5/3/1 Full-Body: Cycle 5. Week 2. Bench

BW - 201

Pause Squats -
BarX10
95X5
135X5, 5
185X3
210X3
235X1

BW Lunges - 3 sets of 10

Bench -
BarX15
95X5, 5
120X3
140X3
155X7
95X12

Chins - BWX10, 8, 5, 5, 5

Pause Squats felt good.  Something that occurred to me about starting every training session with squats:  it forces me to take everything seriously.  Obviously I should take everything seriously, but the thrill/danger of squatting just puts me in a different place from the very first set than anything else.  And I'm not just talking about starting off with calves or neck or something.  Even benching and deadlifting with an empty or light bar does not snap me to attention in the same way that back squats will.  And once I'm in that place, I'm pretty much there the rest of the session, and able to focus in on every rep and set even at the end of a session when I'm fatigued and the last thing I want to do is another set of paused-chins.

Getting that extra leg work in with lunges here.

Bench felt really, really solid today.  155X7 is my 2nd best lift since I reset my form.  I went back to thumb around here, since thumbless didn't seem to help at all last time.  I good cue that I found this session was squeezing my shoulder blades together throughout the lift.  I realized that at the top of reps, I was extending my shoulders all the way forward and was losing tightness in my back.  This worked very, very well, and was something I hadn't understood about the lift previously.

I believe 201X10 is an all-around PR since I started pausing my chins as the bottom.