Hybrid Training. Week 5. Heavy Upper

BW - 226

Warm-up -
Rope PushdownsX20, 15
super-set with
Straight-Arm PushdownsX15, 10

Bench -
up to 190X2
then 160X6, 6

Dips -
BWX10
+10X6
+20X6, 6

Chins - BWX7, 5, 4

Lying EZ-Bar Triceps -
60X6
80X6, 5

T-Bar Rows - up to 110X6, 6, 6

Seated DB Overhead Extensions - up to a 70 lb. DBX6, 6

Straight-Arm Pushdowns - 1 set of 15

Way more volume on this day than I would normally do on this program.  Two reasons for that: A) mainly the coach that worked with me for my meet in March wanted to hear about my training with Matt Wenning, and so I was killing time till he was done with a client; and B) I wanted to start putting some of Wenning's recommendations into practice, so I was feeling out some things.

To that end, I warmed up per his recommendation by hitting some triceps and lats.  Just hit a couple of medium-high rep sets.  No big.

Bench went pretty well.  Grip is moved in per Wenning, and trying to focus on keeping elbows in through lock-out.  I was good for that one the heavy(ish) double, and the 2nd set of 6.  The first back-off set had a bit of elbow-flare about half-way up.

Then it was time to "trash the triceps and lats," per Wenning.  For the initial movements, I kept the Hybrid Training program in mind.  On heavy bench day, following the bench, the program calls for 2 hard, low-medium rep sets.  I'd been doing the Press as suggested by the manual, but Wenning's impression that I needed to get away from benching so much with my anterior delts, made me think that I should sub in a compound, heavy triceps movement.  My old favorite Dips seemed like just the ticket.  To keep the intensity higher than the volume, I went with weighted dips for the first time in a long time.  I was about 10-15 lbs. off my best for that rep range, but that's not bad as a place to start.

The program had barbell rows and then chins, but I thought I'd flop that to hit the lats first.  After that, I was bascially just going back and forth between triceps and upper back movements waiting on Bill to be done.  Tried to take everything into a range where 5-6 reps would be challenging for a couple of sets.  Trying to see what movements I might like to rotate in.  It will be dips for sure as the secondary movement for a few weeks