Isochain 6x6 Week 1

This first week of Isochain-only training started smoothly enough. The Monday session felt good for a first Isochain session in months. Zercher Lunge was the most challenging for me as I'd set the bar low to force my thighs to be parallel to the ground, or at least close to parallel. I was able do all 6 reps of 6-second holds on my left leg. I failed to trigger the 55lb. target for a couple of reps on my right leg.

The Wednesday session though was rough. Before Isochain training, I went outside with a shovel to clear the sidewalk. My body felt fine after the shoveling. Because of the time used up shoveling and my legs still feeling kind of fried from the Monday Zercher Lunge session, I skipped Zercher Lunge and started with Shoulder Press instead, which felt fine. Bent-over Row was where I ran into trouble. I felt something snap in my back, with immediate pain. I think it was because my core muscles - abs, low back, etc. - had not recovered from the snow shoveling and thus could not handle the load of the Bent-over Row. I think I may have been folded my torso a little too far forward. Because of my low back injury history and this latest addition to that history, I decided to drop Bent-Arm Row from my 6x6 routine.

By Saturday morning, my back felt a little better, though still stiff and sore from lying in bed to sleep. A short walk in the neighborhood was enough to warm up the body for Isochain work and loosen up the back just enough. I felt my low back working when I did the Shoulder Press - with pain being maybe a 2-3 out of 10. After the set though, it felt fine.

I then moved on to the Drag Curl, the drill I chose to replace Bent-over Row. Drag Curl stresses the low back much less than the Bent-over Row. I'm sure gains from Drag Curl will carry over to bodyweight pull ups and rows. It will be interesting to see how much. I set the target load to 15lbs because I was going to try reverse grip and I know my reverse-grip curl is weak. But I had forgotten how uncomfortable this exercise is with reverse grip. I flipped my palms and finished the set doing the regular palms-up curl. I had not done the 1-Rep Max protocol for measuring 1-rep max for Drag Curl, so I had to pick an arbitrary target load for this drill, for this session. For my last rep, the Isochain reported a max force of 37.2 lbs. 6x6 says to train at 70% of 1-rep max, which would be around 26lbs, so my next target load will be 26lbs.

I tried Zercher Lunge at a higher position because I figured it would be easer on the legs, which had feel sore all week. I felt the low back working when I attempted the higher position Zercher Lunge. So I decided not to gamble with the low back and temporarily replace Zercher Lunge with high-position Deadlift under the Iron Man protocol. This protocol has the target load as low as 20% of 1-rep max, with an objective to hold for 90s or 120s. Low load with emphasis on endurance is the combo that has historically worked for rehab. So I'll do 1 rep of 90s of high-position deadlift to finish my Isochain workout, and drop the Zercher Lunge set, until the back feels good.