Week 9 - 5/3/1 - Day 31

21 May 2012

Cycle #3

And cycle numero 3 starts. This is also the third and last month of the 3-month challenge, therefore, my Boring But Big assistance exercises will bump up to 70% training max. Definitely much more difficult. Today was press day and so my assistance was the bench. Also, today I decided that I'm going to try going to the gym in the morning versus coming home after work. Usually I get to the gym before 8 and stay until 9:30 / 10:00 depending on how late I get there.

Press: 5x70, 5x80, 5x90

Getting pretty heavy. It was a workout just getting the bars off the rack. I didn't use a barbell and loaded plates since someone was in the squat rack so I decided to use the preset ones (what are these called??). Hoodie probably didn't help with shoulder mobility when I was raising the bar over. Lower back was getting sore for some reason- not sure if I'm arching too much.

Boring But Big 70%

Bench Press: 3x10xBar + 1010/8/7/6 x 115

So, again, my right tri's and lats were burning while my left tris and lats were practically unaffected. I noticed that when I lower the bar, my right forearm wasn't going down perpendicular to the floor. It seems as though I may be tucking too much on the right side while I have my elbows flared on the left. This obviously causes a load imbalance and also loading of different muscles from each side. I stood to correct this on the latter sets and tried to just avoid the tucking for now and try focus on making my form symmetric.

Chinups: 4/2/2/2/2

These felt heavy. I'm not sure if the bench drained my ability to pull, but I definitely much heavier when chinning.

Curls: 3x10x30 + ***Tricep pushdown: 1x10x30, 2x10x35 + Face pull: *3x10x25

I increased the weight on the tricep pushdowns, they're way too easy now and I wanted some more resistance. I'm not sure how I feel about increasing the curls yet. Unfortunately, I'm using the "preset" barbells and so I can't load 5 lbs on them easily. And I also don't want to be the jackass curling a normal barbell inside a squat rack. The face pull felt significantly better. I used parallel foot stance instead of staggered and leaned back a little so my body was at an incline. First off, this took out back involvement completely. This helped quite a bit because before I would have lower back aches when doing these. Second, instead of pulling upward at a slant, I, instead, pulled the rope straight to my face. Felt the anterior delts getting worked good.