January 15th chest & back workout: Lying down on the job

I arrived at the gym determined to follow through with my plans to adopt a less is more attitude in my workouts over the next few weeks. Ideally there would be a corresponding increase in the weight used every time I cut back on the volume, but this just isn’t possible right now for chest, and also legs.

Today was the first time I completed my full chest workout before moving onto back, I’ve been supersetting for months now; sometimes it’s been all-out, recently it’s been the more moderate version of 3 sets of one chest exercise, followed by 3 sets of a back exercise. Today’s 5 sets of 15 on the flat bench felt great, I only managed 10-12 on the last set. I dropped the flyes for this week and went onto the cable crossovers for 3 sets of 10 reps plus presses, these will be dropped next week to be replaced by the flyes.

The one-arm machine press, 3 sets of 10 reps, was the best yet, although a training partner to help add a couple of forced reps would be ideal, I certainly feel ready for this with my chest training right now. Incline dumbbell press was my preferred next exercise but the bench area was too busy, it was either presses on a swiss ball or lying on the floor. This seems to be all the rage in some circles, I thought they’d be rubbish to be honest with you but they were far from it. I need another couple of goes to get used to setting myself up for the lift, but a weight I can easily press for almost 20 reps on an incline bench I managed for just half that today. My triceps had to work a lot harder to initiate the lift and my chest was kept under constant tension.

Just 3 sets of 10 was enough to be left feeling mighty.

My back workout was another hit, it started the same as last week, 2-arm DB rows, 3 sets pronated-grip, 3 sets neutral-grip. Next were 3 sets of wide-grip chins, all were done without a weighted assist. I’ve been very cautious since getting back into training especially with this exercise, but I managed 3 sets of 10 reps, 8+ 2 rest pause on the final set. Thanks to the farmers walk I’ve been doing my grip held out for 3 sets of curl-grip chins for 10 reps. 

Watching this over the weekend certainly helped inspire me to get back on it

and the fact that I realised I’d been training my rotator cuff at least 3 times a week since October. The chances of a repeat to the minor injury; after doing wide-grip chins for the first time in while, I suffered 3 years ago are now pretty slim.

I finished of with 3 sets of 15 reps seated cable rows, this was an exericse I never really enjoyed much, I still did them regularly but it’s only now that I can really feel the muscles contracting.