Exercise Log 12.9.13 (Chest & Shoulder Day, No Cardio)

Quick log of tonight’s workout, first day back in three days so most of tonight was just shaking off the dust. Resuming my cycle today was chest & shoulder day, going to keep this one short and sweet (if I can avoid the conventional tangents and video links)… just for the books.

Workout day was rough today because the gym was swamped. I really need a more quiet place to work out on a Monday. Anyways, started chest with warmup then declined bench presses. Set one was 10 reps @ 105lbs (very light), then 10 reps at 115lbs (light), 8 reps at 125lbs (moderate) then two drop sets of 10 & 12 reps going back down. Always conservative on the declined bench press because I am trying to learn the patterns without having a spotter so I stay away from failure levels.

Unable to find a free inclined bench to do the other way, I did an inclined press machine instead. First time in a while I did a machine as a substitute for free weight (a few months ago all I did was machines) and after spending so much time in free weight I realized the machines do isolate better, but they also feel less effective. A lot of exertion to work a little isolated part of the body. Anyways this was upper chest so I did 5 sets (8 @ 95lbs, 7 @ 95lbs, 6 @ 95lbs, 8 @ 80lbs, 10 @ 65lbs). As you can tell from the rep pattern I tried a few heavier sets then I did two drop sets, sort of becoming my preferred method really.

Anyways I wanted to move on to the flat bench press, but again the benches were occupied so I bumped my dumbbell chest presses up the order of priority to do that instead. Nabbed a pair of 55lb dumbbells and tried to press them a conservative 30 times, but actually failed at 28. Not quite sure what was up with that, but when I press a set and only get 1 rep, I know to quit.

Anyways finally got on the flat bench press but by this point my chest and triceps in particular were shot, so I wasn’t at peak strength. First did a warmup press of the bare bar just to get in the form, then did a set of 8 @ 105lbs, 6 @ 125lb (actually was more like two sets of 3 due to failure). Then decided to incline to failure, 2 @ 135lbs, 2 @ 145lbs and failed at an attempt at 155lbs. Was one of those moments where the gym was so busy someone would notice, and despite safely roll of shaming myself out of the situation someone superman’ed to come to my aid. A nice gesture but I personally am trying to learn to be comfortable with failure. I might’ve tried again after the failure but after the save I felt I’d be better off doing drop sets (8 @ 115lbs, 10 @ 95lbs).

The last chest exercise was seated chest cable flys, did 7 sets including drop sets because I wasn’t sure what weight level to choose so I went up and down the full spectrum. Most of my sets were 6-10 reps but one set was only 5 reps (with 2 awful bad form) at 80lbs.

Alright next, shoulders. Going to speed this up here, did 4 sets of a superset of side raises and front raises (20lb dumbbells), 4 sets of 8 reps @ 60lbs curl bar of military presses, dumbbell shoulder flys 10 reps @ 30lb dumbbells for 4 sets. Reverse fly machine 10 reps @ 90lbs, 3 sets (fast paced through this). Again ran into the issue of the gym being too busy to get to the overhead trap shrug or the seated trap shrug rack done, so got frustrated and grabbed a pair of 55lb dumbbells and did dumbbell trap shrug (4 sets of 10). Works for me. Finally saw someone doing reverse one armed over the shoulder cable flys, and I wanted to do another posterior deltoid exercise so it seemed good enough, did 4 sets of 10 but at a very very light weight (20lbs) on the cable because on suspension machines when you start exceeding the most stable weights your muscle groups isolate (like shoudlers) you involve a lot of extra muscles and it ruins your ability to focus on the right thing. It felt good though and I liked it… wanted to do body rows instead of this, but again, gym was busy.

I think this was the fourth or fifth thing that night where the gym was too busy, and I generally like to leave people alone on their workouts so I don’t hawk machines or bug people on how long they’re going to be on a particular piece of equipment. Alright I thought I was going to keep this log short? Go figure.

Skipped the cardio tonight, the chest/shoulder workout dragged on very long due to the gym being packed and just the volume of all the stuff, so I had to get chores done. Would do cardio after every workout if I had the time or energy, but not always that easy to do on a working day. Maybe someday when I’m retired I’ll get a more strict schedule…