Isochain Promethean Session 1

 I continue to have a lingering soreness in my left shoulder whenever I raise my left hand to about shoulder height, left of the shoulder.  The soreness is alleviated by conscious contraction of the left external rotator cuff/shoulder blade muscles.  

On top of that, I have soreness in my forearms, especially the left.  This is probably from holding the iPad with my left hand.  while I practice on the GeoShred Pro app with my right hand.  The soreness would intensify when practicing pullups and rowing movements on the rings.

Then Dragondoor announced a discount on their new Isochain, a high-tech device for isometric exercise, a well as a discount on their new isometric training manual.  This looked like an intriguing way to continue strength training with less risk of aggravation or injury to the shoulder or forearms/elbows.  The pursuit of the Handstand Pushup will have to wait for another day.

The manual presents tons of training ideas and programs.  I selected the Prometheus program, since it was recommended for people new to isometrics such as music.  Actually, it turns out the manual describes practicing front-lever holds and other gymnastic/calisthenic holds as isometric training, so I guess I'm not totally new to it, but I'm definitely new to bar-and-chain isometrics.  

The first session took a bit long because of the time spent figuring out appropriate chain lengths of each of the 3 drills in Prometheus.  Here are the results, with load as entered into the Isochain:

Deadlift - 120lbs - 4 reps of 6 seconds easily achieved, so increase to 125 next time

Curl - 30lbs - Started at 35 lbs but could not hold for full 6 seconds, so dropped to 30lbs.

Shoulder Press - 20lbs - 4 rep of 6 seconds easily achieved, so increase to 25lbs next time.

The setup for Shoulder Press took the longest time, because it took a while to find a chain length and hand positioning that eliminated any shoulder pain.  This turned out to be hands close to shoulder width, bar about a couple of inches above the head.  The manual recommends middle position rather than top or bottom position, for all exercises, but also says exact position does not matter.

So far the shoulder feels a little better and less temperamental to movements like silk-reeling, whereas up to last week, the slightest error in usage of the suit during silk reeling would result in sharp shoulder pain.

Tried a 15-minute session of GMB Elements as warmup but it really extended the length of today's workout, even with the cutting of the Elements cooldown.  Might do the GMB Elements warmup followed by 5 minutes of freeform Elements movement practice instead.