I’d say a solid 80% type of day.

It’s always nice when things get better as you go along. Inclines were “meh” but the DB presses felt so good — even cranked out more reps with the 95s than I thought I could. And on the DB presses I really sank them deep, good stretch, good effort out of the hole.

One thing I’m thinking strongly about is switching from inclines to flat benching. The main reason I did inclines was that flat were causing me all that arm pain, but overhead pressing was not. I figured to try inclines to see how bad it was, and it was not. So, I programmed inclines to give me some sort of pressing, and it does have a decent carry-over to flat. My arms are feeling really good, I’m sure aided by all the rolling and stretching work I’m doing. So I’m getting curious to try flat pressing again. Not going to switch JUST yet, but it’s on my brain. I wouldn’t change much else in my programming, just a swap and probably starting really light and maybe even more basebuilding-style-programming (e.g. model 1: working up to a single 85%, then 5×8 @ 75% using my incline weights to program from, since in theory one can flat press more than incline, so that should start me out extra light).

Anyways, a good day overall. Progress is being made.

• Incline Press
  • bar x 10
  • 125 x 5
  • 145 x 4
  • 165 x 3
  • 185 x 2
  • 205 x 1
  • 225 x 1
  • 235 x 1
  • 195 x 9 (AMRAP)
  • 195 x 5 (50%)
• DB Bench Press (pause at bottom, get the stretch)
  • 40e x 10 (warm)
  • 60e x 8 (warm)
  • 95e x 10
  • 70e x 13
  • 45e x 17
• DB Flat Flies
  • 30e x 10
  • 30e x 11
  • 30e x 11
  • 25e x 6 (drop)
  • 20e x 5 (drop)
• Press
  • 125 x 10
  • 125 x 8
  • 125 x 7
• Front Plate Raise (tri set)
  • 45 x 13
  • 45 x 9
  • 45 x 10
• DB Lateral Raise (tri set)
  • 15e x 10
  • 15e x 7
  • 15e x 8 + partial burns
• Rear Lateral Raise (tri set)
  • 12e x 12
  • 12e x 10
  • 12e x 8 + partial burns