Day 2 week 20

Beautiful, hazy day here. Warm outside and got a good sweat on early. Went for breakfast with the family and one of the boy's pals this morning at an awesome little cafe near here and took the Blazer, which was fantastic and a great way to start the day. Training was the natural way to follow up.

I used Results, Surge WF, and the Shelby mix per usual with half a Spike.

Wore elbow sleeves and wrist wraps for the upper work, loose briefs and knee sleeves for lower. Warmed up with a lot of dynamic work and bar weight before each. Today was the first time I didn't really worry too much about my quad, though after lifting I find myself listening to it constantly for any symptom of complaining. It'll be a while before I don't, particularly since there's still a big scar under the skin and the scar still hurts to palpate. It'll be a while.

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. Fairly tough today, which is interesting since last time they were easy. I followed them up with...

Posterior fly: 3 sets of 10 reps with 22# each hand, seat at about 30 degrees from flat. The first set was tough, the second two less so. I'll go up next time. They felt fantastic, all told, and with the NGB totally wrecked my shoulders.

Narrow Grip Bench Press with the fat 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, so I'll go up next time. Right shoulder gave me the usual, but no pain.

SSB box squat to parallel: 3 x 10. Set up the box just below parallel and added 20 kilos per side. I used sleeves and a belt rather than suck my thumb, because the only reason to was mental. This was 240 kilos on the SSB and it went up smoothly and easily, though I sucked heavy wind after each set. All reps felt solid and perceived effort was about 50%. Interestingly, I felt them more in my torso rigidity than legs.

All in all a solid day. We'll see how the quad responds to the first day with any real weight on it. It's been two months since the pain abated, so I'm 9 weeks from injury -- should be enough, I'd think. I need to talk with someone about whether to do soft tissue work on the scar yet.

Got a baseball game for the boy at 5:30 today that I have to help coach. Should be fun. Hope everyone enjoys their Sunday.