Exercise Log 5.18.14 (Front Squat & Bench Press Day, No Cardio)

The last day of my first week cycle of my new program, yay! The cycle ends with Front Squat & Bench Press Day. Being the first week’s cycle the theme is basic conditioning. Just laying down to record how it went!

Front Squat: Felt real good, then bad, then good about it. First did my training sets… Sets 1 & 2) 5 reps @ 145lbs. Set 3) 5 reps @ 155lbs, I was feeling good about this so far trying to focus on a wider stance than I usually do (I think my squat stance is too narrow normally especially for front squatting where you gotta open up your hips). So I wanted to do a little more. First, making up for the failed reps from my first day of this cycle… Set 4) 1 rep @ 165lbs (very clean form). Then to push into solidifying the form I did a drop set of 8 reps @ 115lbs.

Bench Press: I kept it simple here. Sets 1 & 2) 3 reps @ 145lbs. Set 3) 2 reps @ 155lbs, the last rep there was very ugly… just felt the bar shift too much but did my best to prevent any undue stress on shoulders as I went on the shakey rise up. To shore up any issues here with form due to the ugly rep I had, I did a drop set of 12 reps @ 95lbs at the end. Felt a good chest pump from these lifts so I felt I put the focus in the right place.

Dumbbell Standing Lunges / Dumbbell Romanian Deadlifts: 4 sets of 5 reps (each leg) lunges / 10 reps RDL’s @ 40lbs dumbbell pair. A good superset, my lunges were very shoddy though.

Angled Leg Press / Calf Raises: 4 sets of 12 reps presses / 12 reps raises @ 270lbs. The sleds at the new gym have a steeper angle which I like a lot. Felt real good on doing these. Fewer leg presses that I saw though, which was the only unfortunate thing.

Dumbbell Chest Press / Tricep Kickbacks: Wanting to keep the weight light for shoulder impingement recovery, I did 3 sets of 10 reps chest presses @ 45lb dumbbell pair / 10 reps each arm kickbacks @ 25lb dumbbell. Focused on good form and liked this superset a lot.

That was it, was under the clock to get home, changed so I could go out to meet friends. Skipped cardio a lot this week, will have to prioritize good running next week (I am training for a 5K coming up in June now). The first cycle of the new program is over, I’m feeling very good about it so far. The shoulder impingement may become an issue because with work and these workouts, it’s not recovering and the problems persist. So I may have to gut my workout plan of major shoulder actions. Going to take this one step at a time though to see how it goes first…

As for the workout plan, I made one minor but important revision. The primary lift of each workout day is the dominant mover so far, and the most likely area to be fatigued the next day, and while my schedule rotates I overlooked what happens if you want to work out the day immediately after the last day, you basically do front squats after deadlifts. Which is no good. So I spaced it out putting my dev day last. So now the official rotation is, keeping in mind the secondary lift is the least dominant that day:

Workout A: Deadlifts & Front Squats
Workout B: Bench Press & Deadlifts
Workout C: Front Squats & Bench Press
Workout D: Developmental Day

This spacing of the days I think puts less pressure to have rest days at the end or beginning I can just kind of do whatever because I feel I got better recovery planned. The plan so far though is very solid in my opinion I think I did good at least as far as the first weekly cycle of it has gone.