he's ok with overhead pressing...just does not like the bench press :)

AC,

Great to hear from you...

You're off in some ways, bro..

1.) I developed a bad attitude towards upper pressing days because I was doing the wrong shoulder rehab/prehab exercises which were messing up my shoulder muscles. I already have severe shoulder injuries so these messed up my stabilizing muscles. So because I suddenly found myself swamped in shitty form and shitty weights, I got discouraged. But upon close inspection of the cause of this problem, I found the solution: remove external rotation exercises. Did that. Now I'm fine.

2.) I have had many shoulder dislocations on both shoulders. I feel damn uncomfortable doing flat bench press. It hurts my shoulders. It is no wonder that I can overhead press 160+ lbs but I can only bench press 185 lbs. I do other bench variations like Dumbbell Presses, etc instead. All pressing movements are dangerous for me in general but the Overhead press is probably the least.

Pity: Thanks :)

Ah, that was kinda anti-climactic :) Yeah, I misread somethng in there. Granted, I was trying to speed raed about 4-5 pages of journal, lol. I suppose I will attempt to be more thorough in the future.

I have had a few dislocations of the shoulder as well. No fun. The last one took me over a year to come back from. Probably has been a good 4-5 years since that now. Injuries are tough. Like I wrote to you on IA's site (which I pretty much got told to f-off from :D ) I lift injured about 75% of the time. Ranging from something major to something small. The remaining 25% is like 20% sore/tight and 5% is all good. Honestly, I don't know what it is like to feel "normal" anymore. I would say that is a problem, but frankly I've been like this for years now, and it hasn't hampered progress much. Anymore I just blame it on aging :)

I appologize for the terrible spelling. My fingers are NOT working today and I can't seem to figure out how to edit out my slop :)

AC, because of these same problems which you have (and some of which I have), my main goal is to make sure that I am as injury-proof as I can be. Because of all of this I have started doing Hip Mobility Drills, a whole bunch of post workout stretching, etc etc....safety first IMO

MAXIMUM STRENGTH by Eric Cressey

Beginning Thoughts:

So, brand new phase http://forum.bodybuilding.com/images/smilies/smile.gif Pretty exciting!

Umm...a few notes. Firstly, "Wanted" was a crappy film IMO. Angelina Jolie was WAY too skinny IMO and the plot was really bad and the action mediocre. Quite possibly one of the worst movies I have ever seen...along with Shoot Em Up.

Another point to make....Because of the long weekend coming up, and since I am going to be flying to Houston to celebrate the weekend with some cousins, I will be working out Monday through Thursday this week.

Then, 2 weeks from now I am flying back to Bombay for the remaining part of the summer. Therefore next week I will be completing my entire Week 2 from Monday to Thursday and since I will miss out the following Monday I will be squeezing in Week 3 Lower 1 on that Friday. I hope this makes sense.

Other good news is that Hancock releases this wednesday http://forum.bodybuilding.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Workout and Videos:

Today's workout began with Front Squats. I was supposed to do 5 "Cluster Sets" each comprising of 4 "mini-sets" of 2 reps each. I took 175 and cranked out the 40 reps. This was tiring and I was soaked from head to foot in sweat. The gym was also jam packed with football players so I couldn't get a video. Next week I do plan on getting on Cluster set video.

Moved on from Front Squats to Dumbbell Step-ups, Bar Rollouts, GHRs and Unilateral Box Squats. This was one long workout which took me almost 2 hours to complete.

Overall Impression:

Extremely difficult workout. I was drained and exhausted by the end of it.

Good notes on the workout Anuj, I'll be patiently waiting to see the cluster set squats vids.

Why so psyched about Hancock, it looks kinda weak to be honest. The extended trailor really turned me off, when he is flying through the air with an suv in his hands ... looks to CG for my taste.

Sounds good on paper but there is always a line between favorable adapatation and unfavorable. Of course there are going to be hard fought reps. And I agree that a hard rep can be very very valuable. But there is a difference between a hard fought rep and a pile of shit where form breaks down and you risk injury. You train to be ABLE to lift heavier things. If you always traing as if you are in a competition....you will not be having many actual competitions.

And it is very important to point out that the way your body adpapts to one or two very hard reps with so so form does not compare to a volume oriented session where you have many reps done with bad form. If most of your "practice" is bad your body is not going to magically adpapt to make it "good" as you progress. Bad practice makes imperfection. With imperfection comes ineficiencies which over time add up to imbalances which then become injuries...etc, so on.

The only reason you can have an attitude about injuries not mattering so much is because they haven't cost you enough yet. I would think. BUT I do understand the spirit of what your are saying. It's just that I've learned that the mantra "hard work" can be taken the wrong way and turned into "train stupid". If it were easy, everyone would do it though :)

I should also point out that there is not intensity cycling in this program and even the lower intensity volume work is still pretty high and definitely in keeping with the "strength training" range. This aint no bodybuilder oriented 60 to 70 percent thing, after all.

Anuj, "Wanted" looks stupid as hell. As soon as I heard the "I want you to curve the bullet" I knew I wouldn't pay to see another crappy action flick with Agelina Jolie as the token babe :)

Next week :)

After seeing how terrible Wanted was, I just want to see a movie which is better than Wanted...and yes, that scene with the SUV looks unbelievable....but dude...this is WILL SMITH! I'm a huge fan :biglaugh:

That whole curving the bullet was a motif present throughout the damn movie and it was annoying as hell. And Angelina looked horrible. I like girls with curves but she had zero (nada) curves. Pretty horrible The only film worse than this will be Mr and Mrs. Smith lol...