After coming off my best meet performance of my career, I am now officially a beat up powerlifter. I'm having some minor low back issues that I'm working on mending up, and then I'll begin to find a competitive option. My goals for 2017 are to compete in a bodybuilding show and also get back to the platform 100% healthy.

For programming and coaching inquires, please email SmitleyPerformanceSystems@gmail.com or visit brandonsmitley.com

Sunday's bench press training called for me to be in the bench shirt again, and my original goal was to get up to about 445 or so if I was feeling it. Well after the minor pec incident on Wednesday, and making it through Friday, I felt I would just play the entire session by ear. Turns out that whatever I did to my pec was very minor, because I moved 305 faster than I ever have in my life (raw). So I felt that putting the bench shirt on would be fine. However, I wanted to err on the side of caution and just stay around the 400 range and work on touching. I did mange to get 395 to touch, so this is a huge improvement.

On the other side of the coin though, I've found out that a good friend from college is getting married in May, and it happens to be the same weekend as AAPF Natinonals. So it looks like I'm not competing in March OR in May. I'm kind of bummed, but I wouldn't miss this day for him in the world, so I'll just find another meet during the summer to jump in the shirt. It's probably for the best as it'll let me focus on building my squat/deadlift back up for the next few months. I'm still going to try to get in the shirt for two weeks, and out for one, but I'm just going to have to play these sessions by ear. Because right now I just want to learn the shirt more than anything else. I've got some big aspirations in it for the year so just getting experience in it I feel will help me. So time for some more off season fun (and food haha).

Items Used in this Training Session
Sabertooth Bar
Swiss Bar
Mini Band
Metal Jack Bench Shirt

Warm Up
Cats & Camels - 10
Quadraped T-Spine Ext - 10 each
Band Dislocations - 10
Alternating Band Dislocations - 10 each
Band Pressdowns - 15
Band Straight Arm Lat Pulldowns - 15
Band Face Pulls - 15
Single Arm Band Fly - 15 each
Band Rows - 15
Band Curls - 15

A1) Bench Press
55x10
105x5
145x5
195x5
235x3
265x3
285x2
305x1
325x1 - Add Metal Catapult
355x3 - air board
375x3 - air board
395x3 - air board
395x1 - TOUCH!

B1) Swiss Bar Floor Press
135x5
185x5
225x3
255x3
270x3 - PR

C1) Close Grip Swiss Bar Floor Press
225x4x6

D1) Swiss Bar Skull Crushers
4x12

E1) Rolling Tricep Extensions
4x10

F1) Pressdowns
4x15
F2) Band Pull Aparts Lying in Bench Press Position
4x25