11 Jul Zane Geeting, Tuesday night OHP and bench accessories

I’m currently in an off-season training cycle, working on bringing up my work capacity and some weak areas. During my busy summer months I only train 2x per week, and have been having good luck with it thus far. As competition season comes (late fall into late winter/early spring) I will ramp back up to 3 days per week. Right now planned meets are Dan Dalenberg’s APF fall open here in MI, in Oct, then the XPC finals at the Arnold.

Tuesday night had me back to the standing OHP part of the upper rotation. The goal on this night was to hit a set of 5 at an RPE of 8. The number I had in mind going in was 235-245, but I was staying focused on feeling things out and going with the appropriate RPE. Here’s how it went down:

Warm up

Bird dogs, McGill’s, Cat/Camel, Fat man rows and push ups

Standing OHP with the Swiss bar

45×15

135×10

185×5

205×5

235×3 (oops)

235×2 (does 5 total reps count?)

down set… 135×16

– This was a bad call. All the straight bars were being used so I opted to use the swiss bar rather than waiting. I like to incorporate different bars anyways, I like to mix things up. What I didn’t account for is that I’m not used to that bar, and thus not as strong with it. This was a bad call, and I should have known to make a smaller jump after the set at 205. So much for sticking to the RPE.

DB incline bench

Warm ups, then 2 sets of 80 with 80 lb. DB’s

DB flat bench

3 sets of 15 with the 80’s

Rolling extensions

Warm up set, then 2 sets of 8-10 with 50 lb. DB’s

Rope pushdown drop set

2 drops from top weight, around 30 total reps

Kroc rows

90’s x20x2 sets ea. arm

Lat pulldowns

3 sets of 12-15 reps

– That was all of it.

– After the OHP work for the front delts and triceps, I got in some DB pressing from 2 different angles to hit the pecs and front delts some more. I chose the incline first because of 2 reasons; 1. I have a good amount of the upper pec intact on my bad side, and 2. The front delts have become more important to my bench than my pecs at this point. These 2 groups are hit harder on the incline than a flat bench.

– After the shoulder and chest work I moved onto the triceps. I’m still running with the rolling extensions. I like these because of how hard they hit the triceps down by the elbow, which is very important for locking out heavy benches. I am getting a little stalled out on these though, so if they don’t move up in the next couple weeks, I’ll be changing to a different extension. I finished off the tri’s with a drop set of pushdowns. These are all about flushing as much blood as possible into the muscle, increasing recovery time, and causing a little hypertrophy. I basically work up to a weight I can only get 8-10 reps with, then drop it by 20-30 lbs. go to near failure, drop it again, and pump it out through the burn.

– Finally I hit my back work with a little extra emphasis on the lats. The Kroc rows were done with a full stretch at the bottom and a full contraction at the top. These hit everything from the lat, the trap, the rear delt, rhomboids, etc. Then, instead of my usual rear delt fly, I chose to do some medium grip width lat pulldowns with a higher rep scheme. The lats are very important to my bench, both proper lowering of the bar, and a good start off the chest are dependent upon strong, well developed lats.

– That’s it, short and sweet. Unfortunately I missed Friday nights squat session, which is a bummer because I’ve actually been feeling pretty good there. We had some issues at work that needed my attention, and I have a ton of stuff going on with the house project right now, so I wound up getting home late and working on the house til around 12:30 a.m. before hitting the hay so I could be up on time for work in the morning. I’m going to try to put in no more than 6 hours at the office, so I can get home and help hang drywall on my bedroom ceiling. Fingers crossed.

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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.  

Latest posts by Zane Geeting (see all)

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