Previous Training Cycle

Okay -- So, I spent the last the last 10 weeks training 4 times a week. Mondays was a max effort upper body lift + variations of pull-ups. I always kept the total tonnage higher on the pulls than on the pressing, which led to doing quite a bit of pull/chin-ups. I mixed the grip on the pull/chin-ups in order to break the monotony and utilize different grips/different muscles etc. One thing I really liked about this is that I definitely got my absolute back-side strength higher than ever. I think my max was about 7 sets of 2 reps at 35-45#. It also helped keep my shoulders healthy, for the most part.

I was experiencing some AC pain but I tracked it down to my 5's weeks. I kept changing my press each week in order to keep lifting heavy, but every week I would do heavy sets of 5 reps I would experience pain for 3-4 days later. Most of my working sets were in the 70-77% range of my max. If I worked sets of 3's in the 80+% I would not get the pain, so I'm leaning to that fact that volume was just to high for that training weight. In my next training cycle I am going to do a lot more triples.

My second body day was more upper body work, but instead of horizontal pressing it was a variation of vertical presses - MP, DB MP, Jerk. This was also the time I did my assistance work on this day. I did some variation of db pulls, some shoulder work, and then tri's. I definitely liked this set-up. It helped keep my time down per workout and still allowed me to get the necessary training in. I am going to keep this set-up in the next training cycle. Except this time I am going to add a little more pulling on my max effort day and my second upper body day is going to be more upper body circuits in order to keep my work capacity up, still target the backside, and help somewhat with body comp.

.... As far as the upper body training goes I think I was able to learn a few things about myself, so I am gunna stick with what works, and change what needs changing...I'll report back in a few weeks.