Friday, March 13, 2009

Bench/Upper Back

Bench
155 x 2 x 5 (paused)
165 x 4 (unpaused)
My bench has not really gone up so far this year...though I did lose 7 or 8 pounds this quarter, maybe that's why?

Dumbbell rows
95 x 3 x 8

Dips (to failure)
BW x 20, 9, 8

Chinups
wide grip BW x 10, neutral grip BW x 8, close grip BW x 8

8 comments:

Juggernaut, the said...

Where is your weak point at?

At least with the training logs, you can look back and see what you've been doing and what things you could try substituting.

Vit said...

Looking at the logs, I have been doing a lot more pressing (banded bench, board presses, close grips) in our bench workouts than I used to.

I looked back at the log I kept over the summer and it looks like my bench increased when I lowered the weight from my best 3 sets of 5 and over a 3 or 4 week period I went back up in weight and exceeded my previous record for 3x5. I also did skull crushers consistently during that time period and tried to increase either the reps or weight I did every workout so maybe that's why it was increasing?

Everything is weak right now but maybe my triceps are the weakest link. But it seems like the board presses we've been doing would hit the triceps much more effectively than skull crushers?

Juggernaut, the said...

I think skull crushers are probably one of the best exercises for isolating the triceps, so I would probably keep them in over board press.

However, maybe floor pressing would be more useful than board pressing?

Vit said...

I've never done floor presses before, but I'd be willing to try them out. Next quarter I'll make it a point to consistently do skull crushers in the bench workouts since I'm pretty sure they've worked for me in the past.

Jake Ceccarelli said...

Just bench press a lot more. 3x5 is not a lot of volume.

Phil Russell said...

Especially if you only bench 1x a week.

Vit said...

I usually try and bench twice a week but I don't do much actual bench pressing on the second day (more overhead presses/dumbbell presses/dips).

I know when I bench on Tuesdays with Dave and the guys it's usually pretty high volume since we generally do sets of 3 or 5 on the bench followed by 1 or 2 other pressing variations.

Do you guys think it matters too much what kind of volume/intensity scheme I use for the second day or as Jake said should I just focus on getting a lot of volume in?

Jake Ceccarelli said...

Do one day heavy one day light. As long as the weights you're using on the light day are over 60% of your max then there's not that much to worry about.