I doubt I will usually post more than once per week but, I have a little spare time and some stuff to add to my original post.
Okay, so it seems my upper body isn't quite as strong as I thought. My 5 RM were accurate as of a month ago, but I guess if you don't do anything for a month stuff gets a little weaker, lol, who knew.
Although this is a little disappointing, I'm not taking it too hard, because my priority has been my upper body lately anyhow. Over the holidays I took only a week off my lower body and didn't lose anything there and actually gained a bit but I took about a month off my upper body, since spare time I had I used to do my leg exercises.
Actually, I'm not really expecting to get many upper body PR's on the program I'm doing, which is fine, since I think I'm a little top heavy anyhow. I read somewhere that your upper body only contributes between 5-15% to your vertical so you should allocate your time accordingly. So my plan is to only try and maintain my upper body strength while increasing my lower body, if it goes up great. I plan on only working out my upper body one day a week by doing 3 main compound exercises. Standing military press, bench press, bent-over row. The one exercise that I do want to get a few PRs on is my military press which seems in-proportionately weak compared to my chest and back, I know its a smaller muscle group but my 5 RM today was only 130. I think part of that is the fact I have a little pain in my shoulder but I'm not sure, maybe I've ignored this muscle group in the past.
*Just a side note, my 5 RM which I've been posting is the current max I use for my last set of 5 so really it should be a little higher since I do 4x5 before that of ramping weight.*
By the way, my dead lift and squat max's are correct as I did those just within the past week. I'll be doing some power cleans on friday so I will post the numbers for that then.
So today's current 5RM 's
Standing Military 130
Bent over Row 205
Chest 235
A 15 lb drop on chest seems a little excessive but it was the last exercise I did and I usually do it first so that may have something to do with it.
There is a pick up game going on tonight, so I see if I can do some vertical measuring at the gym.
One last thing, I need to set a time frame. For my goals so I'll get a little more specific on that once I get my vertical numbers.
Train Hard
JT
Are you going to be doing those three on the same day? I think it might be more productive to do one each day with your other leg stuff, that way you can focus on each lift without worrying about being tired. Also, you'll get a metabolic boost from doing upper and lower during each workout. You could use them as your general warmup before you get into the meat of your workout. Anyhow, I don't think you'll have a problem maintaining. You could also throw in some Bodyweight exercises which will put less stress on your CNS (Handstand Pushups for Press, Pullups for Rows, and Pushups for chest). Just a suggestion.
ReplyDeleteHmmmm, you make some good points. I'm gonna have to think about that. That's kinda what I was doing before when I was just strength training. But I do heavy plyos on mon and Friday along with leg strength and adding in a even a little upper body would make that workout longer than it already is. Wed I do some light plyos for warm up. Maybe I'll just rotate which exercises I start with on Wednesday. I do deads on Monday and full squats on Friday and those get some upper body too.
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