5 reps, then 10 reps then 9 reps with the 45s on the floor bridge press. Then did 25 reps single leg hip thrusts each side, BW only, since it will complement the bridge press.
Went easy on the skaters just to give the press a head start.
Alternating the above as a push day, with a pull day of rows, BW pullups, band pulls and curls.
I like this split.
6 then 10 then 10 reps on the floor press with 45s. 30 reps single leg hip thrusts. 20 reps pull ups (about 90% ROM and the last two a bit messy).
Sleep is my big challenge now. Not insomnia, just switching off the TV and getting to bed, but oh my, the following day is just sooooo much better with that extra hour sleep.
I’m going to try EMOM for my floor press for a while. The Myo reps are not practical with the press since you only get five breaths between sets, and getting into position is a bit of a workout in itself. Maybe two reps every minute with the 50s. If Glenn Pendlay is right, it might just be the kick I need.
I’ll report.
Managed 6 EMOM sets of doubles with the 50kg DBs (110lbs). Felt damn heavy. The last double was a grind, and I don’t think your supposed to grind with these EMOMs.
One advantage of the floor press is that its a little less work to get set up each time compared to the DB bench press on an actual bench. But its still a fair bit more messing around than just unracking a bar over your head. The arms and the hands take a bit of beating with each set up.
Still. I like the idea and Ill stick with it for a few weeks.
I dropped the EMOM for the floor press after a few days because its a pain getting into position every minute. I think its a great exercise, but I just don’t like watching a clock. So I went back to my old favourite ladders, 2, 3, 5, 2, 3, 5 reps. Felt much better. I’d like to get to Dan Johns hypertrophy ladders of 2, 3, 5, 10 reps with the 110 lbs. I think Ill post a question somewhere about these Golgi tendons. I suspect they are messing with my lifting on anything heavier that the 45s because they think I’m old and foolish.
I bought a cheap but big and strong plastic ab wheel. Man that hurts the next day if you’ve neglected the abs for a while. I can now do a good few roll outs from the knees only. Ill see if I can progress to a few seconds from the feet out.
50 kg DBs floor press 5 sets of 4 reps. Felt quite good. Did a load of band pull aparts and face pulls for upper back, side and rear delts.
Im going to focus again for a few weeks every day on the floor press with a bunch of band work for some balance.
The legs and rows will be ok for a while.
50 kg DBs floor press 4 sets of 5 reps. This is more like it! I’m just going to give this exercise some attention every day until my body gets used to it.
Sleep really makes a big difference. It really cuts into my TV and whiskey time, but, it’s worth it. THAT is how much I now rate sleep 
50kgs (110) DBs three sets of six. Last six was a real grinnnnd though.
Will do a load of band work for delts and traps in front of the TV now to celebrate!
Next try tomorrow will be three sets of seven.
Lifting the same weight, around two days in every three, with the only other lifts being band work for rear and upper back, I’ve managed to get the floor press to 50KG (110lb) x sets 1, rep, 2 reps, 4 reps, 7 reps, 7 reps.
This is big news for the stooge, because it now means, at last, that my floor press is just about on parity with my single leg lift. That was always a big hope of mine. Ill be 47 years old this summer, and it would be just fine to be able to rag doll some 50s in the back yard while teaching the young fellas their broad jumps, push ups and pull ups.
PS: put on 5lb bodyweight while progressing this, but it’s worth it. Now at 202lb (92kg). Some of my pants don’t quite fit like they do at 90kg LOL, but I think there’s a few extra grams of muscle up there on my chest and shoulders too.
So, the next big plan is to bring those two lifts up to parity with the DB rows, at over 20 good reps, which should take a good long while. The Holy Trinity of stooge lifts will then be complete! Then I’ll need to cut body weight to just under 200lbs again.
Wow. Logs are great for some perspective. I started this one in November. Seems like yesterday. That’s six months just to add 12 lbs to a one DB exercise! So, around 2 lbs on average each month, so, in another few months…
Patchy schedule of lifting recently, but I’m happy the floor DB press has settled well into a few sets of six reps.
I started again on skater squats, with just the 40Kgs (88lbs), as I knew I’d be rusty, and so I was! Did seven, then ten reps, just to wake the legs up again. Ill do 45s the next leg day and then, hopefully, 50s the next.
Also, major scientific breakthrough! I’m still waiting for the double blind peer reviewed studies to be completed, but I strongly suspect that drinking whiskey before lifting may actually affect ones lifts and ones sleep afterwards. I know! Shocking isn’t it!
Eleven good reps each side on the skater squats with 45kg DBs.
I think the next short term goal is: 10 reps floor press, 10 reps skaters and 20 reps rows, with a pair of 50 kg DBs. It will be soon…few months at most.
