After an abysmal showing at APF Equipped Nationals, I'm now in an off season mode of training. Currently, I am in a strength block building up strength and weaknesses to prepare me for a meet prep cycle for WPC World's in November.

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With Saturday off, I was able to get some good rest coming in to my first bench press session in over a month. I thought I was going to have a great day, and while I didn't have a bad day, I was hoping for a bit more. There are a few factors at play, but I'm still pretty pleased with how things went.

I had in my records that I've hit 230 for 7 with this set up, but when I went back and looked at the footage (this is why I video log my training!), it looks like my hand placement was a bit wider. Probably not a huge difference, but it could have been a rep or two. But that's fine. I know now that I need to keep track of where my hands are exactly on the bar. I've also switched over to a flat foot stance bench press. This is for a few reasons: 1) To save my back. Meet after meet my back starts to lock up after benching, and this is probably why. I can get a great arch, but if it's going to hold back my deadlift, I'd much rather get those pounds and more later in the meet. I also know from a longevity standpoint, it will do me better. I MIGHT go to a tucked position only for meets, but we'll just have to see. 2) After APF Nationals, I saw how picky they were with the pause, and having a flat foot stance, let's me bring the bar under control better and hopefully get a more favorable "press" command. 3) My butt is always teetering from coming off, and with a flat stance I never have this issue. Soooo, while it's not necessarily permanent, it will at least help build my bench press from a deficit (compared to normal), and I think it's something that will help over time.

So all that taken into account, I still feel pretty pleased with this given my best close grip bench press is only 300 pounds (and I had about 270 in my hands).

No nutrition update this week from a pictures standpoint. I did take pictures, but I'm going to only share about every other week, or every 3 weeks to keep the posts a bit shorter and so changes can be seen a bit better. However, weight and measurements are still down! I started my next calorie bump, and am finally back to over 2000 calories on my bench press days, so I think over the next two weeks we can expect to see my bench press rising with this as I'll have more energy. If nothing else, I've learned that I need to take a bit of a break between meets as much as I can, otherwise my metabolism just tanks and it makes it hard to continue to get stronger. All signs are showing that my metabolism is indeed improving considering I'm up a total of almost 2500 calories for the week, and my weight has finally stopped dropping and is holding steady. I'll keep this level of calories until my body gets used to it as maintenance, and see if I can bump them again. I'd like to add in about 1500 more calories per week if I can without gaining much more weight, which seems very reasonable over the next 8 weeks or so.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYjkI4_EUoo]

Items Used in this Training Session
EZ Loaders
Chains
Micro Mini Bands
Mini Bands

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) Close Grip Bench Press vs 2 Chains/Side
50x10
50x5 - add chains
100x5
140x3
170x3
190x3
210x3
230x3
210x4x3

B1) Medium Grip Floor Press vs 4.5 Chains/Side
100x3x10

C1) Skull Crushers vs Doubled Micro Mini Bands
4x10

D1) Wtd Dips
4x10

E1) Incline Tate Press
100 total reps

F1) Band Pull Aparts
100 total reps

G1) Barbell Side Bends
100 total reps per side