Next Training Block: 6-8 Weeks of Chest Expander Training

Yesterday, I went a little overboard playing with shoulder dislocates with a light resistance band and with a stick. As a result, my left shoulder felt sore and unstable. Also, both my forearmms/elbows have persistent soreness from weeks of holding a 24kg kettlebell in bottoms up position for goblet squats and working with the 24kg KB in general. I think the 2 weeks of passive hangs 3-5 times a day, 5 days a week also affected my forearms/elbows. The conditions of the shoulder and the elbows made me reconsider doing 6x6 on the IsoMax for my next training block.

I decided instead to train on my Baraban chest expander for 6-8 weeks. I think my connective tissues will feel better with the eccentric loading offered by the expander. Also, because I was unable to press the 24kg KB, I don't think my delts got enough stimulus for size and strength gains in this latest Easy Muscle block. The chest expander routine is sure to work the delts much more thoroughly. So in short, what I hope to achieve with this chest expander training block is increased deltoid muscle mass and strength. The workout is also designed to stimulate strength and muscle mass gains for the triceps and upper back. I'm fine with the gains I got from Easy Muscle for the triceps and upper back but I'm not going to say no to more gains in those areas.

I thought I'd test my overhead press on the IsoMax. The high intensity reps on the IsoMax should relieve some of the soreness. I also decided to test reverse drag curl as well just for fun.

Overhead Press: 101, 118, 115.8
Reverse Drag Curl: 79, 110.2, 101.4

The overhead press numbers were down compared to the end of my last 6x6 training block when I was pressing in the high 120 to low 130 range. I think this is just exercise specificity at work. To get my overcoming isometric pressing force back into the high 120lb range, I have to practice generating overcoming isometric force. In any case, my shoulder felt better after the IsoMax tests. Now on to the chest expander workout itself:

Overhand Vertical Pullapart - 1 set - 3 springs

Overhand Vertical Pullapart (backdown set with one less spring) - 1 set - 3 springs (oops, forgot to remove a spring)

Underhand Vertical Pullapart - 2 sets - 3 springs

Horizontal Pullapart - 1 set, followed by mechanial drop set of Underhand Vertical Pullapart - 2 springs

Horizontal Pullapart (1 spring less, no following drop set) - 1 set - oops, skipped this.

Back Press - 2 sets - 4 springs.

Sideway (Tricep) Extension - 1 set - 2 springs, which felt so easy that I'll try 3 next time.

Sideway (Tricep) Extension (backdown set with one less spring) - 1 set - oops, skipped this

Overhead Tricep Extension - 1 set - 2 springs

Bicep Curl - 1 set - Tried 3 springs, but was too painful for forearm/elbow, so removed a spring and did about 20 reps

Bicep Curl (1 spring less) - 1 set - oops, skipped.

Reverse Curl - 2 sets - 2 springs

Deltoid Raise (scapular plane/Y raise) - 2 sets - Totally forgot to do this.

So, kind of a sloppy chest expander workout, albeit the first one in months. Despite the mental miscues, there was definitely carryover from the preceding training blocks: the 8-week Easy Muscle block, the 6 week 6x6 block before that, and so on. The Overhead Vertical Pullapart, Sideway Extension, and Reverse Curl in particular felt noticeably easier to execute compared to my last chest expander workout. The improved performance in those exercises seem to correlate with improved performance in pullups, dips, and 24kg kettlebell clean + push press via Easy Muscle training.

I suppose it would be natural to wonder why not just stick to Easy Muscle, instead of messing around with the chest expander. The main reason is that all 3 Easy Muscle schedules are 8 weeks long and I lack the expertise to tweak any of the schedules to, say, an 12 week, 16 week or whatever schedule longer than 8 weeks; in such a way that the schedule produces desirable results in muscle mass and strength. If I create a 16-week schedule derived from Easy Muscle but it doesn't produce results at Week 16 that are measurably superior to results at Week 8, it would be a waste of time and effort. Simply repeating the last 2 week of Schedule B is not going to work because of the Law of Adaptation as documented by Vladimir Zatiorsky. The body will eventually adapt to the training stimulii - and thus no longer progress in strength, muscle mass, or whatever fitness goal is desired - unless sufficient changes are made after a certain amount of time.