Here's a little music to listen to while reading my write-up. This song is in my regular in my training playlist.



Upper and lower warmup
Softball roll pecs/shoulders

Incline bench w/pinkies on rings 135/225/315x3 405/495/530/500x1
Dead benches 430 6x1 w/45 second rest between sets
Rolling dbl tri ext 50 2x15, 55x15, 60x15
Overhead reverse barbell shrugs 135 3x15
Bar bench 1x100
Iced pecs/shoulders 20 minutes


There was a lot going on this session. First and foremost I hit a pr on the incline with pinkies on the ring. I put this lift in the rotation because inclines have been a part of every training cycle where I have hit 600 raw. Last time I pr'd this lift was 2/11 with 525 and I weighed 301. This time around I hit the 530 at 283. Yeah, I'm pumped!

Next were "Dead benches." Josh Bryant recommended I do these. I respect him as a lifter and coach so I asked him to look at my program. Without changing much he wanted me to add this lift in. I did 430 for six singles with 45 seconds rest. Man did these suck. It's such a terrible position to start from--I guess that's the point of them. The exercise sucking only worsened with the minimal rest time between lifts.

Moved onto rolling dbl tri ext. Finished those and worked them hard. I raised weight and slowed the tempo to increase difficulty. After that I got fancy with some overhead barbell reverse shrugs. I do them with just my arms as a warmup and with a light daily stretch I do. Not sure I like them weighted for work sets though.

Last thing I want to report is that I ate only around 20 grams of carbs total during the day going into this session. This is important for me to note because after making weight I have not followed my backloading protocol going into meet day. I just load carbs after weighing in all the way until the meet. If I am strong in training without carbs I will be strong in the meet without carbs. Got to compete like I play. So I am training at 280-283 instead of 285-288. This way it will be less of a cut and I'll have less worry about getting the weight back up.

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Vincent Dizenzo