January 6th - Bench Press, Front Rack stretches

 06.01.2026

Been feeling great. Slept nice, ate decent. Listened to music a lot yesterday, danced a lot. Been noticing I look pretty lean. That's cause I'm too lazy to eat well, heh. I just made some nice pasta sauce and the bow tie pasta. I initially braised and softened the tomatoes but realized I wanna do that to onions so I poured out the tomatoes into a bowl and gave the onions a nice sear, but also added some eggplant in there that was about to be thrown out - it wasn't spoiled, just uneaten. Sometimes when you're dealing with vegetables, searing them and such, you may wanna keep adding water. I was adding pasta water. Then I added the tomatoes which have all gone softened and cooked them together, then I poured them out again and put in the ground pork (cause I had it, that's why it's pork). Fried it a little until it started to get dry, then re-added the vegetables - tomatoes, eggplant and onions back in, as well as a few spoons of tomato paste for a clearer tomato taste. You gotta ask yourself why exactly you're cooking tomatoes when you're making pasta sauce, then it'll be clear how long you wanna do it. How it'll affect the taste and all that. You can tell my brain is a little depleted, heh. Not a big deal! I'm gonna do my 6s in Bench press and do some writing, possibly. Also, Merry Christmas! 😁

Been playing FO4. Pendulating between enjoying it and feeling like it's a chore lol. Had to roll back a couple hours of gameplay cause I installed a mod (Workshop rearranged) that was supposed to add some natural lore-friendly planks and plank buildings and such but instead rebalanced and fenged up the workshop menu. Not good! But this time once I reloaded I played a lot more decisively and cleaned out West Everett Estates with only three deaths (in Survival). I play off-meta rn, don't bother to optimize *too much*. Smashed that Hammer supermutant after he killed me - exploded or hammered me near a dozen times the day before! I frigging came up right to his face and blewed him apart with a few strikes with that Rockville Slugger, ending on a crit 😁 It's pretty amazing how nice FO4 ended up being with Survival mode. Somehow, something happened just right with it.

Workout

Warmup - wall pushups, wrist stretches - it's tight

Bench press

20 - 50 - 100 kinda messy cause I'm multitasking cooking

120 for 6

143 for 6

148 for 6 - nice, I liked it, after a break

153 for 6 - nice, decent, but harder than I wish it was. I'm not fully collected, not well warmed up.

153 for 6 better! Feels good. One more.

153 for 6 - done as 3+3 cause I got confused. First three reps were bad cause I set up wrong and I banged my right side against the rack stoppers and a pair of 10 kg plates fell - not from the barbell, they were just leaning onto the rack. I got up to check and fixed the bench a little, then I did three good reps, decently controlled.

My muscles and tissues are probably fighting one another as I'm trying to do antithetical exercises somewhat. Bench and front rack stretching/clean/decently athletic OHP. I can press big weights awkwardly, yes I can do that. But I need to get back into having good control over the bar so I can pick any technique I want - and *cheat* however I want, heh. And PP - that's the big one. You gotta have a good front rack. I will be working on it today. And on cleans. No time to waste now, let's get her going. I wanna do more bench though.

103 for 2 sets of 8 - struggling with the right side unevenness again. Hm.

Front rack stretches

50 - 100 - 140 - fingertip holds a-la front squat

140 - one full grip liftoff. It hurt a lot, but I can tell I'm very close to a good rack position, surprisingly.

But I am extremely wary of my connective tissues possibly being more fragile than I think they are. I think I may wanna pump my breaks. Doesn't mean I have to stop risking. No, I just need a more methodic, step by step approach.

Here's the deal - I'm simply trying to make it so my wrists are forearms are not extremely stretches while my arms, chest and back are more stretches. I've done some lat stretches already, but that was all fairly minimal, especially considering risual pump and stiffness after bench and yesterday's DL.

I'll do some more front racking, then I'll do light clean and press.

140, 100 and 50 for a gentle liftoff. 140 and 100 were nice, 50 was weird and uneven.

Overhead press

50 for a few reps - feeling weird, my right rotator cuff is both stiff and loose

Cleans

50 for 4 and then 1 - connective tissues in my right wrist got all wrangled up together so I knew it was time for a pause. I'm being too aggressive, definitely. Stretching takes time. Given that, I'm certain I've made good progress on my front rack.