Today was a worthwhile experiment.

With my arm pain, I’m looking for a way to manage and reduce/eliminate the pain, but still keep lifting (if possible). For sure, flat benching is the worst as it directly causes pain to increase, but interestingly (overhead) pressing doesn’t have a problem. So going with that, I wondered how incline pressing might work for me. I can train it with the same progression and work as flat benching. It’s not quite the same, but there is fair carryover to flat benching. If a few cycles of incline pressing can help me continue work but also improve my pain issues, great. Let’s try it.

While this week is a deload, it’s also a fair opportunity to try to figure out a training max for incline pressing, so that’s what I did. A light warm-up, then just singles on the way up. Nothing big. I got to 225 and I could feel things starting to break down. I know I could have gone 235, and more (like 240-245) was a maybe; but there’s no real need because “starting too light” is the way to go and using 225 to calc the training levels is just fine (I’ll use a TM of 200).

In terms of pain, it wasn’t pain-free, but it wasn’t bad. I’ve been having a dull ache on and off every day, and while I felt a slight increase towards the last 2 sets, it was no where near as bad as it was last week flat benching.

So will inclines work for me? I don’t know. Best I can say was today gave me enough information to continue exploration because it’s possible it will work. It’s not a flat out “no” (I’ve had times when an experiment ended quickly because it was immediately obvious; this was far from that), but I need more information to know for sure. So, I’ll go ahead and program inclines for the upcoming cycle and I’ll see how it goes. It may work, it may not. If it does, great. If it doesn’t, I’ll have some additional data and will find something else.

As for programming it, I’ll likely stick with the Carter 5/4/3/2/1/1 style workup. As for additional work, I’ll likely either do the pyramid down sets OR I might just take a FSL with like 1 AMRAP then 1 50% set. I don’t know for sure; will see how the sessions go.

One thing about inclines is they don’t really work the sternal head of the pectoralis. So to manage that, I am thinking after inclines to add in something like flies. A little work there. But I don’t know. I may throw in pushups or dips instead. Again, it’ll come down to how things feel.

As for the rest of the session today, it’s deload. Nothing really to say. Only thing is swapping in Seated French Press. I want to try that for triceps work, so I tried it today just to see if my arms and shoulders wouldn’t complain. All feels good here, just will start light and work up.

• Incline Bench Press
  • bar x whatever
  • 95 x 5
  • 135 x 5
  • 155 x 3
  • 175 x 1
  • 195 x 1
  • 225 x 1
• Cable Rows
  • 105 x 12
  • 115 x 12
  • 125 x 12
• DB Upright Row
  • 35e x 12
  • 35e x 12
• Seated French Press
  • 45 x 12
  • 55 x 12
• Reverse EZ Bar Curl
  • 55 x 12
  • 55 x 12