15 AUG 11 -- An Early Christmas Present

I was planning on going back to 3 x 3 for the overhead press, repeating the last workout I did for it. However, after doing the warm up sets and then the initial set of 3, I felt so stiff and sluggish, that I realized a deload would be better for the overhead press today. Here's the sets anyway:

45 x 25
95 x 5
120 x 5
145 x 5
190 x 2 (this is where I felt sluggish, so I stopped at 2 and concluded it would be a deload)

The owner of the gym had ordered a weight belt for me, made by Grizzly:

Grizzly Weight Belt

I've been wanting one of these so bad that it was like Christmas morning when I picked it up. So, although it's a deload for the overhead press, I still decided to experiment with the belt to see what I could do with it.

I started with chin ups.

Bodyweight x 10
10 lbs x 6
15 x 6
20 x 5
25 x 4
35 x 3
45 x 2
50 x 3

I concluded with another bodyweight set of 11 reps, culminating in 50 total.

Then I experimented with dips.

Bodyweight x 10
5 lbs x 10
10 x 10
20 x 10
25 x 10
35 x 8
45 x 10 culminating in 68 reps total.

I jumped onto the elliptical trainer and did 20 minutes on the fatburner program.

The weight belt is awesome. My strength will improve even more with this tool, and I am very glad to have gained this opportunity for advancement. I am thinking of using the 5/3/1 format for chin ups, so crunching with the one-rep max calculator based on my last set (I added two reps, due to being tired from the previous sets), I arrive at 58 lbs, or 60 rounded, for my training max number (and 90% of that is 54 lbs rounded out to 55 lbs for the working max to calculate the working percentages). Once a week, I'll be doing 5/3/1 chins. If the numbers don't work for me when I try it next time, I will recalculate based on what I get. In regards to dips, I will continue to use them as an assistance exercise after overhead press or on bench day, whichever works out, utilizing the 5 x 10 format with a weight that can be handled for that many sets. In one of his articles, Wendler revealed that 5/3/1 can be applied to exercises other than the basic four, including rows and curls, so I think I'm on the same page by going with this approach for chin ups. I noticed that my last set of 11 bodyweight chins today felt springy while performing them, so I am confident that my year-end goal of 20 bodyweight chin ups will be brought forward to the near future instead.