Today was weird, but good.

“Week 3”

• 5/3/1 – Bench Press (working max: 215#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 1x5x85
  • 1x5x110
  • 1x3x130
  • 1x5x165 (work)
  • 1x3x185
  • 1x6x205 (PR)
• Asst. #1 – Bench Press
  • 5 x 10 x 125
• Asst. #2 – 1-Arm Dumbbell Rows
  • 5 x 10 x 55
• GPP – Elliptical
  • Tabata style (20 sec. 150-ish strides per min., 10 sec. 100-ish strides per min)
  • 2 minutes slow (warmup)
  • 1 Tabata set
  • 2 minutes slow (cooldown)
• DeFranco Agile 8 – just foam rolling

Today was weird.

My lower back is rather sore from deadlifting 2 days ago. You know how it goes… day after you’re sore, 2 days later you’re REALLY sore. Then last night before bed I couldn’t pop something in my lumbar region and that just made it worse. Finally got it to adjust this morning, but it still hurt. Then while doing my PR set on bench press, I was really tightening up. I’ve been working on putting my whole body into the bench press, keeping my feet really planted, pushing through my heels, whole body tight, whole body pushing, but keep the butt on the bench, keep an arch, etc.. And while I still have a LONG way to go on getting the technique, I did make progress because boy I had an arch today — almost too much arch. My lower back was screaming at me. I only cranked out 6 reps because my back was screaming, it surprised me and threw off my focus, and that was that. Between sets for the rest of the workout I kept doing lower back stretching exercises.

But I don’t feel bad about it. While it hurt, it showed that to some degree there was improvement in my technique. Whereas before things were collapsing down there, today they weren’t, which was awesome. Again, lots of work still to improve, but a step forward is a step forward. And as for 6 reps with 205? Well, last cycle I did 6 with 200. So no regression, I’ve gotten stronger. I can’t be unhappy about the progress.

Everything else just jammed along. I had to use another elliptical machine today and the resistance didn’t feel the same. It should be, in theory, but didn’t feel it. So I bumped it to “13”, and I’ll stick with that number on the machine I regularly use and see how it goes. I don’t really want to up this too much too fast.

A pretty decent day, I must say.