Exercise Log 11.29.13 (Back Day, No Cardio)

Another long day, Black Friday, and before work I hit up back day. Going to keep the log short but as usual I like to lay down some of my thoughts. After warmups I did deadlifts (my primary lift on back day), now beginning to increment what I consider “light” and “moderate” all up a notch. Despite being fresh, I was hit with a case of the yawns so I didn’t do as well as I wanted. After a 6 rep light warmup set, I did a 6 rep moderate set, a 6 rep heavy set and tried then to match or beat my deadlift limits but failed. So instead I did another 6 rep heavy set and then did two drop sets to add some volume.

I learned two things though about deadlifting today that I think will prove helpful for the future. First is that the act of coming back up is easiest if you do so after letting yourself slowly fall down, simply because the act of landing at that position is the ideal form for pulling back up. Secondly is that thoracic extension during the lift has two huge benefits, one is it stabilizes your core by essentially having you to suck your gut in to push your chest up, but it starts your upper body in a stronger posture to actually hold the bar up and begin the pulling action of the lift. This will be useful in the future… but I admit today just wasn’t the day energy-wise to break to a new plateau.

T-bar rows (3 sets), wide-grip pull-ups switching to chin-ups at failure (7 reps, 4 sets), seated rows (3 sets, heavy to light weight). I want to work on my laterals so I did lateral rows (5 sets, light weight high volume of reps, aiming in 12-16 reps per set), one armed dumbbell rows (5 sets, started with moderate weight, heavy weight, extra heavy weight, then 3 drop sets just to show my lateral muscle fibers I mean business). Then to wrap up I picked a moderate weight curl bar and did form-focused bent over rows (3 sets). Feeling pretty good at where I was in the day I wrapped up with some back stretches, didn’t have the time for cardio.

So while I didn’t break any new plateaus, I felt like I did a good workout today despite the low energy with a lot of focus and volume. Now I gotta just get some protein in me and I’ll be good.