Pretty good day.

Benching went well. I am going into these heavier sessions with some trepidation, and I realized why: past injury. Whenever I’ve gotten to heavier weights, it’s when injury or things like the arm pain set in. So I’m a little wary: will the pain come back? since it’s a shoulder issue, am I risking a different (and worse) injury, especially if I don’t keep tight (as I’ve realized doing that – the crush grip – really helps mitigate things)? It’s not that I can’t move the weight, it’s just the fear of injury again.

It’ll be interesting in the coming weeks: next cycle, weights go up; cycle after that, weights go up and start to touch more so in places I’ve not been before. It’s actually exciting, and yeah… a little fear of the weights is good, especially when you overcome.

Anyways, benching was fine. Focusing on the crush grip does really help, and I was much better about maintaining that throughout the rep, as I’ve had a habit of loosening up during the descent. During the BBB sets I really worked on tucking the elbows and better drive out.

I did NOT lunge today; I’ll come back to that.

Everything else was just everything else. Reasonable assistance work.

I saw the orthopedic doc yesterday about my knees. Cursory examination looks like it may be a knee cartilage issue. No immediate signs of things like a tear or other worse problems, which is good. I’ll be getting an MRI in a few days to get a better picture of things, and then we’ll go from there.

One thing doc suggested I do between now and then is spend 20-30 minutes/day on a spin bike. So ok, I started that today. Only did 10 minutes, because the lower quads started to feel it. Interesting sensation, as normal stationary bikes don’t hit me like that, but I guess the angle in the spin bike… Anyways, I’ll work up to it. We’ll see how this fares for me.

5/3/1 (Based on: Forever, BBB, 5’s PRO

• Bench Press
  • bar x 5
  • 100 x 5
  • 135 x 5
  • 155 x 3
  • 190 x 5
  • 215 x 5
  • 240 x 5
  • 135 x 10
  • 135 x 10
  • 135 x 10
  • 135 x 10
• Bent-over Lateral Raises (superset with bench warm-up sets)
  • 12e x 15
  • 12e x 15
  • 12e x 15
  • 12e x 15
• Kroc Rows (superset with bench work sets)
  • 60 x 10e
  • 60 x 10e
  • 60 x 23e
• Pushdowns
  • 85 x 20
  • 85 x 20
  • 85 x 20
• Slant Board Sit-ups
  • 22 x 12
  • 22 x 12
  • 22 x 9