15/abx15

Stretching
 
Comments: While not thrilled with getting a cold and having to essentially go with option D as far as training plans go, it is good that I didn’t seem to suffer as much with jetlag and getting back into the swing of things like the last time I went to another time zone. I think part of it was never acclimating to the time zone that saved me. Also good that work wasn’t that bad despite the chaos. And having a 3 day weekend to come back to so that I could get my self in order with sleep and rest. My weekend was spent getting workout plan in order and then mowing the lawn and walking beyond doing some housekeeping. I was a bit surprised I was 260lbs even for my weekly weigh-in as I was over 268lbs for the comp (with shoes on). Still dealing with the neck thing. Still have a bruise on the left arm from fingal finger (right hand is not in pain and fine now). Left shoulder and right knee decided to act up while I was resting. First session on what is probably going to feel like the rest of my life. No working so lifting in the early afternoon. Did a good bit more foam rolling on my lower body then usual as stuff was feeling stiff and tight. Upper body got decently warmed up from the neck rehab protocol. Lower body stuff with the usual circuit to get the knees happy and then static stretching. Got my polarized lens on my glasses since staring into the sun for some of this stuff. I was really not sure how this would go with axle press considering the big ask with volume. 50 reps total with 60% of “training max”. Inverted from the normal style of Juggernaut so doing 10x5 instead of 5x10. I want to keep things crisp and build fatigue and not trying to do reps with fatigue and have bar speed slow down a ton. I wasn’t planning on doing these with no support gear of any kind but it just felt right to be unburdened in the moment. There was anxiety but not so much that I was feeling twitches. First set already had me asking myself what I got into as felt a bit heavy. I told myself I could stop at any time and bargaining to do 5 sets instead of 10 sets but I just kept going anyways. Kept to usual rests here so I got done in about 15 minutes once I started. Was definitely feeling fatigue by the end of this and reconsidering some choices with the rest of the workout. I’d say less than a handful of the reps were things where there were issues with balance so that is good. Next was dips. These seemed to have treated me well this past training cycle and doing them with low volume and adding each time was good. I was planning to pick up where I left off but I think I realized I should drop down in weight after seeing the fatigue from the 50 reps of push press. The other being that it has been about a month since I last did weighted dips. Left shoulder was fine but right shoulder was acting up at the start. So dropped to 50lbs in the event I was too beat up but that felt good so went back to 75lbs (still 15lbs under what I wrote). Shoulders were fine, could feel the triceps missed the attention these hit them with. So honestly not that bad. Moved on to pull ups. I had initially put to just do 2 sets of bodyweight as a coming back to it thing. Leave reps in reserve. Aim was just 2x10 and plan is to do weighted pull-ups this training prep. 12 reps felt pretty comfortable that first set. I definitely was a bit closer to my limit for the second set. Then I decided screw it, put a third set here just to get some more volume. That time the fatigue was quite apparent as I was not really able to get as many reps there. It is nice to see my back is working in concert here and strong. The band assisted stuff I felt helped a good bit with getting my form on these so not going to complete abandon that in the future. More triceps brutalization after that. Going back to the lockouts for overhead. Swapping in log instead of axle. Log seems to be easier to find that balance point vs axle in the rack. But I guess it has been a while or I’ve not really done rack work with the log as it was a bit of pain to set up. I wasn’t too sure what I’d end up hitting here but plan was to do same thing as axle. I feel like this and planned leg press stuff are going to be my “heavy” exercises while I’m doing the lighter fare. Once I felt like I had things sorted here I started with doing 3x6 with plan being to work up over the sets and have the last set be leaving 2RIR or something. First set was maybe too light and a 30lbs jump seemed to be just fine. That weight also felt pretty easy that I felt another 30lbs was good and it might be still too easy. It was not too easy this time. It may have actually been a bit too challenging if I compared it to how axle had been. But it may be just right as 300lbs isn’t bad to start. I went into the garage to finish up the session. Superset to end the training. I really liked how the leaning side lateral raises had hit things in the shoulders as well as when paired with band face pulls. So doing that again. I lowered the weight and band tension and aimed for 15 reps here. I’m not sure if I will try to add weight/band tension each time and lower reps (and then go back up and drop weight to start over) or try to keep the reps the same to progress things. I’ll have to see how long it takes me to recover from this. First set was good but could tell the fatigue was getting to me in the shoulders. Second set was a bit tougher to finish up. Put stuff away before stretching and then having dinner with family.