December 12th, Thursday - Bench and Squat

 12.12.2024

Pretty fatigued today after yesterday's workout. CNS fatigued too, but there are sparks of leftover excitement. Nutrition feels a little better.

Started my day with some cold tea, brewing a conventional medium-sized portion of coffee, and finishing off the beans&veggies&couple meatballs from yesterday. I've been on some kind of weird vegetable binge, there's something weird about it. Well, I'll buy some newer groceries soon.

Kinda sleepy, kinda lax. But I think I will have a nice workout today. Not exactly sure what I'll be going for. I can tell I'd prefer to go light on squats. But bench? I think I'll go for a bit of a 'pyramid'. A 'pyramid' can be seen differently; if you look at it from left to right then it's when you start with a light weight for many reps, go to heavy weights for low reps and go back down. But if you look at it from the front you can imagine the high rep sets are the base and low rep sets are the top. I've gotten way too used to thinking about a 'pyramid' that way, not that it matters very much. But man, yesterday was a real hard day. So glad I was able to overcome my superstitions. All I really need is to have better discipline in my recovery.

My glutes are whacked, my middle-upper back is whacked, my hamstrings are a little fatigued.

I feel decent though. I brewed coffee in a curious way - medium-large amount of beans, only a part of it double ground, poured over with room temperature water, then added hot water and brought close to boil. It tastes mediocre today, but at least it's not bad. Honestly, if you really wanna enjoy coffee there's one important thing you gotta do and that is to not be hungry, eat something else in advance, or in the morning at least.

Workout

Warmup - fairly thorough, upper body

Bench

20 and 40

70 for 20

90 for 15

120 for 10 - pecs a little strained on the outside, on the edges, otherwise good

130 for 5 okay, decent, even better strain-wise

140 for 1 and a half reps - right upper pec started crawling to the side. That's okay, I'm glad I learned to stop on time. Otherwise I feel pretty strong even at 140. No more benching can really be done when the muscle starts doing that.

Squat - sets of 10

70 - 90 - 100 - 100

My technique has gotten better. I'd doing a bit of the arc with the hips (I talked about it earlier), popping it into the hole and jumping back out. I can really feel my quads working today.

Front squat - 5 sets of 1 in various front rack positions; a few extra sets of just front rack at first. A lot of tolerable pain in the wrist bones, but in the end I did a set that was really felt. Curious thing, however - if you do it right you spread the tension between your arm (the rotator cuff) and your wrist and neither one of them gets painful. It was all mostly about stretching. Overall, I'm very happy with today. Happy to be wise to stop the bench before anything happens. I'd be a little happier if I learned to avoid it - I believe the issue is with the ATF in muscle running out after some time. Do more volume? Sounds plausible.