Isochain Promethean Mark I - Week 2

The results for this week:

Shoulder Press (medium angle) - Finished with a target load of 45 lbs, with max reading of 57. a 13lb gain over last wee.  In last week's post, I said "I think that not trying to stand all the way up, so that I'm sitting/squatting just a tiny bit, makes it easier to connect my feet to my hands, and thus improve stability of the chain during training. I think this will also allow me to apply whole body power to this drill. "  Turns out I was on the right track, but I was still missing something.  During the Wednesday session, I figured it out!  This discovery made all the difference between struggling to sustain more than 45 lbs. of force for more than 3 seconds, to sustaining force output at that level for 6 seconds without much of a struggle, and scoring almost 20% above my 1-Rep Max.  More details on this discovery later in this article.

Bent Row (medium angle) - Finished with target load of 110 lbs. with max of 200.2. which is more than 50lb gain over last week, and well above my 1-Rep Max.   I no longer have to grip with maximum gripping force to protect my elbow, which is great because gripping the bar with maximum force grinds into my thumb and causes some tingling sensation in the hand.

Zercher Squat (low angle) - Finished with target load of 70 lbs, with max reading of 106.4, for a 20lb gain over last week.  The required body positioning taxes the body more than any of the other drills.  The full 4-set suggested warmup for this drill is kind of brutal, as I barely have the endurance to sustain the 20-second hold, even at the lightest load.  I was so tired from the warmup sets that I could barely hit the 65 lb. target load last week.  So for this week, I cut the warmup sets to the 10-second and 5-second holds.  This resulted in greater force output in general for all my sets in this drill for this week.

The new procedure for the Shoulder Press, incorporated the newly discovered technical details:

1. Start with your hands under the bar as usual and squat down a little. 
2. Try to feel your feet pressing up to the bar - like there are invisible lines of force between the the feet and the bar.   This is basically jin (or muscle-jin).
   
3. Squat back up as you ramp up your force against the bar - you're like one of the Star Wars heroes trying to stop the Trash Compactor in the Death Star from crushing you.  This activates the legs, glutes, and core (abs, back, etc.) for the shoulder press and thus adds their force to the overall force.
   

I think this is a good start for this latest program. I'm already getting close to, or beating my 1-rep max scores in the Shoulder Press and Bent Row. I was a little tired from being awakened early on the day I took my 1-Rep Max measurements, which made the scores lower than they might have been if I had better rest beforehand. However, the purpose of thee scores is just to set the starting target loads for work sets and the warmup sets in Promethean, as well as establish metrics than can be used for calculating strength improvement by the end of the program. My elbow is feeling better as well. I'm still doing 15-sec. finger holds on the Isochain at a 70lb load, after the regular training session. I also still do the supline thoracic windmill as part of warmups and mobility work and wrist rotations with the hammer. I don't do the wrist curls with the bag of canned food anymore.