Major report number 3:
I was originally scheduled for my ME upper day yesterday (Wed.), but I wanted to watch my KSU wildcats play KU. It was ugly. Ah well.
Today’s workout–I kicked it’s assss! I’m going to be pressing my volume up, and eventually start more conditioning work, as noted before.
My db bench sucks royal balls in comparison to my barbell bench. It’s embarassing. I need to be able to stabilize [much] better. That’s why I’m using the db’s. db bench started from the bottom position against chest.
db neutral grip bench press–60x6, 72x5, 80x3, 90x3, 100x3, 110x1, 115x1–immediate drop to 100x4
db row to chest 80x5, 90x5, 100x5, 115x3, 130x3, 140x3, 150 2x5
A1) seated db shoulder press 55x8, 60x8, 60x6
A2) pull-ups (semi-wide grip) 2x8, 1x6
dips 2x10
B1) db elbows out Tate Press 25x12, 25x10, 30x8, 35x6
B2) db low trap shrugs/ [10-2 trap raises] 25x 6/[3]/6/[3], 25x8/[6]/6. 25x6/[4-hit the chair]/6
pull-ups 1x5
rope grip tricep pushdowns 80x4 drop to 60x6, 60x6–too pumped to move my arms
reverse cable flyes (a CT back exercise) 40x8–too easy, 60x5–too tanked, will try later when fresh
I felt like I had more in me at the end of the db rows, maybe I should have tried for 8 reps. But when my pull-ups came due, I felt worn out, so maybe not. My pullups suffered.
As I said before I’m not very tolerant of high reps. My seated overhead presses felt weak, probably both due to the heavy back work and my last drop bench set. Still, it was sub-par weight. I threw dips in because I felt like I had more work in me, but the presses weren’t going anywhere.
The second superset group marks the part of my workout where I started experimenting with completely new movements I hadn’t done before except pushdowns). I should have gone much heavier on my dumbell low-trap shrugs/10-2 raise giant sets. However, I didn’t want to have to drop the shrug dbs and have to grab new ones for the 10-2 raises.
Next time I do these I will go a lot heavier on the shrugs portion, I wasn’t even close to failure on the last set. I needed another set of pull-ups, but tanked early–too unused to volume. Doing the pushdowns was a challenge because my triceps were gorged and I felt like I couldn’t move them–this is bad, because the weight should have been easy. Problems with handling volume again. The reverse cable flyes were interesting, but I’ll have to save them for when I’m fresh. 40 was waaaay too easy, I could have done them all day, but 60 was impossibly hard, I know I can do more.
I got the idea mid-workout when I noticed my right rear delt was getting pumped doing the db rows, but my left was not. Seems my right rear delt is bigger than my left–I need to fix this.
This was one of those days where I left feeling like I’d kicked the crap out of my workout, while simultaneously thinking that all my weights used were much, much too low for me even while they were much too difficult to perform. Weird. As I work more on volume, I’ll undoubtedly be able to move the weights up a lot as I go along, but it’ll probably take a long while to get used to it.
As a side note, I found out that I apparently have a reputation for especially sadistic workouts, and that some people are scared of me. I find this really funny because I don’t really think my workouts are all that special, and I’m nowhere near the biggest guy in the gym, and quiet about doing my workouts. But apparently, some of the bigger guys are talking. I’m at the gym to work hard, not socialize. I suppose that’s why I’m progressing and most others are not. Anyway, it pretty much made my day knowing that a lot of the guys who dwarf me think my routines are savage.
I learned this as I was talking to a guy that I’ve seen a lot around there (older guy, scruffy phd student in physics–but he can bench pretty well). He likes to talk too much while I want to do sets, but I’ve been teaching him about GM’s, and training organization, variations on exercises, and showing him how to snatch.
He’s put a lot of the exercises to use, so I put up with some of his chattiness (not during the 1st 2 movements though). I’m proud to say that he really loves GMs and is starting to sumo dl a lot better than he used to. He told me that as I was telling him about a single leg weighted back extension variation.
Surge produced marvelously. I was at the gym for 2.5 hours (crowded), never got hungry, kept the feeling of energy up, even as my tolerance for work decreased horribly. Feel like I should go back and do some more back work, but they’re closed. The next two days should tell the true effectiveness of my Surge experiment, although so far i’ve been very impressed that it’s done as well as it has in sub-optimal circumstances (my food schedules and choices are suffering this week, for some reason). Also, it is getting easier for me to get all my Surge in pre/during workout. Adaptation I suppose.
That’s all for now.
