The highlight of today wasn’t the workout, but all the after-work. I believe all the foam rolling, stretching, massage, and other bodywork I’m doing to myself is making a big and positive impact on my entire body, but especially my back and shoulder area. I’m still working on finding better ways to impact my shoulder/upper-back area, but it’s getting there. And overall, things are feeling MUCH looser, MUCH better. I’d like to hope this is going to improve my arm pain issues too, as I believe that is actually rooted in my shoulders.

Heck, just rolling a tennis ball under my foot (on the sole) for a few minutes is having a noticable impact and improvement. I used to use a lacrosse ball, but that didn’t work as well. The tennis ball works better because it squishes, so I get more contact and a spread-out force, instead of a pin-point force. Just push/stand “hard” and roll it everywhere on my sole. So much improvement.

I may skip cardio here and there, but I don’t want to skip this rehab work.

Anyways, arm day.

I made one big change: no more supersets. Instead, I alternate: all curl sets, then all close-grip, then all hammers, then all french press, etc.. I also changed to only have 1.5 minutes of intraset rest, trying to keep moving. I found that when I started a new exercise it went better because the muscle group was more rested. But as the sets went on, because of the drop in intraset rest, the sets actually got harder. I think this works better, if nothing else, it’s less of a logistical problem at the gym.

I did change my final biceps exercise to cable curls. Had to adjust the weight a bit to find the right spot (may drop it even a little bit more to hit even higher reps). But I dug it. What was especially cool was really feeling the isolation here – the curling felt like pure biceps contraction and nothing else, especially on the drop sets at the end.

So, I’ll probably go with this emotion for a bit.

• BB Curls (elbows in, wider grip)
  • 55 x 8
  • 65 x 7
  • 75 x 6
  • 85 x 5
  • 95 x 4
  • 105 x 3
  • 85 x 10 (AMRAP)
  • 85 x 5 (50%)
• Close-Grip Bench
  • bar x 5
  • 105 x 8
  • 125 x 7
  • 145 x 6
  • 185 x 5
  • 205 x 4
  • 225 x 3
  • 195 x 12 (AMRAP)
  • 195 x 5 (50%)
• Incline Hammer Curls (3 second eccentric, go to failure, then stand and do AMRAP alternating supinated curls)
  • 25e x 12 (8 more)
  • 25e x 12 (3 more)
  • 25e x 10 (3 more)
• Standing French Press
  • 75 x 15
  • 75 x 15
  • 75 x 10
• Cable Curl (hold/sqeeze at top)
  • 60 x 23
  • 50 x 27
  • 50 x 18
  • 40 x 5 (drop)
  • 30 x 5 (drop)
• Rope Pressdowns (First 20, twist out hands at bottom; remainder straight hands pushed to failure)
  • 60 x 40
  • 60 x 33
  • 60 x 25
  • 50 x 8 (drop)
  • 40 x 8 (drop)