Tues, 30 Jan 18

Speed Upper

This week finishes up a 6 week block of training for me and for what I believe is the first time in the two and a half years I've been in PT school, almost the whole block was made up of good or better training days.  I still had to make several modifications to my schedule or length of training, and add in an unscheduled deload based on Winter semester finals, but progress has been made almost universally on multiple fronts.  Today was no exception and though I'm still not pressing fast enough to make the internet think I'm speeding up my videos, it's a hell of a lot better than it was when I added speed work back in a few months ago.

Also, do yourself a favor and get some EZ Loaders if you use chains for anything.  Instead of thinking about what a pain in the hooha it will be to have to count links to adjust the stringer chains for different exercises or because someone taller or shorter than you used them last, or because someone only used one set and now you have to figure out how to fix the mess they left, they allow you to adjust the setup in seconds for almost any exercise except deadlift.  Fortunately, they solved that issue by making EZ Loaders specifically for DL as well, which are also a huge time saver.

Chain Axle Bench Press (1 set of chains)

10x75

6x125

3x165

6x3x180

3x215

3x255

3x275

I had planned to work up to about 250 or so after the first six triples, but everything was moving well so instead of repeating 255 I bumped up again for the last set.  This was the only set where I had any of my reps really slow down because for what I can only attribute to fatigue, my right arm decided to take a dump half way up on the last rep, so it was a good thing I was already planning to stop there.  First video is my sixth set with 180 before working up and second video is my tenth and last set with 275.

A post shared by Andy Deck (@andydeck) on

DB Rows

10ea x 85

2x15ea x 125

15ea x 135

This killed me.  The sad thing is it was really only bumping up 10 lbs on the last set that did it, but I was toasted after this.

Dips/DB Curls

10xBW/-

3x{15x45/12ea x 50}

My left biceps tendon was feeling wonky all the way at the top where it inserts onto the shoulder blade only at the very top and only at the end of my sets.  This was definitely just from working up on bench, but I still cut my sets down from the planned 15x to 12x in response to it.