LOL no doubt!
I’m thinking I may make a slight adjustment to my split, and have my off day on Wednesday instead of Thursday. Currently:
MON - Chest
TUE - Back
WED - Delts
THUR - Off
FRI - Legs
SAT - Arms
SUN - Off
Yesterday’s shoulder session didn’t feel great, not as good as the rest of my sessions have felt the past couple weeks. Monday’s chest workout was PR city, so I think my front delt wasn’t fully recovered from that yet as it was a little sore during the session, and couldn’t quite match my numbers from last week. Yesterday after my warm ups and first two working sets, I could tell it wasn’t going to be a day for PRs, so I backed off slightly on the weights, really focused on isolating and initiating the movement properly, and still had a good workout. Moving my delt workout to Thursday would give me an extra day recovery to make sure I’m fresh, so I’ll give that a go next week.
While we’re on the subject of working around potential issues, makes me think of a couple instances from the gym recently. A few days ago a guy comes up to me and asks me to spot him on the bench. We’ve talked before, seems very smart, definitely trains well, good physique and strength. He’s got 275 on the bar, and tells me normally the weight on the bar is no problem, but he recently had a very serious shoulder injury and the doctor told him to take it easy. So, why the hell would he be benching at all, much less such a heavy weight he needs a spotter for?
Yesterday, another guy comes up to me and asks for a spot on seated behind-the-neck barbell presses. Very nice guy, around 50, always goes heavy on everything he does, like too heavy. He complains about his knees and hips hurting, then wraps them up and squats 315 on the smith machine, and presses 20 plates on the leg press while pushing his knees. Back to yesterday - he asks for the spot on behind the neck seated barbell press. I stand on the platform behind the seat, and see he’s got 225 on the bar. Now, personally I think behind the neck presses should be avoided all together because it’s a very unnatural angle, risks injury and doesn’t provide a benefit you can’t get from other delt exercises, again just my thoughts. But 225 seems pretty silly for behind the neck presses. So, 1-2-3, I give him a lift and help him unrack the bar. He starts the rep, lowers it behind his neck, and gets stuck, can’t move it back up an inch on his own. At this point it’s not the easiest thing to help him get it back up because he’s totally stuck, but we make it happen, I spot him and we get him back to the starting position. Naturally, I assume he’s done. Then, he starts going for another rep. I immediately tell him to stop and to rack the bar, which we do, because there’s no way in hell he’d be able to do a second rep if he couldn’t do a first, and there’s no way I can upright row 225 all by myself.
I’m sure we all see this frequently, but it just reinforces that regular lifting should be thought of as a long term never ending marathon. Of course we always want to keep improving, to get stronger and set new PRs, and feel like you came in and accomplished something every day. But, avoiding injury and being smart has to be part of the process. Another reason I like to auto-regulate sessions and not keep a clipboard anymore. If I know the fire isn’t there, I can back off weight slightly, change exercises if needed, focus on performance and work around the issue, not through it, and don’t feel a need to have to match or exceed my numbers from the previous week.
Today is an off day, tomorrow is legs, and Sunday I’m meeting the gang at Bev’s Powerhouse for a day of training and eating lots of food 
Can’t wait!
haha nice beard for only 5weeks btw!
