26 Sep Zane Geeting, Tuesday night bench training. Trying to get a shirt to work for me

I’m currently training for the APF Fall open, this October, here in MI. I’m still on my 2x per week training split that I use during the busy summer months. I’d love to be training more than that right now, but to be honest; its hard enough to find the time as it is. This split has worked very well for me the past 2 off-seasons, but I’ve never used it going into a meet. The next few weeks will show the results.

Tuesday night most of the guys were deadlifting, as that’s what the normal 3x-4x per week rotation calls for. The way I have to do things because of the condensed schedule, makes it a bench night for me. Luckily for me the guys are very helpful and were willing to stick around while I tried out another new shirt. Right now I’m having trouble finding the proper balance of loose enough to allow me to set my upper back properly right off the bat, but tight enough to give me support all the way through the range of motion. Here’s what I tried and how it went:

Warm up

McGill big 3, push ups, side laterals, scarecrows

Bench

60×20, 150×10, 200×5, 240×2

Add raw shirt (Yes I said it again. Its a size 62 regular phenom that I can do push ups in)

290×2, 330×2

Raw shirt off, size 58 Rage-X on

420×1- 3 board ish

420×1- 1 board ish

420x1x2 sets (touched on both)

• This shirt does allow me to set up like I want, but it is a little too loose in that it doesn’t carry through all the way to lock out. Now with 420 this isn’t a huge deal, because its still technically raw weight, but it will cause problems when I get to weights in the 500+ range. I think this will work if I have the sleeves taken in, but I’m on borrowed time going into this meet (4 ish weeks out) and with my current schedule, I can’t imagine making it into a seamstress. So, I have one more shirt to try, and honestly, I think its going to be the ticket, I should have tried it much earlier than this. Live and learn.

Rolling extensions

30’s x10, 50’s x10, 55’s x10

Pushdowns

1 set of 10, 1 drop set with 3 drops.

JL planks

2 sets of 30 seconds.

• That was it. The session was short because of the fact that I don’t get to the gym til the other guys are close to an hour into training. I am happy with the work I was able to get in, and figured out what I was looking to. Obviously I’m not in a prime spot, not having a shirt that works right for me at 4 weeks out from a meet, but I’ve made these things work more than once before. I’ll be back in the gym Friday night to take something around an opener on squat, and do a couple rep sets in the 85% range on deadlift. Hopefully that goes better than the last couple times I tried pulling, lol.

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Zane Geeting

Zane Geeting is a pro multi-ply powerlifter with best lifts of a 935 squat, 625 bench, and 765 deadlift. He is coming back to competitive PL after a year and a half layoff that was a result of several serious injuries including a severe rupture of the right pec that could not be repaired. Zane has an extremely busy schedule that would make most people quit before Friday. He works 55+ hours a week as a finance manager. As a renaissance man, he is also currently restoring a 140 year-old farmhouse and maintaining a hobby farm. Despite all this, Zane still finds time to train 2-3 times per week, as well as coach other lifters.  

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