Sometimes you just clear you mind and the day goes well.

Things have been clearing up for me in life, a little less stress, and so I didn’t have tons of things weighing on my head going into the gym. So I just…. lifted.

A little Amon Amarth doesn’t hurt either. 😉

Pressing went well. I am still working to fine-tune my setup, but it’s getting there. For sure, reduction in “pressure” as I set up and press upwards is helping. It’s still a matter tho of finding the right balance so I can maintain tightness and balance and keep things moving. But so far so good. What seemed to help today was, as I said, just having a clear mind and doing it.

I was supposed to try those rack pull-ups today as a way to mitigate some issues. But given Tuesday’s experiment with doing pulldowns to warm up then pull-ups for work, I wanted to explore that a little more today. During the Press work sets I did slightly heavier pulldowns in a reverse pyramid: weights go up, reps go down. I did NOT push the reps hard, stopping well short of really feeling worked, because it’s just about warming up. Interesting is as I started I felt the same discomfort in the teres major insertion area, but no where near the same issues because I was moving half as much weight. Imagine that. 🙂 The discomfort went away quickly as things warmed up, then doing pull-ups during the close-grips felt just fine (tho I did lose a couple reps, but meh).

I’m actually digging this.

It got me to thinking… not just this, but a few other things, and then blending them all together.

I do need to do some sort of a cut. Even if it’s just 6 weeks (tho I may go 10-12), I got too free some months back and I need to remedy that. I won’t switch off 5/3/1, but the program will need to be modified slightly. Jim talks about it in the “5/3/1 for Powerlifting” eBook: do the main lifts with no extra reps, push assistance work with lower rest periods and higher volume, and push conditioning work. Pretty simple. So I’ll have to modify the assistance work, but otherwise I plan to just stay on the basic track about things. So, for all my other talks, this is where I really need to go for the next some weeks. No question. If I can drop at least 10 lb, I’ll be good.

5/3/1 Simplest Strength Template

• Press
  • bar x whatever
  • 65 x 5 (warmup sets superset with band pull-aparts)
  • 80 x 5
  • 100 x 3
  • 115 x 3 (work sets superset with pull-downs)
  • 130 x 3
  • 150 x 8
• Close-Grip Bench Press
  • 130 x 8 (sets superset with pull-ups)
  • 155 x 8
  • 175 x 6
• V-Bar Pulldowns
  • 110 x 20
  • 110 x 18
  • 110 x 14
• Face Pulls
  • 90 x 20
  • 90 x 20
  • 90 x 16
• Lying Triceps Extensions (superset with curls)
  • 60 x 20
  • 60 x 18
  • 60 x 13
• Close-grip EZ-bar Curls
  • 55 x 20
  • 55 x 18
  • 55 x 13