As long as my masculinity is again being called into question, I suppose it’s as good a time as any to answer a few of the regulars who emailed to ask about what’s been going on in the workout front, particularly about an injury I’d mentioned a while ago. I don’t know if it was age getting the better of me or if it was just my propensity to overtrain, but something deep inside my shoulder had been bothering me for a long time, so I finally listened to Spacebunny and kept my bench under 165 for about a year.
The rest seems to have helped quite a bit; today was my second heavy lift in over a year and the shoulder held up fine without even a twinge of discomfort. It felt great and everything except the very last rep at 270 went up easily. I suspect it will take a while for me to get back where I was, but I seem to have retained a bit more strength than I’d dared to hope. I also have a workout partner 3x per week who is one of those fill-out-the-card types and his mania for always going to the gym at the same time has probably been a good thing too. Partly due to the shoulder injury, which ironically only affected my chest workouts, I’ve been on a shoulder kick for a while now. Here’s what we did today:
Bench
135 12x (warmup)
225 10x
240 8x
255 6x
270 4x (Only got 3. Still too nervous to force any reps)
215 12x
Shoulder press – seated dumbell
50-55-60-65 for 10x-8x-6x-4x
Shoulder press – standing military
45-65-75-85 for 10x-8x-6x-4x
Dips
10-12-12
Shoulder flies
30-25-20 for 10x-10x-10x
Seated curls
Cappucino for 1x