Clusters

Money Shot

Was doing a lot of cycling, soccer and Tennis over the last couple of months, taking a bit of a break from the heavy weights.

Lost a fair bit on my lifts as expected, so decided to revisit something I used years ago to good effect in order to get over a plateau called clusters - I'm sure others call it something different. Anyway, going to do it for a month on the Bench to see how I go - It's also great for me as I don't have a whole lot of time for my workouts (30 min max)

First off, needed to get my one rep max - I managed one good rep of 100kg last week and didn't feel I could get another, so that's my starting point - nice and even.
So 85% of that (85kg) should be a weight where I can get 5 good reps. I will only be doing one 'working set' on this program, but it's pretty intense and I'm hoping to add 2.5Kg a week to my lift. I want to get back to a 120 kg lift - so this should take me to 115 anyway in four weeks. (we'll see)

Here's my first bench session using clusters

20kg - 10 reps
70kg - 10 reps
85kg - 5 reps (replace bar and 7 second rest)
2 more reps (replace bar 7 second rest)
2 more reps (replace bar 10 second rest)
2 more reps (replace bar 10 second rest) shattered
1 Final rep (replace bar) totally shattered

Everything else I done after this - Dips etc, I struggled with big time - but that's fine. The idea anyway is to get one good full set of 10-12 reps of a weight where you could normally only get 5.

Money Shot

Here's how I got on - quite well, the first five reps felt good in that I felt that I could probably have managed a sixth, just. Confident for 90 for 5 in my next session - which I could not have done last week.

Warm up set 20 kg - 10 reps
Warm up set 70 kg - 10 reps
87.5 kg - 5 reps (replace bar and 6 second rest)
2 more reps (replace bar 6 second rest)
2 more reps (replace bar 8 second rest)
2 more reps (replace bar 9 second rest)
1 Final rep (replace bar)

Again, upper body is really shattered after it, and really struggled on dips after it, but I don't mind that.

Money Shot

Warm up set 20 kg - 10 reps
Warm up set 70 kg - 10 reps
90 kg - 5 reps (replace bar and 9 sec rest) - struggled to make the initial five
2 more reps (replace bar 9 sec rest)
2 more reps (replace bar 9 sec rest)
2 more reps (replace bar 10 sec rest)
1 Final rep (replace bar)

Going well - can't see myself getting five at 92.5 next time, but if I get four, I'll be happy...

Money Shot

Session four
Warm up set 20 kg - 10 reps
Warm up set 72.5 kg - 10 reps
92.5 kg - 4 reps (replace bar and 10 sec rest) - Didn't want to risk five, but wasn't shot after four
2 more reps (replace bar 9 sec rest)
2 more reps (replace bar 10 sec rest)
2 more reps (replace bar 10 sec rest)
1 Final rep (replace bar)

Session Five
Warm up set 20 kg - 10 reps
Warm up set 75 kg - 10 reps
95 kg - 4 reps (replace bar and 10 sec rest) - a very tough four, but made it
2 more reps (replace bar 10 sec rest)
2 more reps (replace bar 10 sec rest)
1 more rep (replace bar 10 sec rest)
1 more rep (replace bar 12 sec rest)
1 Final rep (replace bar) shattered, but going well