Tuesday, 9/7/2021

Main Lifts

Board Press -- 5 boards 135x8, 3 boards 135x8, ZERO boards 135x8

Other Stuff

T-Bar Row -- 3 sets of 65x9
Skull Crushers -- 3 sets of 60x11
Seated Lat Pullup (unilateral) -- 3 sets of 52.5x11
Face Pulls -- 3 sets of 32.5x13

After giving my shoulder a full weak of rest from doing any board pressing, it is feeling a lot better.

On Tuesday, as you'll see, I actually tried my first set of real bench (no boards) in a while. It felt pretty weird while doing the set. I actually had trouble even getting the bar to my chest at all because my anterior delts on BOTH shoulders felt so tight. Almost like I was wearing a bench shirt or something.

Interestingly my shoulder(s) felt fine the next day and they feel fine today. But the set itself did not feel great. Very strange. I am wondering if it is because I have developed some asymmetries from continuing to do a lot of back work while doing very little bench or shoulder type work. Pretty uncommon problem for a power lifter to be asymmetrical because his rear delts are too strong but maybe that is the case here?

After celebrating how great my back felt it started getting a little sore. Not super bad. But I went from basically not feeling it to now definitely noticing that it is sore. Probably not surprising as I continue to up the weight and sets on deadlift and squat.

I decided to take Thursday (today) off from squatting to make sure I don't re-injure myself.

I haven't tried these but I might. Especially after that weird experience trying to do a regular bench and not being able to seemingly because both shoulders were so tight.

I was thinking maybe I need to start doing some isolated anterior delt and possibly some pec work (like chest flies) to stretch them out and catch them back up.

Sling shot may be worth trying. I have heard good things about them

I have been using a bench block that beeschnuts suggested to do some board pressing and its been great.

hope you find a way to keep training painlessly. injuries really suck

Back when I even lifted, I got a fair bit of good use out of the Slingshot and would recommend.

+1 to hoping you can continue to work back to training pain-free.

thanks

I more or less feel good about my back

I am not anticipating any set backs there

It will take me a while to work back up to the weight I was doing before but I feel good. Back feels really solid.

My shoulder is the more concerning part. Mainly because I don't really understand what is going on or how it heals. But I'm not going to give up so I'll be back eventually. May take a few more months

Bump

thanks buddy!

not sure why i couldn’t find it

Been a while since I've posted. To be honest I was kind of demoralized with all the injuries I was dealing with. But through it all I did keep hitting the weights as hard as my body would let me. The back is still on the road to recovery and by deadlift is still very slowly crawling back to where it was before. Thankfully, my squat was not as affected and I have been able to get back to where I was. I wanted to share a new PR I just hit recently:



old PR was 455 so was super happy to nail 465. I actually forgot my knee sleeves the day of the PR so I think I probably have a few more pounds in me. Will probably be trying another PR in a few months.

Shoulder is still not great but I definitely think it is making progress.

I have been basically just doing 4 sets of week of 8x135 for several months now and my shoulder will hurt on and off. When it hurts a lot I will take a session or two off.

Recently it has felt pretty good though. Several sessions in a row where it feels ok. It is really hard to tell how much is the actual injury vs how much it just the whole shoulder being very weak and thus going to be sore as I work my way back up.

For fun I gave 225 a shot recently and I was able to do it no problem which made me happy to find out that even with ~6+ months of no benching I hadn't lost too much strength.

I am in the middle of a week off but I am hoping that once I pick back up I can start adding ~5lbs as week as long as the pain doesn't get bad.

Def looks like there’s more there. Also, looks like high bar squat, do you not do low bar?

I've never done low bar before. I guess I always shied away from it because I figured it would put more stress on your lower back.

That is true, it is harder on the low back. And given your back issues, that makes sense. You could prob squat 500 low bar if you can high bar 465 but not worth it given your injury history

is it every possible that someone could do more high bar than low bar? mostly just curious

doesn't Jon Haack squat high bar?

Of course it’s possible. If you only train high bar, then attempting low bar would prob feel very awkward at first and you might not do as much. I think for most people, if you train both, you will find you can do more with low bar. I think haack is one of the only power lifters who does squat high bar

Awesome PR!

Agree with beesch there's more there, but given your injury history, not redlining seems prudent. Glad to hear your shoulder is improving; are you doing any prehab outside of the gym? Rotator cuff work, gtg pushups, band work?

Yeah that makes sense. Maybe at some point once I am feeling fully recovered I may do a few training blocks with low bar just to see how it goes.

I did it for a few months back in the summer but then I stopped. I should probably be doing more.