Thursday, January 1st 2026 - Bench sets of 8, medium load, thoughts on front rack and stretching

 01.01.2025

Reminder to self: do not **stretch** anything, ever as a part of WARMUP.

It's alright to stretch it later - but warmup is different.

Need to remind myself about it for OHP day too. And squat day too, I'm certain I can start squatting big again.

Wrote this in the morning today. Didn't sleep. I'm probably gonna accidentally switch to nighttime living lol! Maybe not.

***

Alright, thirteen hours later. I've had one coffee. Last time we did sets of 12, that was the firstest ever microcycle session. Pecs are in a super good shape rn. Kinda wanna go and try to bench like 148 for sets of 8. Or maybe I'll work up to it. I want more coffee, I only had one conventional 35/440 and it was just two cups. Not quite as insane today! I'm gonna go and pump my beach muscles, heh.

And let's not forget about my rotator cuffs. They need to be bouncy, not just stiff. For the longest time I didn't think I could bench with a wide grip. And now it's been almost a year of me doing it fairly well, reaping nice new rewards. Last January was mostly quiet... But apparently I was already benching pretty well back then! But I still had pain issues, hm.

I'm kinda glad I abandoned my "program following" attitude, cause I did it wrong. I didn't program right. Now I train intuitively but I do "microcycles" and I know when do pump the brakes a little. Cause I train pretty often. I train 3 days out of 5. Which is 60%. And four days out of seven is something like 57%. Better! Deadlifting can be tiring, of course. I pumped the breaks fifteen days ago, when I was just doing 200. It felt like recovery. Then 245 and 258 on the next couple sessions, they felt way harder until yesterday which finally felt easy, that 260 - but it consistent volume!

Yeah no, my bench is definitely so much better rn than it was a year ago. Have I done 160 or more for five? Well, not today, in about ten days I think I'll do that lol. And also I **should** do some OHP and Squat today as well, just keep it light.

***

10:30PM. Took my time. A little messy in my head; for a minute earlier today I was considering starting chapter 18, but then I decided to consolidate my ideas, after I've done my reading. Reading Huckleberry Finn out loud, that really helps the speech and words moving, but today it's not useful, it's like a super light workout and conditioning, some of it (consolidating ideas for ch18). A lot of verisimilitude, oh yes there is.

Workout

Warmup - wall pushups. They do incorporate stretching, don't they? Just minor stuff though. My hand and palm are pretty fatigued after yesterday, thumb muscle too! I've done a good amount of pinching.

Bench

20 - 50

100 - 2 sets of 8 - first stiff and awkward, second better; then a break

120 for 8 a little too hard, wondering if I should preserve energy here

130 for 8 okay

133 for 8 a little better, unbalanced because of tight right wrist

135 for 8 - super easy, I love it, managed to do it fairly evenly here, put on music

138 for 8 nice

Decided not to go for 140 after all; I wanna do the light stuff that I need upkeep on.

100 - 2 sets of 10 medium-narrow grip, controlling the speed and acceleration, very satisfying

Clean and Press

50 kg - about 10 cleans, then 10 presses

50 - 5 cleans, then 5 presses, some additional pausing in the rack position

20 kg bar - some holding in the rack position. I think I should do it more, simply pick it up and hold, let it harden naturally. I used to do a 360 kg quarter front squat. It hurt me but I held it very well.

I can keep my elbows up. I should be glad about it. The bench will not hinder me.

Squat

10 reps

You know, I've forgotten about my oldschool ham/squat stretches I've been doing so much. They keep me very limber!

Static holds / squat and hamstring stretches - 2 sets - feels good.

Front rack stretch with a 17 kg ez bar - 1 sets - cramped my serratus muscle on the right side, interesting. Really forcing the rotator cuffs back. Another little obsession, I'll focus on that. Get my front rack into a satisfying shape.

RPotD - Glasfenster in der Eingangstür des Schlosses Caputh in Brandenburg