I thought I had things dialed in, but it looks like there’s still some room to adjust. Not a bad thing, as I’d rather start light and slow and have a longer road of progression.

Incline pressing adds a little to the work up. Taking a cue from the squatting, to work up to a heavier weight so I can keep that progressing. I’m getting more used to the equipment at the new gym, and it’s really forcing me to improve my technique, which is a good thing. Much more tightness throughout my body. One thing I realized today is I have not been keeping my midsection tight, so I focused hard on being tight from toes to top-of-head today. What was cool was that often caused the bar to just rise out of the j-hooks like magic. Tightness is so key, and there’s always room for improvement. It’s probably the #1 cue I tell myself.

I will stick with these weights on inclines until I hit 6 on the 50% set. Any “high rep sets” that I’m doing for upper body I’m setting a ceiling of 12 reps before I drop back down. Not everything will go to 12, but certainly that’s the ceiling for upper body work.

DB benches were really cool today. First, I still think I can up the top weight because I’m aiming for 6 reps; I got 8 and only stopped at 8 because I was not trying to rep-out here (I could have done more). So this will probably get a 5# bump. I’ll probably also bump the 2nd set to 65’s, but the last set is about where I want it. For sure these are really good. I go down, hold, stretch, sink in, and press up. Descent is a little slow, ascent is explosive. Push to true failure. I really like how these go. I am also finding they are giving me one hell of a grip workout, which is an unexpected but welcome side-effect.

Flies are whatever they are. I need to up that weight because I pushed the last set to failure and got a LOT of reps here. In fact, even tho I added the drop set, I didn’t quite go to failure on the sets. It was almost failure, so it just means I need to bump up a hair.

As a result of pushing a bit harder on the front end, the back-end shoulder work of course lost a little ground. This is to be expected. Main comment here is on the last set each of lat raises and bent raises I would do some partial burns. No idea how many, just until I couldn’t do any more.

Afterwards I did 20 minutes elliptical, then a good session of stretching and rolling. In fact, one thing I spent some time on was just “standing” on a tennis ball and rolling it under my foot to massage and loosen up the muscles in my sole. Wow, that hurt, but afterwards is feeling so good. Yes, overall things are feeling better, and I really do need to keep this work on the recovery and just maintaining my body. It’s making my gym sessions long, but so far my body is thankful.

• Incline Press
  • bar x 10
  • 115 x 5
  • 135 x 4
  • 155 x 3
  • 175 x 2
  • 195 x 1
  • 215 x 1
  • 225 x 1
  • 185 x 12 (AMRAP)
  • 185 x 4 (50%)
• DB Bench Press (pause at bottom, get the stretch)
  • 40e x 10 (light warmup)
  • 55e x 8 (light warmup)
  • 85e x 8
  • 60e x 15
  • 40e x 21
• DB Flat Flies
  • 20e x 12
  • 20e x 12
  • 20e x 20, 15e x 11, 12e x 10 (drop set)
• Press
  • 115 x 10
  • 115 x 10
  • 115 x 6
• Front Plate Raise (tri set)
  • 45 x 12
  • 45 x 9
  • 45 x 7
• DB Lateral Raise (tri set)
  • 15e x 10
  • 15e x 9
  • 15e x 7 (followed by partial burns)
• Rear Lateral Raise (tri set)
  • 12e x 10
  • 12e x 10
  • 12e x 10 (followed by partial burns)