Chest Expander Workout 8/12

Overhand Vertical Pullapart - 1 set - 4 springs - Managed 2 nearly full range reps.

Overhand Vertical Pullapart - 1 back off set - 3 springs

Underhand Vertical Pullapart - 1 set - 3 springs

Overhand Vertical Pullapart - mechanical drop set - 3 springs

Horizontal Pullapart - 1 set - 2 springs

Underhand Vertical Pullapart - 1 mechanical drop set - 2 springs

Overhand Vertical Pullapart - 1 mechanical drop set - 2 springs

Back Press - 1 set - 5 springs - 3 reps

Back Press - 1 back off set - 4 springs

Sideway (Tricep) Extension - 1 set - 4 springs - 3 or 4 reps

Sideway (Tricep) Extension - 1 back off set - 3 springs

Overhead Tricep Extension - 1 finisher set - 2 springs

Reverse Curl - 1 set - 3 springs - 6 reps

Reverse Curl - 1 back off set - 2 springs

Deltoid Raise (scapular plane/Y raise) - 2 finisher sets - 1 spring

After a weekend of rest, I was still feeling DOMS in the upper back and shoulders from last week's chest expander workouts. I realized I had not been varying my effort very much. Except for the very first workout in this training block, I've been training with high effort every workout - going to failure on every set and not taking much rest between sets. So for today's workout I did not push myself to failure on all sets. I stopped short of failure on the higher effort sets such as the 5-spring Back Press.

I posted a while back that I'd given up on doing the regular Bicep Curl on the chest expander, due to elbow pain. Then found this video on straight-arm exercises for bicep strength and muscle gains:

Out of the exercises presented, I decided to try Supinated Grip Front Raise, which is the 2nd exercise presented in the video, with the elastic band that was shipped with the IsoMax. This band offers light resistance for most exercises, but for the front raise the resistance is too heavy.

I then decided to try using my IsoMax to do an overcoming isometric version of the Supinated Grip Front Raise. Any isometric version of the front raise should be less risky to suspect elbows than any dynamic version, due to the elimination of joint abrasion.

I set up the IsoMax with the strap attached to the bottom newel of the stairs, and the bar held behind my body to put the shoulders, biceps, and forearms all at a stretched position. For this first session, I set the IsoMax in Load mode with load set to 10 lbs. for the first rep and tried to exert force to failure within 30 seconds. I then looked at the average force, with was close to 17 lbs. then reset the load to 17 lbs. and tried to sustain a minimum 17lbs. of force for up to 45 seconds, for each of the remaining reps. It was only on the last rep that I remembered to focus on activating the biceps so that my shoulders are not doing too much of the work. I am not expecting dramatic gains in bicep size doing this isometric front raise, but it's better than relying only on the Reverse Curl to try to stimulate bicep gains.