Last time I did this workout, I was really concerned that my biceps would be extremely sore for a good long time. Doing a lot of curls is relatively new to me (although the Shoulders & Arms routine from Phase I did a decent job of prepping the biceps), and virtually every exercise in this particular routine uses biceps at least a little bit - so they really got worked. Fortunately, any residual soreness I felt for a few days afterwards was surprisingly mild.
So today I mostly wanted to hone in on the appropriate weight to use, as opposed to trying to up the # of reps from last week - since I'd be increasing weight already, I didn't want to also increase reps and overdo it. This way I'd have a better baseline with regards to exhaustion. The only wrench that throws into things is that my rest between many sets was longer than desired, since I often had to spend a solid minute changing out weights.
The big 'WTF' exercise from last time was the corn-cob pullups. I was able to improve on the form slightly by moving side to side a little more, but I ended up banging my head on the ceiling joist. And then I tried actually doing the in-and-out part, but banged my head on the air duct behind my pull-up bar contraption. So in the end, I decided that maybe I'd just have to make do with somewhat limited range of motion.
The nice thing is that I was able to adjust weights up and down based on last weeks notes, and complete the reps, and I don't feel quite as sore. I think I am finding that my strategy of increasing reps from the previous week via mid-set break (ie, if I did 8 last week, this week I'd do 8 and then 2), or combining a previous workout with a mid-set break into a single set, seems to be working. There are certainly some exercises where I'm keeping the number of reps the same during two successive weeks, but as long as I'm seeing progress and increase strength elsewhere, I'm not worried about having to consistently increase reps on every exercise.
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