This week’s shaping up to be a busy one. With yesterday’s workout unfortunately being sacrificed to the God of Time, today’s was back to full-force benching.
The combination of a cold day and waking with a stiff neck prompted a longer-than-usual warmup (which carried slightly in the high-rep benching at the start). As for musical accompaniment, it was back to the usual variety (I want to see how much difference soothing music can make, by only using it randomly) – this time a relaxing blend of Monster Magnet, Nashville Pussy and The Prodigy was blasting through the headband.
Following a few bench sets (I’m trying to increase endurance here, which’ll mean high reps/low weights/short rest breaks for a while) it was time to try a couple of simple neck exercises I noticed the other day. These are nothing more extravagant than nodding or shaking your head, whilst holding a plate against your forehead. I tried these with a paltry 2.5kg plate, and will gauge future resistance by any pain I notice tomorrow.
Bench press
2×50@20/44
20@30/66
Bench press (15° incline, switching from wide -> std -> close grips each set)
3×10@30/66
3×10@40/88
Neck flexion
2×20@2.5/5.5
Neck lateral flexion
2×20@2.5/5.5
Shrug
2×20@60/132
2×10@100/225
2×5@140/308