Benching up

Ah, yes, the Thursday bench press.

I guess from all the years I started every workout with the bench press, I look forward to the bench press days as the "easy" workout. And that's odd, considering I'm never, ever satisfied with my progress on the bench press.

Today I did pretty well. No, not satisfying, but the progress according to the plan I've sketched out is right on schedule.

I felt a lot better today than I have on recent days. I've really felt rundown lately, so to go into a workout feeling energized was a nice change. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with my caloric intake. I have always had a problem getting enough to eat. I always plan on eating at least 5 meals a day—mostly chicken and vegetables—but I often end up missing one of those meals. So I've taken to snacking on peanuts during the day to make up for it. I think it's working.

Today I maxed out at 215 on the bench press for three reps. I was hoping to do five, but it just didn't happen. According to Fitocracy, that's a personal best since I started tracking my workouts on the site. As impatient as I am to move forward, it's still solid progress, so I'll take what I can get. I'm a long way from my all-time best, however, and I hope to get back into that range before the end of the year. I figure I'll have to eat a lot more steak to make it happen, though.

I did a sort-of reverse pyramid after the max on the BP and finished up with four sets of 10-12 reps at 135. During the reverse pyramid, I supersetted in sets of bent-over row and single-arm dumbbell row.

I've been wimping out a lot lately on the assistance work, so I was pleased to get in a full workout with assistance work and high volume on the main lift.

All in all, things are looking up. I need to be more disciplined with my diet to ensure I'm eating enough. Tomorrow is squat day, so I'm going to shovel in as much food as I can.

Doing that bench thing and thoughts on weight acclimation

As with some other exercises recently, I'm feeling the need to make some minor adjustments to the progression pattern. Today, for example, my warm-up sets were to go from 90 up to 135, with the working sets starting at 165. I know I may be a little neurotic about this, but I didn't like the 30-lb. jump from the last warm-up to the first working set, so I decided to squeeze in another set at 155 before the set at 165. That's a more gradual progression, so I think it gets my body better acclimated for the heaviest working sets.

I believe that weight acclimation is a highly underrated—and perhaps misunderstood or even unrecognized—concept. Yes, it's almost entirely psychological and thus will largely be dismissed by many, but it certainly can have an impact on your workout.

Try this experiment some time with an unsuspecting test subject:  Empty an opaque milk jug and then put it in the refrigerator. You could wait for someone to go for a bowl of cereal or you could just ask someone to pour you a nice cold glass of cow juice. What happens when they pick up the jug? Surely, everyone has done this at some point. You think a jug is full and when you grab it, it nearly flies to the ceiling.

Afterwards, try the opposite. Fill a jug full and tell someone to "throw that empty away." Again, what happens? Exactly the reverse of the previous experiment. If you think the container is empty, you exert less force against it than is actually required.

I firmly believe the same principle applies exactly the same in weight training and weight lifting. If you go into a lift cold and attempt your 1RM, chances are, you'll fail. It's not necessarily because you're incapable of lifting that much, but because your body just isn't ready for it.

Never mind the fact that trying to lift heavy without warming up leaves you vulnerable to injury.

Yes, I believe the progression matters. As I've stated before, it doesn't really matter that you only do one rep in that acclimation set as long as you do something to prepare your muscles for the heavier weights. Also consider what it feels like in reverse: After you've done a working set at your heaviest weight, drop back down to your heaviest warm-up set and see what it feels like. It seems a lot lighter than it did when you were warming up, doesn't it?

Today I again employed the additional warm-up set to acclimate myself before the working sets. My goal was to do at least one rep at 205. Instead, I did two at 215 and then dropped down to complete the bench press workout with a set of three reps at 205. I'm not going to say that the acclimation set helped me exceed my goal. The fact is, I simply knew I could do more. I opted for two heavy sets at the end just to give me some forward momentum. I'm deloading next week anyway, so why not?

