Tues, 27 Feb 18

Speed Upper

It's been 2 whole weeks since I killed me a man... OK, that's the intro to Major Payne, but that's how I felt today since it's been almost a week since I trained last thanks to PT school and my first two exams of my last semester of classes.  I have learned (slowly and painfully) that I have to approach studying the same way I do training, which means I have to weigh the pros and cons of which training to prioritize.  In this case, PT school wins because I've got a very limited amount of time to train my brain for exams I only have one shot at doing well on, versus training for strongman or anything else where my deadlines and plan of attack are able to be much more easily modified to accommodate the former, as long as I don't have a competition coming up.  Per usual, after studying pretty much all day every day since Friday of last week (minus breaks for eating and sleeping and occasional bouts of letting my brain chill out when it stops working), culminating with about 6 hours of sleep over 2 days of exams, I was not firing at 100% today.  But that was OK because I adjusted my training accordingly and was still able to do much better than my attempts at training under these circumstances early on in PT school.

Banded Bench Press (doubled minis)

10x45 + bands

8x95

6x135

3x165

8x3x180 - 45" rest b/w sets

The changes I made to what I normally would have done here today were:

1) adding in extra warmup sets

2) decreasing volume by knocking 2 sets off of my planned 10 work sets

3) decreasing intensity by not working up in weight on my last couple sets

I moved pretty well for most of this, but slowed down some on my 3rd rep of sets 5-7.  I was able to tighten my setup and bracing on the last set and get the pop back on my last rep.

Speed Axle Strict Press

10x70

6x90

8x3x105 - 30" rest b/w sets

Similar changes as on bench except for adding more warmup sets.  I was all over the place at the end, but at least the bar was still moving fast.

Meadows Rows

10ea x 50

10ea x 90

2x15ea x 70

I normally train upper body at Iron Strong on Mondays now, so doing this at home in my garage required me to rig up a super crappy setup for Meadows Rows since I don't have a land mine, but I still got the work done even if I was getting a little annoyed in the process.  It might be time to invest in an Elitefts core blaster or two.

I called it here for today since I was starting to spiral the drain and I hate finishing training on a pissed off note cause then I'm salty afterward instead of feeling like all is good and right with the world.