Sunday bench

Megan and I went to bed at 10pm and slept straight until 1pm the next day. We've both been fighting a cold/flu, and spending the day at a powerlifting meet and freezing quite a bit didn't help. I thought I might be in trouble when I woke up, but 2 aleve and 3 ephedrine tabs made me feel pretty good, and I really wanted to train.

Warm up
3 mins on bike, back foot elevated hip stretch, gh stretch, foam roller under low back

Bench with 45 lbs chain
barx10, 95x10, 135,185,225, 265 for 10 sets of 3
-I was very happy with this, I did this a couple weeks ago for 1 set and found it fairly heavy, doing it for 10 sets is pretty awesome, going to move up to 235 for 5 sets of 7, just need to take slightly longer rests, 255 for 7 sets of 5, and 275 for 10 sets of 3... if i can do that in a week, i'll be one happy guy. if not, it might take me 2weeks, thrn i'll takea down week and re test my max... 340-350 with chainswould pretty much make my day. I'll likely only attempt 340, but I'll want to feel ready for 350 if that makes sense.. this is just a stop along the way. I'd rather keep up positive momentum on my way to a 365 bench with chains. 325 felt really good, i'm using my lats even better now, i'm not touching as low, better drive off my chest. I'm doing a level of work much higher than ever before on my bench, I think it's a good approach. Just going to focus on building up to the level of work someone with a 405 bench could do... I think that's around 325 straight weight for 4 sets of 4... so I'm building to that, and just going slow, and I really like chains. The new goal is to be able to handle that level of work, and that's how I think I'll accomplish my goals. today I think I could have easily handled 300 for all 10 sets, and I may do the week straight weight to get a gauge of where I'm at. For example, the chains are around 20 lbs on my chest, and 45 at lockout, so 285, and 310 ... I think I could do some triples with 315, but maybe not. Chains are cool, on bench I feel they're like a dampening effect on the stretch reflex, they make you have to have the strength of 310 to have to do it... an I feel they match up well.

Neutral grip pull downs
120x20,16,13,12,8
-These were pretty hard, and I was short on time, I'm looking forward to getting further down the machine, I've dropped chin ups as they're just too hard on my joints, and I want my bench to go well. I feel building my lat strength is more important than building my chin up strength and right now I'm just not up for training threw the level of pain that comes from back squatting lately. I'm hoping doubling my back work reps with the heaviest weight I can handle will be pretty good. I get a great pump, stretch the shit out of them between sets, and I don't know if they're getting stronger, but I'm looking forward to re learning chin ups after my back gets such a high level of work from 3 days of trying to build to 100 heavy reps in 5 sets, and a ton of deadlifting. Should be good times.

didn't have time for external rotations