Yeah, it’s nice to be Pressing again.

Pressing went well. I really did miss it. I felt more in the groove today than last time — tight tight tight all the way from head to toe.

I’m still not used to supersetting all the “pulling” work in between the “pushing” work — I’ll just go into my groove of changing the weight and then remember “oh yeah, I need to do some chin-ups”. But I am enjoying it for sure.

Well, almost didn’t enjoy it today. I started with “normal-width” chins and my arm joints, especially my elbows, did not like the torque. So I played around with grip width, and a narrow grip — about 1 palm’s width apart — seems to be workable. It’s funny how almost everything I do on this Press day winds up being a narrow grip width.

I felt that some weights were a little too light, but I’m not going to worry about it too much — start too light, it’ll get heavier later.

And that’s really more the comment today: the first week back on 5/3/1 felt really good. I expected to be really sore, but I wasn’t. A little, but not crippling (which is what I expected). I think the per-day volume is good but not killer, thus I expect that hitting each “major group” 2x/week ought to work out then. I do have to remind myself to leave something in the tank, to not go to failure, “stimulate, don’t annihilate”, and all that stuff. That said, I did start to have a wonder about adding in just a bit more pressing volume — like a “first set, last” sort of thing. Not sure, and not going to bother for now.

Very much looking forward to the next week as I hit the 3’s. 🙂

5/3/1 Simplest Strength Template

• Press
  • bar x whatever
  • 60 x 5 (warmup sets superset with band pull-aparts)
  • 75 x 5
  • 90 x 3
  • 95 x 5 (work sets superset with chin-ups)
  • 110 x 5
  • 125 x 10
• Close-Grip Bench Press
  • 105 x 10 (sets superset with chin-ups)
  • 125 x 10
  • 145 x 10
• V-Bar Pulldowns
  • 85 x 20
  • 85 x 20
  • 85 x 20
• Cable Rows
  • 100 x 20
  • 100 x 15
  • 100 x 12
• Skullcrushers (wound up supersetting with the curls)
  • 45 x 20
  • 45 x 20
  • 45 x 17
• Close-grip EZ-bar Curls
  • 45 x 20
  • 45 x 18
  • 45 x 13