Couple of quick questions about week 2

[Joonyer]

Hi all

I've just done day 3 of week 1 and unfortunately my elbow is flaring back up. I'm 95% sure it's from benching on the smith machine (there's no proper bench at my gym). I've been thinking of binning it for a long time as it's a horrible piece of machinery for so many reasons. Would it be ok to switch to dumbells from week 2 instead? I realise it's meant to be compound, there's no point continuing if it's going to kill my elbow before I'm even up to the heavy weeks. And there's the argument for better all-round development with DB. Thoughts?

Also worth noting, I'm currently alternating the bench with weighted dips, so I'd still be getting a good compound movement in.

Also I did 2x15 for my first week rather than 1 - I realise I should have just tried it out before messing with it, but I couldn't help myself. I'm finding the second sets are considerably more difficult, and on a couple of the exercises I'm having to quit at 10ish for set 2 to avoid failure. For week 2, shall I just go to 1x15 for each, as the weights are going to be going up?

I'm enjoying it so far though, it's really different. Looking forward to getting to the 10s.

cheers in advance
Matt

*edit* Actually I've just thought, it could also be from BB curls as I'm using a straight bar... I might switch to an EZ bar for week 2 and see if it subsides.

 

[Old and Grey]

DB bench presses are more compound then Smith Machine bench presses and you get a better range of movement and also work the smaller stabilizing muscles and tendons. I also find that incline presses seem to put less stress on my elbows although getting heavy DB's up to an incline position can be difficult. You can always do DB inclines for 15's and 10's and flat DB benches for 5's.

 

[Joonyer]

That's great mate thanks, much appreciated. I think I'll do that.

Do you have any thoughts on whether I should just go to 1x15 for week 2?

thanks
Matt

 

[Old and Grey]

I typically stick to 1 set for 15's, 2 sets for 10's and 3 sets for 5's but a lot of times I will just do 1 set of 5's followed by two higher rep drop sets. It seems to stimulate growth better for me. If I have nice success with a certain program, I will repeat it until the gains seem to stop and then change tactics.