Sleep has been bad for a few nights, and I was really dragging ass coming into this session. I thought about swapping out Squats for something easier, but decided to just get the volume in at an easier weight.
Took a little over a week off to go on vacation immediately after the last training block, so I think I'll do a 2 week pivot back into regular training.
Leg Raises were really weak, but everything else went about as expected.
I'll probably bump volume up slightly the rest of this week and the beginning of next week, and then pull back before I head into the intro week for the next training block.
"Reverse SSB" means put the bar in the rack backwards so that the weight is up above the shoulders. Not getting under the bar backwards i.e. SSB Front Squats. Although this did feel fairly upright similar to a Front Squat.
Mostly old favorites here so nothing to really note. Hoping a lot of banded chin up work of varying difficulty combined with sub-maximal chin ups (in dev blocks) will start to yield gains where other chin up strategies have fallen short.
Haven't done Paused Bench in a while. Felt totally comfortable.
GPP Day -
- Circuit: Straight-Arm Pull-Downs, DB Press, Hammer Curls - 7 minutes; 3 rounds; sets of 10
- Rower - HIIT; 6 rounds; 12 minutes
Solid upper-body session. sRPE was sub-target for the 2nd week in a row, so if I'm feeling well fatigue-wise next week, I'll be adding a set to each movement.
Bench took a 2% jump in e1RM this week, which is above average for the last year. In my best training 4 training blocks over the last year, bench jumped about 3% in week 2 on average, but the TM on the first week for those bench blocks was 92.7% on average (below the mean for the year), and this block started at 98.9% (the highest of the year). So year-best TM and an above average jump in week 2, are a combo that I haven't seen on bench in the last year, and an auspicious start to the block.
Last week, RPE on Close-Grips ramped quickly on the sets across, but this week I was able to both add weight, and maintain it at target RPE. Nice to have that on track in week 2 as well.
Added a rep to all the Rack Pull-Ups but BW was down, so whatevs. I'm not going to stress over these, even if the data says they were one of my top-6 DL accessories in the last year. They'll progress or they won't.
GPP Day went very well. Got another 3 round in 7 minutes on the resistance circuit. I added weight to all movements, and still hit 10 reps on all sets. Thought I would add 2 rounds to the HIIT, but only adding 1 felt right in the moment.
GPP Day -
- Circuit: Straight-Arm Pull-Downs, Seated DB Press, Hammer Curls - 7 minutes; 3 rounds; sets of 10
- Rower - LISS; 20 minutes
Nice little upper-body session.
200X3 @7.5 is interesting because that's about at 99% of where my bench was at the end of the previous, aborted cycle. That was back on 12/22. So almost a month later, with minimal training, bench strength is about where it was. Not sure if there are any take-aways, but if the lift trends upwards from here, and especially if I get a couple of larger-than-average jumps (my Bench tends to have those), I could end up with a good little bench block.
I had to drop weight on the last set of Close-Grips, as the RPE started jumping pretty fast. All good (probably).
Rack Pull-Ups were fairly easy, especially as I'm still dropping a set from each movement in this first week.
vi
GPP Day went well, too! Was able to move through this combination a bit faster and with more reps, resulting in getting a 3rd round in the same amount of time. I think the prior GPP day's circuit probably had a lot more biceps involvement in each movement and that created more fatigue.
Also doubled my time on the rower with no difficulty. Will probably switch to HIIT next week.
