Lateral Raises
Holding both 25 lb plates, did alternating reps for 10 each hand, 3x10
BB Curls
65 5x10
1 minute plank and 20 situps, 3 rounds no rest
Woooooo boy. First thing’s first - I am obviously so piss poor at push pressing weight, haha. Last week was a set with 95, then 6 sets with 105 before I failed, and had to drop back to 95 for the last 3 sets. This week I strict pressed 105 for all 10 sets. I pretty much hit absolute failure on the last set, hell of a grinder for my 10th rep, but some of this is obviously my work capacity returning to me. Plus, I focused on some OHP technique - treating it as a full body movement instead of just a shoulder press, pushing my head through, building power on the eccentric and exploding upwards.
The plate raises and curls were pump city, and then the ab work was significantly more miserable than yesterday, but got through it.
They definitely do that, plus I just think flat bench is more shoulders and arms than chest, especially for people who pin their shoulderblades back. Incline bench is awesome, though. The chest pump I get from it is unparallelled. Probably also from the extra flare I let myself get. I’ve tried more of a flare on flat bench and it doesn’t go well, ever. I miss my gym’s incline bench
On incline, my elbows feel like they’re at 90 degrees from my torso - similar to DB OHP. I can’t do that on bench, though.
Think your bench could handle a slight incline by propping up the top end? Think of it like setting it on the first pin of an adjustable bench. That’s my “bench” setting now.
Honestly, my bench can handle a lot of weight - I put all 300 lbs I have on it and stood on it, and it held up - but that’s only straight-down pressure. The only thing stopping it from pulling apart on horizontal pressure are simpson strong ties that I bent to 90 degrees with my hands, so propping up the end of the bench, even by a bit, would put pretty much all the weight on them. Basically, I don’t trust it and I’m not willing to find out in my backyard, haha.
The good news is, after flat bench and close grip bench, I’m a bit fried, and foot elevated pushups on pushup bars literally feel like they’re ripping my chest apart.
It says “Change I must, or Die I will”, and I got it when I was leaving the Marines with a 5th-a-day drinking habit and checked myself into the rehab program that the military offers you for free (3 weeks inpatient, which is about $1000-a-day in the civilian sector), and it’s a shitty tattoo, but it reminds me of what I had to do to survive my own self-destruction. Funny that you referenced it with that guy in mind, in this case, haha.
@T3hPwnisher and @oldbeancam nailed it - set 7. Set 5 is like, oh, I’m halfway there, I can do this! And then set 7 gets grindy, and then during set 8 all you can think about is that you have set 9 AND 10.
What’s even worse is imagining lifting actual heavy weight for 10x10…
“Halfway there“ is the worst for me because all I can think of is having to repeat the previous effort
The last sets aren’t too bad… until the last 3 reps
The mindf**k is that getting TO set 5 really isn’t awful. So it lulls you into a false sense of security. Then set six happens and you go “oh sh*t” and THEN the doom sets in.
Up to set 5, the suckage is linear. After that, it is exponential.
That’s the thing though: it’s not just effort. The squats and deadlifts themselves are beating you up.
I equate it to leg kicks. The leg kick that you soak up in round 1 is the exact same leg kick that takes you out in round 3: it’s just that, in between, you absorbed a few dozen on them. It’s the same effort per squat set, but with the forced short rest periods, you’re never actually fully recovering between each set, so you just keep compounding the suckage.
