Oh, shiny!

Got myself an incline bench as I change things up following a setback in my covid recovery. Even though I thought I was taking it easy, I must have pushed it a bit much and my immune system was still in a weakened state that lead to an infection - of what I don't know, but the gland under my right jaw is swollen, preceded by a bit of a fever for a day that a course of antibiotics seems to be now clearing.

When I first started weight training I was at a loss as where to start. Like nutrition, there is just so much misinformation out there, when in reality it's all pretty simple. To train every muscle group in the body, you can boil it down to 5 movements:

• Vertical pull (e.g. deadlift)
• Vertical push (e.g. overhead press)
• Horizontal pull (e.g. row)
• Horizontal push (e.g. bench press)
• Squat (aka the "King of Exercises")

OK, you may want to throw in something like chin-ups to get some direct arm work, but these will get you most of the way in building a stronger version of yourself.

I'll be keeping to this same template, but swapping in some unfamiliar variations of these movements forcing me to lower the intensity, that'll grow as my skill level improves but hopefully at a rate that doesn't out pace my overall recovery. I'm also shifting the rep range from a strength focused 5-8 reps, to a more hypertrophy range of 8-12 reps, that also dictates a lower weight to be used.

I've tested out some dumbell incline bench presses as an alternative to the barbell flat bench press, and talk about Bambi-on-ice - all over the place with weight I'd normally use as a warmup without a second thought, so somewhat humbling getting back to a baby-beginner stage. Actually excited at the prospect of this all providing a nice carry over and a boost to my main lifts when I get back to them - if I don't mess up my covid recovery for a second time that is!