I finished up with supersets of incline dumbbell press and single-arm dumbbell row. This is the first time I've included incline DB press, so I figured it was about time. It will probably become a permanent substitute in place of flat DB press.

And it's another workout in the books at Fitocracy.

Bench press Thursday

For many people the bench press comes easy. It's the primary movement on which most of their effort is focused. When someone wants to know how strong a guy is, they'll ask how much they can bench. The bench press is easily the most overrated weight lifting movement. Far too much emphasis is placed on it.

And it doesn't come easy to me. It seems I've always struggled with it. From time to time I've made good strides, but very seldom have I ever felt confident that I could beat personal records.

Today was another of those days it just didn't come easy. You would think that the OHP and bench press would go hand-in-hand, at least to some extent. Doing 8 reps at 115 on the OHP was easy the other day. Today, doing five at 195 on the bench was not. I might've been able to do six or seven reps, but I was expecting to be able to do 8 or even 10. I was really thinking 8. It was the number I had in mind from the start of the workout.

The bar just seemed to have my number today. But I'm only in my second cycle of 5/3/1, so the PRs may yet come. Did I lift the weight at or above the rep total the plan calls for? Yes, but it was just more difficult than I expected. I did an extra set of dumbbell bench press and Kroc rows to try to make up for the disappointing bench press numbers. As with the squats, I often feel I'm just not doing enough on the bench press sometimes.

In the next cycle of 5/3/1 I expect I will be seriously pushing the envelope on my limits. I'll have to wait and see how it works out. The PRs on the bench press are still several months down the road. On the deadlift, squat and overhead press, they're just around the corner.

Yes, it's logged on Fitocracy.

Bench press Thursday

Thursday is bench press day. This is the one day I'm not going to meddle with much in terms of assistance work. I like the Kroc rows, so I'm going to stick with them for a while longer. I did add a few sets of chin-ups because Wendler recommends doing them between pressing movements. I didn't want to do much, though, because it should not interfere with the main exercises.

The bench felt pretty good, and I was able to complete 8 reps at 185. I don't know if I've ever done that many reps at 185, so it's an encouraging sign. On the dumbbell press, however, I could only do 12 reps with the 65s when I'd completed 15 across 5 sets before. After a few sets at 65, I dropped down to 50 and finished a total of 10 sets.

The Kroc rows were great today. I recently purchased some dumbbell bars and more plates, so I did my first two sets of rows at 105 lbs. I wanted to get in some good rep work, though, so I dropped back down to 95 where I was able to do 10 reps. Previously, I was doing 8 reps at 95, so, again, another small step forward. I intend to keep going heavier and heavier on the Kroc rows. I supersetted the last five sets of dumbbell press with the Kroc rows.

One could make the argument that I'm not doing true Kroc rows and that I'm not really following it as Wendler prescribes. Kroc rows are supposed to be performed at a very heavy weight and in such a way that you have to cheat a bit to squeeze out every last rep. As with some other movements, Wendler says do 20 reps in a set on this one. My plan at the current time is to work into that. I want to go heavier, but I also want to get the rep work in, so I may drop down to 75 in the next workout after a few heavy sets and go crazy with them.

I'm considering one minor adjustment to the assistance work on bench press days. I experimented with some workouts from Tom Venuto's web site a couple of years ago. One of them involved doing supersets with incline dumbbell press in which you perform several sets back to back, lowering the incline between each set until the last set is almost on a flat bench. This might be something to try on bench press days after the barbell bench press and Kroc rows are out of the way. One thing I remember from doing this is that I really felt it in my triceps.

So another bench press day in the books and on to squats tomorrow. I keep feeling like I'm not doing nearly enough for my legs, so after the standard Wendler barbell squat routine, I'm going to throw in 3-4 sets of higher rep squats before moving on to the leg press. I'm adding a few sets of lunges as new assistance work tomorrow, shaking things up just a bit without overcomplicating the workout. Fridays are always the toughest days of the week to get motivated. There's a part of me that just wants to brush it off and play games instead. Tomorrow I have to stick to the plan.