5/3/1 Log: Cycle 1. Week 3. Incline

Defranco Shoulder Mobility
Incline -
BarX10
95X5
120X5
135X3
150X3
125X10

Klokov Press -
45X5
65X3
75X2
85XFail

Chin-ups - BW(206)X10, 4

Cable Rows - 3 sets of 10-12

Swiss Ball Crunches - 3 sets of 15

Not a bad session for having been out of the gym for over a week with a low back strain.  I used a different incline bench that's a little less vertical, and my pressing was predictably stronger.  I guess I'll just have to start tracking which bench I use in a session.  Still, because my incline was weaker than anticipated in my first week, for the next three weeks, I'm dialing back my training max in the hopes to get more reps on my top set.  Because I could only get 3 reps on my top set here, I decided to do the back-off set with 125.  Both the 150X3 and the 125X10 projected to increased maxes on this movement, but again, it was a shallower bench.


People are going gah-gah over the so-called Kolokov Press, a snatch grip military press BTN.  I decided to bite and put my toe in the water on them for some more shoulder volume today.  As advertised they are quite hard to break off the neck, and it requires significantly less weight than front presses.  I didn't get the full-body strain feeling that's been written about, but possibly if I can start using slightly more weight by programming them in as a main movement, I might get that. 

Chins for a 50% set.  This performance is about on par for my vertical pulling strength since the new year.  That's fine because I haven't been pushing that sort of movement for about 3 months.  Nice to know it's still ball-park from when I was.

Supposed to be doing Kroc Rows on this cycle, but they're always a bit hard on my lower back (I'm sure my form sucks, but I haven't been able to find a tweak that makes a difference).  Coming back from the strain, I decided to do some nice, controlled cable rows here instead.

Chiro prescribed short-ROM swiss-ball crunches as one of the two ab exercises she wants me to do, so started that today.  Sure enough, I was shaking like hell on the first set.  Then I remembered a trick she mentioned about forcing the tongue against the roof of the mouth, and the next two sets were smoother.  Still a work-out though, and therefore seems like a good scrip.

No farmer's walks today, because I'm still dancing around low-back recovery and don't want to put it at risk.  No other conditioning either because I needed to grab food before rehearsal.