day 2 week 19

Beautiful holiday day here. I really needed a day off, and a chance to train at my leisure is more than welcome. As a result, I've been super-relaxed today and even dragging a little.

I used Results and the Shelby mix per usual, no Spike.

Wore elbow sleeves and wrist wraps for the upper work, loose briefs for lower. Warmed up with a lot of dynamic work and bar weight before each. Still a little paranoid about my left quad since the tear, and a little more so due to pain from the muscle scar. Been doing a little soft tissue work to massage the adhesions, but a little wary of digging in too much. Just not sure how soon to start working on it, either manually via soft tissue breakup or under the weight.

All exercises were 3 sets of 8-10 with 180s rest between, all to positive failure.

Shoulder work: 3 sets of 10 reps with 35#. Held each rep at the top and worked to avoid swinging at the bottom. Shoulders felt fine. These weren't too tough today, though I don't know if I'll go up on the weight next time or not.

Narrow Grip Bench Press with the regular bar: 140 kilos x 3 x 10 Same weight as last time and felt good today. Kept elbows tucked and pushed up from about 1-board height -- just short of touching to take it easy on shoulders. Weight went up easily and tris barked, so happy with it.

SSB box squat to parallel: 3 x 10. Set up the box just below parallel and used the same weight setup as last time. For whatever reason, these felt heavy today and I sucked serious wind. Not sure why, but these were a lot tougher than this weight should have been. So be it. I kept strict form and pushed everything up, constantly taking stock of the left quad. I wonder when I'll start to trust it?

All in all, a good day. I felt like I was whistling in the graveyard all day, but I got the work in and feel good about it. I look fuller in the mirror now that I'm back at it and bar weights are still going up, so I have nothing to complain about. We'll see how things progress.

Hope all have a great day off. Stay safe.