A little late to getting this training log posted, so I’m going to keep it pretty straightforward. I have a few ideas for increasing the density and volume of my warm-ups to hopefully stimulate some more hypertrophy over time per information put out by Matt Wenning (he usually does around 100 reps of 3-4 different exercises prior to the main movement regardless of max effort or dynamic effort). That said, none of that applies to this day’s workout.

I’m not a particular explosive lifter, I never have been so I’m hoping that by including dynamic effort days into my programming, I might be able to tap into these more explosive muscle fibers. In the grand scheme, I’m hoping this will make me a more explosive grappler with regards to sweeping and rolling my opponents. We shall see how it all works out, but for now here’s the workout:

Speed Bench – 45x20x2, 95x10x2, 115×5, 130x3x5, 135x3x5, 145x3x5

• Speed on everything through 135 felt pretty good. I definitely noticed speed drop off pretty significantly with the 145, but it was still relatively speedy. I’m going to stick with the same intensity ranges going into the next block of training to see if the strength I develop in this block will help transfer to being a more explosive bencher.

Incline Dumbbell Bench Press – 65x8x3

• I’m pretty happy with this movement. In general, I’m not particularly strong with dumbbells, or on an incline, so I’m just trying to get whatever I can out of this movement. I knew I could hit 3×8 with this weight as long as I gave myself ample rest intervals, so to increase the training effect, I opted for shorter rest periods. This made the last set a true challenge, which is what I wanted. I’m going to keep using the same weight for a couple workouts and see if I can improve how they feel before bumping up to the next dumbbell that I have (75s).

2-Arm Dumbbell Bentover Row – 45x15x3

• I’m really enjoying this movement, it’s the second time this microcycle and it just feels great. I’m definitely feeling my rhomboids working much harder than I have ever felt before. Last set found me using a little more body English than I would prefer, so I’m going to stick with this weight and try to get to the point that I can complete the volume comfortably with minimal form breakdown before bumping up the weight.

One thing I did this workout was include more upper back work before the main movement in the form of band pull aparts and face pulls. Hit 100 total reps on the pull aparts and then 3×20 on the face pulls. Made me feel more stable in my bench set up which was probably a big contributor to the overall positive feel of the workout.

It’s an interesting feeling waking up well before one’s 4:30am alarm and not being tired when this happens…granted, I woke up because my bowels decided they needed emptying, but still. It was weird to be wide awake at 4am without having the alarm go off. Anyway, took care of business and hopped down to my workout.

Here’s the workout:

Speed Squats – 45x5x2, 95x5x2, 135×3, 185x2x5, 195x2x5, 205x2x5

• I should definitely get my warm-up volume higher to really get my movement patterns in better shape before hitting the work sets. I normally do 50+ reps in my warm-ups, but today all I did was 25 body weight squats, 25 back raises and then dropped under the barbell. Even there, my warm-up volume was much lower than usual. Normally, I would do 45x10x2 (sometimes to sets of 20 instead of 10s), 95x10x2, 135x3x2 and then lower volume working up to the work sets.
• Squats just didn’t feel right until I got to the sets with 205, where everything felt really locked in and explosive. Need to make small adjustments to achieve big changes.

Speed Deadlifts – 45×10 (stiff-legged deadlifts), 45×10, 135×5, 225×2, 230x2x5, 240x2x5

• Programming called for another 5 doubles at 255, but between taking way too long (in my opinion) to finish the squats and being completed gassed after 10 doubles, I just didn’t have it in me to keep going. I’m going to work on improving overall work density moving forward to ensure that I can get all of the desired volume moving forward.

Goodmorning – 65×10, 85×10, 105×10, 125x5x3

• I probably could have gone heavier than this, and I’m glad that I know this. I’m going to use this as a starting point to build my intensity into this movement. The goodmorning has always been a weak movement pattern for me, and I firmly believe strengthening it will help with my deadlift and squat and overall stability/strength.

 

Two days of 2-a-day workouts is definitely a challenge as far as recovery and sleep is concerned. Waking up this morning for another workout was definitely a hard decision to make when my alarm was buzzing away on my wrist. Anyway, I got up and took care of what I needed to take care, and actually felt pretty good by the time I was done. I skipped the last 2 movements, but that’s ok. I got the meat and potatoes movements done, and called it a day as I was just feeling demotivated by the time I finished with the 3rd exercise.

Today’s workout:

Close-Grip Bench Press – 175×5

• I had wanted to go for 185, and frankly probably had it in me, but 175 felt close enough to a RPE8, that I didn’t want to push it too hard today. Compound that with the general fatigue and sleepiness that I was contending with, calling it at 175 just seemed like the right idea.

