Conditioning Work and Bench Progress

Since having my knee op at the start of October I have been gradually getting back up to full strength with squats and deadlifts.

The major positive to come out of the reduced poundage from squatting and deadlifting is that I have had more energy to put into my benching.

Over the last few weeks I have switched up to benching every 5 days (as opposed to 7) and keeping single reps to a minimum.

The result has been great and am now in new territory with the weights I am shifting.
My previous best bench was 120kg which I can now hit comfortably any day of the week.

I am resisting the urge to go all out for a new PB attempt right now as I am trying to eek out the gains for as long as possible.

My format has generally been one heavy session of full bench press, working up to 3 sets of triple or double reps.

This has been followed by a lock out movement such as heavy 4" block presses to over tax the triceps in that movement.

Second session of the week has been a speed based session, working at 50% ish of my 1RM with an Iron Woody Mini band attached to each side of the barbell. This serves to increase the tension as it nears lockout making the movement dynamically more taxing.

The second exercise is then usually benching to a 2" block for reps of 5, somewhere around 4 sets of progressively heavy weights to a single 5 rep all out set with max weight.

I reckon my bench at the moment is sat around the 127.5kg mark - will see what I can get a little nearer to Christmas.

My goal is a solid 130kg bench but we shall see.

I have also been starting to include more in the way of conditioning and played about with this "fun" little kettlebell session a day or two ago.

After a thorough 10 minute warm up: -

Kettlebell single arm jerks(performed as one long set)
32kg x 10 reps (5right/5left)
28x 20 reps (10L/10R)
24 x 20 (10L/10R)

This was very VERY hard. I wanted to get 30 reps with the 24kg but I was gassing BIG TIME. This is going to be a core exercise for me now over the next few weeks as I would love to hit 100 reps with another drop down to a 20kg bell!

kettlebell single arm jerks
32kg x 20 reps (10L/10R)
32kg x 20
32kg x 20

kettlebell single arm snatch
16 x 60 reps swapping hands each 10
16kg x 40 reps as above

Double kb snatch
16kg each hand x 10
16kg each hand x 10
16kg each hand x 10

One thing that this session has revealed is a much greater need for some shoulder/thoracic spine flexibility work as I had a problem keeping my lifting arm tucked to the side of my head when in the over head lockout position.

That's probably due to all of the benching of recent, but still is no excuse - shouldnt be neglecting my flexibility!

Thanks for reading.