Hypertophy Phase - Week 3, Day 13

60 seconds rest, 5 sets, 13-15 reps

Bench
235x14
225x8
185x10
135x15
135x13

Curl
65x20
65x15
65x14
65x13
65x21

Band Pull-Aparts
40
20
20
21

Notes
Skipped the gym last night because I had to go look at new apartments.  I have a wedding this week so everything is going to be compressed into the next 3 days. As such I'm dropping a lot of accessory work and I'm not going to worry about the weights I use for anything.  Just use the big lifts to get a decent workout in.

As I was walking home tonight, I reflected on the fact that I have literally come full circle and now believe that the bench/curl workout is fucking awesome.  But it is only awesome if you actually work hard and blast everything.  Jim Wendler has often talked about how you should only really expect to do 1-2 lifts really well every workout.  I think it drops down to one when you've been working out 6 days a week.  Either way, bench/curl is fucking awesome for the following reasons.

First, your upper body gets pumped to shit and you look and feel fucking awesome.  High rep bench + high rep curls = teh pump is teh cumming.  Second, it makes sense from a strength perspective.  We all know the antagonist, push/pull type approach is great for strength workouts.  In this case, you get to really hit your big lift hard for the day, but you still have enough juice left to hit the curls as hard as you can.  Curls aren't like rows or chins or other heavy compounds that are easily impacted from shit like heavy bench.  Though bench is an antagonist to the row, we are still talking about fucking strength training. If you are doing it right, you are using your whole body.   Benching heavy effects my row.  Not so with the curl.  Which brings me to my third and final point.  Heavy barbell curls are probably most "legit" isolation exercise I can think of.  They really aren't akin to shit like triceps pushdowns.  You can go fucking heavy in curls and use body momentum to heave that shit up.  That is how brutally strong guys power curl with barbells.  They don't sit there and squeeze their biceps constantly while getting buttfucked by their partner. Brutally strong guys go hard and heavy in the barbell curl and treat it like a fucking lift.

When I think of heavy barbell curls, I think of my old training partner, Chris Moore.  Chris could bang out 135x10 on the curl at will.  Was he strick?  Not even fucking close.  Are his arms huge?  I'd liken them to that of a silver back gorilla.  I would never, ever consider arm wrestling him because I have no doubt he would tear my shoulder out of its socket with little effort.  Point is, I'm really going to go hard and heavy in the barbell curl.  I think thats the way its supposed to be done.

Edit:  One final comment.  I think super high rep pull-aparts or facepulls make this workout perfectly balanced.  One heavy compound.  One heavy isolation.  One super high rep blood pumping/shoulder balancing isolation.