2-Count Paused Close-Grip Bench Press – 140x8x2, 140×7

• I really started to feel awake during the paused work, and the weight felt light on my chest. I’m working on being as consistent as possible with the pause length, but it can be hard to maintain a proper count cadence with your entire upperbody contracted to prevent a weight from pressing down onto your chest. Anyway, I was able to hit 140 for sets of 8 and then a set of 7, overall, that’s good volume in my book. I’m considering using progressive sets for the supplemental work, but I’ll wait until the next training block to make that change.
• Progressive sets are sets where weight increases each set, assuming the top end of the prescribed range was hit. For instance, I hit 140 for 8 on the first set, with a prescribed range of 6-8, so if I was using progressive sets, then for the next set I would have tried to use 145 or 150 and seen where I was at this point.

Standing Band Crunches – 20×3 w/ EliteFTS Average Band

• Super set ab work with the paused bench sets. Just trying to get some hard core work in every day. That’s definitely a weak link in my lower body movements, so I need to strengthen it up. I need to figure out which movements are really working for me aside from the ab wheel rollout. I want these standing band crunches to be good, but we’ll see as I move forward. I’m going to start giving dead bugs and RKC planks a try as a super set with my upper body movements.
• I’m also going to start getting more low back work in by way of the back raise bench.

2-Arm Bentover Dumbbell Row – 40x15x3

• I slowed the tempo down on these and tried to perform each rep deliberately. Forced my scapulae to go into full extension at the bottom and retracted hard at the top to try and feel my rhomboids contracting hard. The slower tempo definitely made a very big difference; I don’t think I’ve ever felt my rhomboids contract in isolation like this.
• I tried taking my elbows out to 90 degrees to my torso, but that aggravated my shoulders from some reason, so I stuck with a 45 degree elbow angle. This definitely helped with hitting my rhomboids, while a 90 degree angle probably would have hit the rear delts much harder.

As I said last week, I opted to restart this block after getting completely thrown off with a very nasty stomach bug last week. I pretty much took a 8-count on Tuesday and was in bed until the evening, and I was still pretty unsteady on my feet the rest of the week. Ended up getting into bed around 8pm every night and slept as much as I possibly could. Luckily, my kids were somewhat accommodating, in the sense that they were pains in the ass unless we took them to bed with us and then slept like…well, they slept like babies (there I said it, leave me alone!).

I did a repeat of the original workout today, and it didn’t go nearly as well as planned, but it’s a good jumping off point I think. Plus, I can only go up from here after how it felt.

I’m back to doing front squats vs 1 chain per side, and while the movement itself feels pretty good, there’s definitely something going on with my mid-back. I know when it got tweaked, just don’t know how to fix it yet. On Tuesday, while I was laid up, I was taking a nap with my 8-month old daughter (who was also sick, so we were providing comfort to each other that point), and I felt my mid back (just below the scapulae) start to hurt. I probably should have adjusted, but she was sleeping so peacefully that I didn’t have the heart to disturb her. So, like any good parent, I decided to suffer quietly and luckily, it wasn’t painful enough to keep me up.

The problem is that the same exact spot has been hurting whenever I carry any anterior load. Did I mention that I have twin 8-month olds? I’m pretty much carrying an anterior load whenever I want to spend time with them. Great, huh?

Anyway, because of this issue, front squatting just felt off, but it was the movement I had selected so I stuck with it in the hopes that warming up would help alleviate some of the issues. I was very wrong. Last time I did this movement, I got up to 205 for a comfortable set of 5, but today 185 started to almost feel like a grinder by the 5th rep. I capped it there figuring that I can only improve on this next workout. What I didn’t account for was how increasing the volume on the supplemental (paused) work was going to completely wreck me with just one set. Between the pain in my back, the instability in carrying the bar (I’ll get to that in a second) and suddenly a complete lack of aerobic capacity, I was shot after just a single set of 6 with 150lbs and sucking wind. Called it there, chalked it up to just still being under recovered from being sick, and went on to accessory work. All I can do now is hope that I can get everything back into square so that I can hit some bigger numbers in the next microcycle.

Before I get to the workout, let me address the instability issue from above. I prefer using a clean grip when doing front squats (a clean grip being with the position the hands are in after the catch phase of a power clean), but last time I was experiencing some serious wrist pain regardless of grip width, so, today I opted to use straps. Straps are a good middle ground, but for some reason I just couldn’t find a good bar position or proper tension on the straps to keep the bar locked on my deltoids. I think the set of paused reps was probably the best it felt, but even that felt pretty garbage-y. Anyway, if you can do a clean grip, use it every time you front squat, it’s just better.

