Pretty decent day.

Benching went well. I’m enjoying the competition bench/rack, especially how the bench pad covering is so tacky — I can really get into AND STAY in position. I am finding myself making small changes to technique to work with this. It’s also really nice to have more fine adjustments in rack height — less disturbance to the shoulders and position when unracking the bar.

And so then more benching. Moar. More volume right now, that will decrease as the cycles wear on. I picked a weight that’s a little more than 50% in an effort to not get a clean 5×10.

I’m also not supersetting as much. In part it’s driven by equipment realities at the gym, but also I’m wanting to move away from it. It’s a fine technique at times, but I get more out of things when I can focus on the thing vs. the 2nd exercise getting less out of it because fatigued and not from that exercise. Not totally abandoning because of time limits, but some.

Dropped Krocs in favor of regular DB rows. I need to up the weight, but it’s a nice variation.

I was to do curl-grip pulldowns, but my arms/shoulders weren’t feeling it – so narrow grip it was. I’m also adding a little more warm-up work to help me ease into things – happier joints and tendons.

I’m also trying to drop the rest time between sets. Bigger movements like benching, same 2-3 minutes. But the assistance work? Trying to move to 60-90 seconds.

I gotta admit, feeling a wee beat up. I want to push as much as I can and see about making at least 3 cycles here. After that, I’ll adjust. I’m starting to think a good idea might be knowing 1RM-ish, taking 85% for an EDM, then doing 3 cycles in a more hypertrophy orientation such as 5’s PRO and a lot of assistance work. And also, taking a bit of a cut diet. I would expect this should not set me back too much in terms of long-term progress, and help me overall wave through a good long-term approach.

5/3/1 (4th cycle, leader-1, 5/3/1+PR sets)

• Bench Press
  • bar x 5
  • 110 x 5
  • 135 x 5
  • 160 x 3
  • 175 x 5
  • 200 x 5
  • 230 x 8
  • 155 x 10
  • 155 x 10
  • 155 x 8
  • 155 x 6
  • 155 x 6
• Bent-over Lateral Raises (superset with bench warm-up sets)
  • 20e x 15
  • 20e x 15
  • 20e x 15
  • 20e x 15
• DB Rows (superset with bench work sets)
  • 75 x 12e
  • 75 x 12e
  • 75 x 12e
• Narrow-Grip Pulldowns
  • 90 x 10
  • 120 x 15
  • 120 x 12
  • 120 x 8
• Rope-Handle Pushdowns (superset with curls)
  • 100 x 20
  • 100 x 20
  • 100 x 13
  • 100 x 10
• Cross-Body Alternating DB Curls
  • 35e x 12e
  • 35e x 12e
  • 35e x 10e
  • 35e x 8e
• Stationary Bike
  • 10 min