Do No Harm

I'm discovering that certain movements leave me with unpleasant knots under the shoulder blades, mostly when I squeeze my upper back together as when I used to do close neutral grip lat pulldowns. Using the Power Straps with neutral grips also makes my shoulders unhappy. Today I skip those and do something a little different. Something that's not going to cause my upper back to knot up.

After the painful, awful, 20-minute cardio warmup (in which I could feel my slightly sore hamstrings) I do my basic core exercises: crunches, planks, knee-ins, bicycles, and pushups. It only takes me a few minutes to go from freezing cold to being just shy of sweaty. Then, instead of jumping right into hammer grip pull-ups, I do regular overhand pull-ups first. Because of the way the bar is mounted, I have only two positions I can use (narrow and wide) and I'm not familiar with either of them. The bench is more than a foot away from the wall so I have to lean forward to reach the handles.

Then I take a few minutes to review my video, swig some water, and do another set. But hammer grips this time. I get one more rep but only by muscling through. Again I take a few minutes to review the video (and edit out the beginning and end for time), then do one more set, this time underhand chin-ups. I've actually never done chin-ups before and I'm worried that my right wrist will freak out the way it did during underhand Inverted Rows on the Power Straps. But that doesn't happen. Instead, I've gotten about a dozen reps for each set, so I'm happy. In total, 40 reps. Not pretty by any means, but I'm counting them.

While all forms of pulling myself up stress my forearms (mine are weirdly undersized), I did notice some key differences resulting from the change in grip position. I only felt lat involvement during the hammer grip pull-ups. Naturally, chin-ups focused all attention on the biceps. And regular pull-ups pinged my elbows a bit. It might just be the way I'm built and we're built a little differently from each other. But it's definitely worth getting yourself a pull-up bar somewhere in your digs, unless you want to emulate the Buff Dudes videos showing him hanging off of doors and door frames. I can't recommend it, but it's good for entertainment value.


The DB superset flies by. I'm less thrilled with the Rip Skulls because I'm worried about the pressure I feel in my head and neck during the movement. I can't be certain that this is a problem with my glaucoma, but I don't want to take any chances so I'll be doing something different next time. After playing with the EZ bar for two sets of 25 reps, I do a few quick stretches and call myself done.

Wednesday workout 

Vision elliptical

Program: manual

20 min

Miles: 1.75

Calories: 162

HR 78-136

Crunches 60/60

Elbow Plank 60s

Bird Dogs 2 x 60s

Bench Knee-Ins 60

Bicycles 60

Pushups 31

Regular Pull-Ups 13

HGPU 14

Chin-Ups 13

Bodyweight squats 25

DB SuperSet x 3 sets all

Press x 25

Alt Front Raises x 12

Lateral Raises x 12

Split Squat 12 each leg

EZ Bar Rip Skulls 30 lbs x 12 x 2

EZ Bar BB Curl 30lbs x 25

EZ Bar RG Curl 30 x 25

Quick stretch