Anyway, here’s the workout, as truncated as it was:

Front Squat vs. 1 Chain per Side – 45×10, 45×5 (add chains), 95×5, 135×5 (switched to strap grip), 155×5, 175×5, 185×5

2-Count Paused Front Squat vs. 1 Chain per Side – 150×6

• As I said above, these just left me sucking wind on the first set, so I stopped there and opted to move on with the workout.

Split Squat w/ Weight Vest – 26x15x3

• These give me such a killer quad pump. I’m debating whether I should increase the weight for next workout, or just work on improving the quality of these and get a better training effect before increasing the intensity. I think that’s what I’m going to do.

Ab Wheel Rollouts – 10×2

• I was intending on going for 3 sets, but frankly, my ROM was so short that the training effect was going to be minimal from adding volume. I’m going to just work on getting the ROM farther out, until I’m almost touching the ground with my nose, and then add volume from there. I’ll probably reduce reps to 2 sets of 5 instead of trying for 10 reps moving forward.

On the bright side of today, after I lost about 5lbs from being sick, and then eating completely off plan for the past few days to help with recovery, I found that my weight has pretty much stayed at the lower body weight. So that’s cool.

As of today, I’m officially down on 2.6lbs from January 1st, but frankly, my weight on January 2nd is probably a more accurate measure of where I started at, which was 202.4lbs.

Anyway, just have to keep the train rolling along. Got BJJ today, so that should be fun as usual.

Thanks for following along!

Today’s workout was a damned good one! Everything felt like it was locked in, and I was firing on all cylinders going through the main movement and the supplemental movement. Everything is still relatively high-volume, and that’s mainly because I’m trying to focus more on my intra-muscular conditioning and hypertrophy. I don’t need to focus on driving up strength through neurological stimuli beyond what the main movement is providing since I don’t have any meets planned at this stage.

There is so much science, as well as art, to designing a good program. I’ve gone and jumped from program to program so much over the years, but I’ve always made it a point to follow each one to the letter for at least 3 months (at least most of the time). In my opinion, 3 months is the bare minimum time that one needs to stick with a program to see any kind of benefit from it. It’s very common these days for a novice trainee to start a program, follow it for 3 weeks, get bored and then claim that the program didn’t work for them.

Well…no, the fact of the matter is that it takes a really long time to actually build muscle. A long time, and concentrated effort. You aren’t going to see any kind of results in strength, hypertrophy or weight loss in only a few weeks. The human body just doesn’t work that way. Moral of the story: trust in the process and give it 3-6 months. I’d even suggest pushing it out to 12 months assuming you aren’t backtracking after 3 -6 months to get a true gauge on the efficacy of a program.

So with the end of today’s workout, I’ve now completed the first microcycle of the first 4 week macrocycle. With these 4 workouts, I’ve gotten a better of idea of the kinds of intensities I should be utilizing for dynamic work (ie. 60% was way too high to start with on the first dynamic day), and how the max effort work should be feeling as well. I have a good place to build from moving forward. Here’s today’s workout:

DE Bench Press – 130x3x12

• Used 3 separate grips, which I switched after every 4th set. Started with wide-grip (ring finger on rings), then moved in to my competition grip (a finger’s width in from the rings) and then to a closer grip (finger’s width away from the smooth). Everything felt like it was locked in and the bar speed felt great through to the last set. I tried to keep rest intervals to a bare minimum, only allowing myself 15-20 seconds, but mostly going by feel and breathing.

Incline Dumbbell Bench Press – 40x20x3

• Nothing really fancy, just getting pec volume in, and hoping that this will result in some decent upper pec hypertrophy. Originally had planned to use 50lbs for these, but decided that it was better to err on the side of caution and start with a weight that I knew I could get all of the volume with (AKA start too light). These felt great and I got a decent pec pump out of it.

Bentover 2-arm Dumbbell Row – 40x20x3

• My goal with these was to hit the rhomboids and upper back more than the lats, since I’m doing heavier and more lat-focused 1-arm rows on my ME Upper days. First 2 sets felt like they were doing what I wanted, but by the end of the 3rd set, I had a pretty good pump in my lower lats. Not a bad thing, necessarily, just need to keep an eye on this and see if I can get the mind-muscle connection to get the rhomboids stimulated as much as possible.

Chin-ups – 5×1

• Chin-ups are just too hard to put at the end of an upper body workout. I’m going to have to move these up to the front if I want to keep them in the program.

There you have it, that was the whole workout and only took me about 40 minutes, which was an awesome perk in all this. My workouts have been moving really well and I’m getting everything done in a reasonable amount of time.