Evil’s Workout Plan – January 2015

My neck and I are like an old couple that over whatever get into the same tiresome arguments over and over again.

More Neck, Less Fun!

Remember I introduced my December 2014 plan with the headline “less neck, more fun”?

Woe is me, because one (unrelated!) change I made in that plan reintroduced the neck problems.

At least I noticed that before I went into another round of waking up the next day and feeling like my upper spine is trying to crawl across my head and snuggle up above the eyebrows.

Evil’s Current Workout Plan (January 2015)

 
Again ExRx links to the exercises I still have no video on.

Mondays Explained

With the Mondays we get right to the problem I unwittingly introduced.

As I explained in the December plan, the two kinds of pullovers I did up until November were the cause of humongous headaches. Because doing these two I tensed my neck muscles a lot.

But, after I had them up to enough weight to be challenging, I noticed I do the same when I do barbell triceps extensions.

I have no idea why I do that. The same exercise with a dumbbell doesn’t cause the reaction. Maybe it’s the balancing the barbell requires.

Anyhow, this entailed some searching for a replacement and I opted for standing triceps extensions. In the past I had problems keeping my balance with them, but, heck, let’s see if some careful execution won’t make them work for me.

Wednesdays Explained

The regular barbell rows and the underhand rows stalled a bit. Looking over what I wrote down for the last two months, I noticed that I didn’t do any rep range variations with them.

I hope that doing just that will be put them back to speed. If not I’ll grab my own towel and do what I showed you over here.

Fridays Explained

Those rear delt dumbbell rows showed me that there’s a lot of difference between an isolation and a compound exercise targeting the same small muscle.

When I started them I figured they’re an exercise for the tiny rear delt, so I better start small even though they’re classified as a compound. I also knew that the last weight I used on rear delt raises, an isolation, was 7.5 kg (17 lbs.).

I put 11 kg (25 lbs) on the dumbbell, went ahead and did 3×12. Next week I used 12.5 kg and again did 3×12. The week after that I put 13.5 worth of plates on the bar and made extra sure I used very good form: no motion from the back and the upper arm in a perfect right angle to the body. Again it ended in 3×12.

Only now that I’m up to 15 kg the exercise starts to feel difficult enough.