Speed bench workout

Speed bench workout with Stump.  

After warming up with just the bar, the benching went as follows:

135 for 3 quick ( quick for me that is with my 6'11" wingspan,  promise that's they last time I used that excuse ) reps, no bands today.  I lost count of number of sets but I think I probably did around 12 sets.  I think I'm not recovering enough from my squat/deads workout on Sunday/Monday ( or taekwondo ) and it's affecting my speed on this workout.  But I guess that's kind of what this is all about, pushing yourself to make your body respond.

I noticed that even with 135 on speed day, I'm slow to bring the weight down, just like I was with heavy weight last saturday.  I'm really trying to work on that on tuesdays, since hopefully it means that I won't use up all my energy lowering the weight when I bench heavy on saturday, and my 1RM will go up.  I don't know why this is so hard for me to get, but it is ( even harder then using my legs to drive which Stump emphasized to me today ).  But before I never even focused on these things, so I feel that "trying" to focus on them is an improvement in itself.  It's working, in general ( when I'm able to sleep enough ) I feel strong.  The bench is going up, the deads are going up even faster, the squats... well I'll get there eventually I'm sure.

Sorry, that got off track, back to the workout...

I then did some overhead presses on the smith machine, 4 sets of 7-9 reps with what I'd call 185 as the weight, ie the actual weight is what the smith machine subtracts, which I'm not sure what it is, and don't really care.  The "smith" machine at this gym hooks on in the opposite direction as the one down in AF that I used a few days ago.  LOL, my brain didn't like that, trying to figure out which way to twist the bar looking in the mirror.  

I then did super sets of lat pulldowns ( in front, I don't do them behind anymore ) and standing cable tricep push downs  (I need to start filling out this blog in the gym.... ) for about/probably 4 sets with the whole stack of weight.  I then did 5 sets of face pulls ( as shown on the westside barbell dvd ).  I can see these helping my weak shoulders more than the overhead smith machine presses ( which I need to cycle out of my workouts anyway since I've done them two DE bench workouts in a row ).

272# today, ie still gaining.  Free all I could eat lunch at work yesterday and  free even more than I could eat dinner at class last night seems to have helped build some mass, LOL.  Lets see the meet is about a month away, I'll probably continue with this until I get to 280 or so, and then drop down to just under 275 before the meet ( I can loose weight pretty quick when I try ).  Not that it really matters, my ultimate goal is to just be strong, but I'm curious to see if I can cycle my weight like that, and what it means to my strength.  The learning continues....