Leg day yesterday. Eight kinda messy reps each leg skater squat with the 50Kg 110lbs DBs. Tired today, as squatting late in the evening seems to amp up my system and affect my sleep.
Tomorrow will be push day (I’m back to push pull legs split). I think I’ll follow P Carter advice and just add some body weight to bring the floor press up a bit and then try to retain as I diet back down.
Still, that 50/10 trinity is within a few short months…I can feel it…
Leg day again yesterday. 10 fairly tidy reps each leg skater squat with the 50Kg 110lbs DBs.
Stooge happy.
Eating plenty of food and getting sleep. Would love to get ten reps in the floor press soon!
I’ve been working hard making friends with the floor press, and you know what?, you can teach an old dog a trick or two. I really feel like I own the exercise now, whereas before it felt uneasy and unstable. I can now do a really good, any day of the week kind of max, eight or nine reps of the floor press with the two 50kgs, with a flat back and very little leg drive, well just a sneaky bounce at the start to get me going off the floor.
I’m going the get the duct tape out tonight after dinner and I’m going to stick on some five kg iron plates on to each end of the York fifties, to make me a brand new pair of sixties. (I like the Dan John idea of going up in biggish jumps). The rows and the single leg deadlifts will be fine, but the floor press will be …interesting.
I turn 47 years old soon enough. If I can knockout a few doubles and triples with my new 60ies, it will make a great B’day present.
Looking back: it has taken me from Nov 2017 to now, to get from a shaky 45kg DB press to a solid 9 reps at 50kg, and from a five rep max single leg dead lift with two 50kgs to a steady ten rep any-day max. As a younger man that rate of progress would probably have frustrated me, but really, its been a very rewarding experience. Hopefully I can keep improving for a good while longer…
Reality check on the plan: managed a 1.2.3.4.4.4 reps with a pair of 55kgs. Still, thats OK, its 55 for reps, right? Duct tape rocks!
I didn’t like the unbalanced mongrel 55s I had taped up, so, I strapped another 5kg plate onto each, and I am now the proud owner of a pair of fairly unadjustable 60Kg dumbbells. According to a Rep Calculator web site I found, a lifter who can lift 50 for 7 and 55 for 4, should have a one rep max of 60, and sure enough, I manage one rep, twice, with my new 60s. One rep max, no kiddin! Damn near killed me. I slept long and hard that night, and the next.
So the plan now is to use the 50s in the local gym/pool when myself and the wife go there, and then play around with the 60s at home (where I can curse and howl appropriately).
I might need to do Anderson squats to keep the single leg dead lifts going with the 60s, but that’s no harm, and my rows needed the extra weight in any case.
I’ll need a new thread title…
Well, that was interesting…
My body was not too impressed with a few sessions of singles using the sixties. I am a slow developer, you might say, in that I have been developing very slowly with relatively low intensity for a few decades, so that I am still getting a bit stronger in my late forties, at a modest enough level. Any time I manage to lift a weight once, it is usually followed within a short time with a double, and a triple…etc…etc… But the sixties have proven a bit much for me. I have started a cut now for a few weeks to see if I can reveal an ab or two. When I’m back to eating a bit more I might have another go with the 55s.
Quick update, yea, bin a while. God it’s humbling to read back on your younger self being so foolish! After messing around with 1RMs I managed to hurt my left front delt a bit, enough to put me out of action for a few weeks. Then, while getting back into it, I hurt myself properly doing DB rows, by absolute favorite move, using a weight I thought was easy for me. But I was out of practice, and my kids were cheering me on as I horsed out a load of ugly one arm cheat rows with the 50Kg. At first my arm just went dead, like a connection had broken momentarily, but then, like a fool, I ignored it and just rocked on for another set. Once I had cooled down the pain started. Over the coming hours, days, weeks, and months, I was well and truly daffy ducked. I know now I had pulled a vertrabre or disk out of position and it impinged savagely onto a nerve in my mid upper back. The pain was worse than anything I had ever experienced. Although the damage was done near the spine, the pains were all over my right side, underarm, arm, right down to my fingers. Torture. And it was bloody relentless and unending. If I lay down it hurt, if I rolled to my left or right I hurt, I could barely walk, I couldn’t sleep, if I coughed or god forbid sneezed I let out pathetic little cries of miserable pain, and it just went on and on, for weeks, and then months.
So, aaannnnnnyyyywaaaayyys, I was off the weights for a while, and so I decided to avail of the opportunity to loose some weight. I went from around 96Kg (211lb) to 86.7Kg (191lb).
I the past few months I’ve since recovered. It took a while to work it out, but I realize that I can row, carefully, nearly as much as I like, but not one armed with the right. And no cheat. Just smooth slow rows, chin/pull ups etc.
The plan now is to try to progress back to my previous strength while keeping a faint impression of abs on me.
You live and you learn…