Today was good!

First and foremost, benching with almost no arm pain is a win. 🙂 There was a little ache in my right biceps at the elbow, but that was there before the session and the session didn’t seem to change it. I think all those body work sessions with Howard really paid off. Plus taking all of last week off, stretching, etc..

That said, working up to 210 actually felt heavy. If I was going for rep PRs I’m sure I still would have hit my 10-rep threshold just fine, but again it FELT heavy. Why? don’t know. Could be that on the cutting diet here yesterday was an off day and I didn’t have much for carbs. Could be benching later in the week now I’m not as fresh. Could just be a random thing. Dunno. But worth noting.

The AMRAP set tho, again I went for 60% and hit 15 reps easily. So I am thinking I MIGHT try changing the AMRAP set to a true first-set-last. But I don’t know — feels like then on 1+ weeks I’d risk only getting 5-8 reps and I’d rather be sure to hit up to 15 reps because volume. But we’ll see. I’ll play around because nothing says I can’t try first-set-last and if it’s not enough reps I go back to straight-weight.

Assistance work is of course what it is. I continue to focus on getting a “3-0-1-0”-ish tempo. I say “ish” because I found if I really want to get that tempo I focus too much on counting and not on what’s important. So I’m more trying to just ensure the concentric is “fast and explosive” yet still the muscle moving the weight (no heaving, no momentum, etc.). Then make sure the eccentric is slower than the concentric was. One thing that came out of today is I may need to actually have a 1-second or so pause at the top/peak. Not because I want that squeeze or anything (tho I’ll take that), but more to stop momentum. As I was doing the lat pulldowns, I found that I’d lose about 1/2 the eccentric to just slowing down the momentum — not really what I want. So if I pulled down, held for a second, then all that energy was lost and the eccentric became nice and slow all the way down.

Still, today kept things “light” to help me find the placement for things and where to work, because again that slower tempo works things harder. 🙂

On the 100 rep work, I’m following that version of “100-rep protocol” where you start with about 40-70 reps, then rep as much as you can. When you hit failure, rest for as many seconds as you have reps remaining (to 100). Then keep going, get more, rest as much as there is left, etc.. I didn’t keep track of where things stopped — not really important. I’ll know over time if it’s time to move up (e.g. if first “set” hits 60-70 reps, up the weight and keep going).

Based upon 5/3/1 for Powerlifting, off-season for mass

• Bench Press (superset with lat pulldowns)
  • bar x whatever
  • 100 x 5
  • 120 x 5
  • 145 x 3
  • 160 x 5
  • 185 x 5
  • 210 x 5
  • 145 x 15
• DB Bench Press
  • 55e x 10
  • 55e x 10
  • 55e x 10
  • 55e x 10
  • 55e x 10
• Chest-Supported DB Row
  • 45e x 12
  • 45e x 12
  • 45e x 12
  • 45e x 12
  • 45e x 10
• Pushdowns
  • 35 x 100
• Face Pulls
  • 50 x 100