I’ll see if I can find one. For now, I tried using my fingers as I can pretty easily reach the area.
I just pushed hard with a finger on the spot that hurts. It does feel better for a little bit afterwards, but it soon goes back to hurting.
I’m also trying to move it around from time to time, and try to let the muscle stretch until it becomes painful, as opposed to trying to move it as little as possible, in hopes that it’ll expedite recovery.
Lesson learned either way; I’ll really pay attention to my head and neck positioning from now on.
I woke up very disheartened as it was hurting even more than yesterday, but that must have been due to the fact that it wasn’t moved at all during the night.
As the day went on and blood started getting in there, I realized it’s hurting much less than yesterday–it’s barely hurting, in fact. It only hurts if I try to touch my chest with my chin, as that movement stretches the muscle out.
For the most part, it’s back to normal. Ready to crush that back workout tomorrow.
For me, overhead press is beneficial when I’m doing a strength-type program (which is rare…) and trying to get my bench up. You don’t have as much room to waste all your recovery “assets” (or just plain time) on a ton of isolation work, so you’ve got to be efficient. Also, you’re probably doing a lot of bench pressing, so having a movement that forces you to lock in your core and lets your scapula move freely seems to help offset some of the “slop” I can start building.
For the Meadows’ stuff, though, you are trying to wreck a muscle. In fact, spending your energy working through a movement with a high neurological cost that you can’t feel can reduce your effective volume - we don’t want that.
I can really get a lot out of the hammer strength shoulder press machine. At the top, I can actually purposefully flex my delts. Sounds like that might be the smith version for you. These are never a main movement in the Meadows’ programs, and you’re already progressing the incline, so I’d give yourself “permission” to just do what you feel. There’s additional trap and rear delt work to balance out your shoulder girdle anyway.
Rack pulled 350 x 10 in one of the most balls the wall sets I’ve done in a long long time (I am 90% positive that if I had attempted an 11th rep, something could have gone very wrong). I am relieved by the fact that there isn’t any more rack pulling in the last 3 weeks of the program.
Part of me wonders if I could easily rack pull 400 at this point and how many reps I could do with it. But I’m not going to find out for the time being (or for a long time, I think).
I murdered my biceps, with what already was one of the hardest and most painful biceps workout of the program, to which I added a couple more sets as per the decision I took at the beginning of this training cycle. Today I was really tempted to just execute the original plan, as it seemed to be already hard enough, but I still found the will to go the extra mile.
This fuck ton of training to failure feels like it’s starting to slowly take a toll on me. I’m at the point where I know these next three and a half weeks will be a grind, but I totally believe the results will be worth it.
Eating is absolutely on point as well. My father grabbed the groceries earlier and he got home with some fish burgers that he got discounted as they are expiring in three days. I ain’t letting no food go wasted, so I guess today’s calories will end up a tad higher than usual. I am after gaining mass so that’s fine. And hey, fish burgers!!
I have decided to add 4 weekly sets for both biceps and delts for this training cycle. I really want to improve those two muscle groups as I feel they might make a pretty big impact on the appearence of my physique.
Today I bench pressed 84 lb dumbbells for the first time ever since I’ve trained.
I did them on the “slight decline” for 2 sets of 8. To be fair, I had a guy spot me just in case, and he kinda helped me on the last rep, so I can’t fully claim the whole 2 sets as mine, but all the other reps were “all me, bro.”
Very happy about this pr. Dumbbells at my gym cap at 92 lb, so I’m excited to see how long it takes me to get there. Probably still a while.
So, I was looking at this pic of me that a buddy took the other day at the gym, which I also posted on the check in thread.
I also found a pic from 3 years ago, in which I was pulling off the same pose. I decided to put them side to side for comparison, and I honestly can’t pinpoint a single area that I see improved vs the others. Like, I get the feeling that I look bigger, but there isn’t a single area that stands out more than the others to me. Maybe it means everything grew? I don’t know, but here are the two pics
Yes dude, haha - mid back is like 2x as thick, traps are bigger, your lats are bigger, and overall everything is just thicker while still being as lean… That’s 3 years of hard work on display right there.
Do you dB bench often? I found that the first few times doing them or going back to them I’m always weaker at first. Almost like the stabilizing muscles that help (what ever they are) haven’t quite figured out what to do. So, you might get to the bigger dumbbells a lot quicker than you think of you’re just starting or starting back to using them.
When doing 5/3/1, I didn’t press dumbbells a lot. In fact, 99% of my pressing was done with a barbell and I’d always be fried by the time I was done to actually put much effort into db presses.
Right now, dumbbell pressing is a substantial part of the work I’m doing, and barbell pressing is done as my second exercise. Initially I was weaker, when I’d just gotten back to those. Indeed, I felt the movement to be less stable.
So yeah, maybe I’ll see a more rapid increase of strength on the movement over the next months. Hopefully!
So today I tried this lat exercise for the first time:
basically today’s workout called for a db pullover but I have no use for that exercise: only my triceps feel like they’re being worked, no matter how hard I focus on my back, and it also kinda hurts my joints, so I subbed the one arm pulldown in since I figured it’d be a pretty similar movement pattern and an interesting exercise to try, since I always have difficulties feeling my lats work.
my lats are mad sore, even having only done two sets to failure on these. I literally got home from the gym 15 minutes ago, and my lats already have doms. And I’ve never felt a stronger contraction in my back than during those.
I finally found my money lat exercise! I’ll make sure to include this movement in every back workout I do from now on. They’re just priceless. The last couple of weeks of this program call for several sets of shrugs on back days, which I really don’t think I need compared to how I could use some extra lat size. So I’ll sub all that trap work for these little gems. I’m so hyped up right now about this finding lol
Cool video! I’ll definitely try these next back day. I really like a lot of meadows stuff, makes it real easy to understand without all the fluff.
Side note, dudes got some damn fire hose veins lol
I just hit 300 kg (660 lb) x 10 on the leg press. My very first time leg pressing that weight.
I also did a set of 8 with 375 lb on the trap bar deadlift as my second set (the first one being 355 x 8). First time with that weight as well, as I’d never done the trap bar deadlift before this summer. Next week I’ll attempt 8 reps with 400.
Man, I loathe training legs. But damn, those sweet pr’s…
So lately I’ve been wondering if I have shoulder impingement. Both shoulders to some degree, but particularly the right one, has felt weird for some time now.
Some movements, namely those where my arm ends up elevated, hurt a little bit at the end of the range of motion. I feel the pain internally, can’t really pinpoint a spot.
Shoulder raises are affected, mainly. I’m a stage in which it doesn’t really bother my workouts, but sometimes it does come up in everyday movements.
Also, when I flex my rear delts by extending my shoulder I feel some pressure in my front delt (which is weird if you ask me).
Has anybody dealt with shoulder impingement before? Are there any ways I can actually diagnose it, as at this point I’m pretty much just speculating?
Do upright rows. If your shoulder makes a wet crunching sound and explodes, something probably was wrong.
In all seriousness, I think I remember reading/hearing (from Jeff Cavaliere, AthleanX) that the top position of your arm in an upright row is the exact same position PTs use to diagnose impingement. Not a PT or anything myself but from what I remember you’re meant to put your arm in that position and press down on the wrist to internally rotate the shoulder, and if you feel pain it’s likely you have impingement. Jeff has a lot of videos on shoulder health, maybe they’ll help.
