Burly Decides to Bench Again...

[burlyman30]

Yesterday I was lifting a pressure washer out of my truck and even though I was doing a two-man lift, I pulled one of the strands on my left delt. It wasn't bad. It was more just extra tight on that one strand, and certainly not torn. I chose not to workout yesterday because of that, but decided to try it today and see how things went, knowing that I could dial it back at any moment.

I warmed up for a while prior to doing the bench workout. I had little choice. There was a guy monopolizing the power rack for his squats that were, no joke, 6" depth. He actually set the safety bars 6" below the rack he was lifting the bar from. After 30some minutes, I finally got a turn at the rack. At my network of gyms, they do not have bench press benches, so you have to use a flat bench in a power rack or a smith machine.

Even after warming up a lot with 5 lb plates doing therapy exercises pre-bench press, the shoulders needed more warming up, so I started with the bar..

Bar x 30
95 x 15
135 x 5 shoulder felt ok
185 x 3 shoulder felt a little off, but not in pain
225 x 1 felt great. I found my groove again.
235 x 5 went up no problem. could have done a couple more
235 x 5 felt real good.
235 x 5 first four were great, but number 5 was a bugger. but with a lot of oomph I got it up.

The 235 was chosen because it was 80% of my recent max of 295. Next week I will move to 85% and attempt to maintain the 5 rep scheme. Going from 80-85% will increase the weight from 235 to 250. I'm following the same protocol in my DLing thread

Thoughts: While my 295 max last week made me feel "strong", especially for just coming back to a lift, 235 x 5 seems a bit anemic to me. In the "good ol' days" I remember putting in a heavy bench workout (~275 x 6 for a few sets) and then at the end when I was tired out, I would rep out with 225 for 12-15 reps. However, my actual 1 RM was probably only 315 at the time. I'm not sure if that is just a matter of me having greater muscular endurance because I was younger, or if I had fewer fast twitch/strength-trained fibers back then, or something entirely different.

The rest of my workout concentrated on flat bench flyes with light weights and high reps, doing a few drop sets, followed by a few sets of parallel dips, followed by a tricep/bicep workout. I won't detail these since it has little to do with the thread. I did want to note that I was doing high rep stuff after the heavier workout. I do this instinctively, I think, to work different fibres, to create more blood flow, and to lessen any further strain on joints and tendons beyond the heavier stuff I am doing.