Reps and Volume. Week 1. Bench

BW - 198

Bench -
BarX15
95X5
115X4
135X3
155X2
135X12, 8, 5

CG Bench - 135X3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 5

Incline (steep) - 95X10, 8, 7

Reverse Pec Deck - X20, 20, 20, 15

Hammer Curls - 25sX20, 18, 15

First time benching in 3 months.  Went well during the session, but my shoulder wasn't happy about it later.  I may just push through and see what happens after a few weeks.

I wasn't totally sure how I wanted to approach this as I came in.  I went mostly by instinct, and I'm pretty happy with what I ended up doing.  I'll probably make this the bench template for the coming weeks.

Started off with regular bench.  Did a very light over warm-up, and then repped out 135.  My goal is 20.  PRs will start at 18.  I also want a total of 23+reps on the work sets with 135.  Everyone's talking about volume these days, and it's something I'm going to start tracking closely.

After regular bench, I decided to do endless triples of close-grip with my regular grip working weight.  This is some Paul Carter inspired stuff.  It started off ridiculously easy, but get a bit tougher towards the end.  Still, I was able to hit 5 reps on my 8th set.  Will probably move down to 6X4 next week and just start pushing these up.  When I can do 8X5 with confidence, I will up the weight.

Moved over to the gym's steeper Incline bench next and did 3 sets of AMAP with 95.  It is what it is, and this is what it is right now.

Finished off with some rear delts (which is when my shoulder started feeling bad again weirdly) and then some light biceps.  I'll be doing more thorough biceps work on a different training day.