Today was a bench day, and although I'm coming off a meet, I wanted to give a new shirt a go so I'd have as much time as possible to tweak it before September, where I'll be trying to qualify for the 2017 XPC finals. At the last meet, I barely made 600, which was really a miss at lockout that I got the benefit of the doubt on. The Ace I was using had worked well for most of the cycle, but was too stretched out by the meet to give me enough support.
This new shirt is one of two prototypes I received from Metal last year. It's essentially a beefed-up Pro in the Jack cut, without the seams on the chest plate. You can get a very similar one here https://www.elitefts.com/shop/power-lifting/multi-ply/metal-pro-bench-shirt.html
When I first tried it, I liked it, but it was a little big. Since gaining and losing whole bunch of weight, My upper body is a bit bigger now, and it now fit a little tighter. The goal for the day was to get around 600. I warmed up to 315 raw, then put the shirt on.
405 - 3 board
495 - 2 board
545 - 1 board
600 - touch
The 600 was really easy, and the lockout was nice and solid!
Looks like this is the shirt for the next meet!
Since this session went as well as it did, and I'm confident in the shirt, I'm gonna take a few weeks off from shirt work to address raw strength. When I do incorporate it back in, I will only do my full range work in it, and use another shirt for board work so that I will not wear it out as fast.
For assistance, We did a dumbbell incline bench, where I worked up to 3 sets of 10 with 100's (actually, I only made 7 with the last set, lol)
Next up was the chest supported t-bar with 3 plates, 4 sets of 15 dips, and 4 sets of 15 on the shrug machine.
Good start for September!