Exercise Log 12.20.13 (Back Day, No Cardio)

Alright, a quick log just want to put this to record. For those of you who don’t think there is a reason to have this up on my public site, it’s easily one of the best ways to access these notes after the fact, and I do that frequently. Also it’s free content for the site, and who can complain? If one person learns something cool about fitness from my endless rants, so be it.

Okay, tonight was short got out of work later than I wanted so tried to keep it to basics. Back day’s primary lift is deadlifts, so after warmups I went straight to the barbell. Sometimes when you do compound lifts right after a basic warmup, you gotta get your neurological system pumped up first. So before I did a serious working set, I did a quick 10 rep warmup set of 135lbs. Alright after that, I did 8 reps of 195lbs, and the third set was 5 reps at 235lbs. At this point I was feeling like I did last time when I added to my deadlift, so I pumped myself up and tried for 265lbs. Didn’t hit the mark, but that’s okay failing sometimes is it’s own workout. Probably failed 5-6 times before giving up, even trying 260lbs. With my first rep of 260lbs I came very close to completing the rep, but had to bail on it after the pull up started as I felt my structural integrity waning. To wrap up, set 4 was 5 reps @ 225lbs, 5 was 8 @ 195lbs and lastly the final set which was a drop/burn set was 12 reps @ 135lbs.

Needing something to give my body a little ability to focus, I did T-bar rows next. Sets 1 & 2 were 10 reps @ 70lbs, set 3 was 8 reps @ 90lbs and set 4 was another attempt at the same with failure after rep 7. Feeling like that was a good indicator I did this lift good I added a drop set of 12 reps at 45lbs. To also work my scapula adductors, I did seated rows setting the weight at 135lbs and just doing each set to failure. Set 1 was 9 reps, set 2 was 7, set 3 was 8 and set 4 was 9 reps (had a bit of a pause before this set to recover). The final set was a drop set of 12 reps at 90lbs. Good working out the upper back.

Bent over rows was something I knew I needed to do, so I knocked out 4 sets of 10 reps @ 110lbs. My form was not the best due to the volume and weight but that’s okay sometimes. Added a drop set of 20 reps @ 50lbs which was surprisingly effective I will be doing drop sets more with bent over rows. Weight floor was busy so my options were becoming limited by this point, so I decided to wrap up with some pull-ups/chin-ups. I always do these in sets of 7 with the following premise: pull wide gripped normal pullups to failure, then finish the set of 7 with chin-ups. So after 4 sets I noticed I was pulling better on the pullups, doing 5-6 instead of 4-5 reps with the wide grip and only 1-2 reps of chin-ups to finish off the sets.

No cardio tonight, just had a few things to take care of at home. That said though, it was a great time and a great workout! I feel like with the right recovery that I may in fact pull that next deadlift level next time, we’ll see!