It’s now Sunday & my hams are still very sore from the good mornings on Thursday. I’ll leave it another day or two before doing them again on the same day as my next workout probably, (chest, delts & arms). Anyway, it’s incredible the DOMS I got considering the tension curve on the exercise being so strong at one end & minimal at the other, but high tension in the lengthened position really does seem to matter a lot. Anyway, short ramble post incoming.
I have straps now & I’m looking forward to progressing on shrugs. I’m also looking forward to experimenting with pushdowns with a rope but using a very particular form, as I’ll soon explain. Straight bar & V bar both feel a bit awkward on my wrists, (V bar is better but it’s a bit finicky), & while rope is very comfortable on my wrists, I feel like it’s less stimulative on a set-to-set basis, because it’s so hard to spread the rope out that the set is terminated once you can no longer achieve getting the muscle short in that particularly difficult position when there’s still plenty of juice left in the muscle in the mid & lengthened position. I’m therefore going to do my sets with spreading the rope for a few reps & then performing more reps with the handles pressed together. Call it a mechanical dropset if you will. It seems arbitrary - why is it enough to go to failure on these other movements, but rope pushdowns require a mechanical dropset? Intuition. That’s it. The physical discomfort of pushing a muscle to failure is very unpronounced on rope pushdowns for me compared to using a bar, or doing any other exercise. I could almost hold a conversation while doing rope pushdowns to failure. Spreading the rope on early reps & pressing the handles together I think will keep it as stimulative as bar pushdowns while also being more comfortable on my wrists too.