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.