Pull Day (PPL W4D2)

It felt great. I feel like I’m gradually getting the hang of pulling with my back rather than my arms, and I held on well even when it got tough.

Similar to Lat Pulldown, it felt great. Normally I struggle to engage my mid-back muscles during rowing movements, but today the activation was really good. This was my first time using this machine and it was a successful experiment. I’ll keep practicing the technique of pressing my chest firmly into the pad and pulling with my back.

There seem to be two main weaknesses in particular — I need to practice setting the cables overhead and moving only with my shoulders. On top of that, I think I need to raise my elbows slightly.

I’m moving my elbows too much, and I think I’m also rotating the dumbbells inward too aggressively.

As for elbow movement, I think moving forward by about 1–2 cm might be acceptable, but watching the footage it looks way too dominant compared to the bicep contraction, which is wrong.

For the second point, I think I need to keep the angle of the line from my shoulder to my elbow at around 45 degrees. It seems like I’ll need a lot of practice.

The cable curls also felt quite awkward today. I think I need to keep my elbows fixed slightly in front of my hips and hold them there.

This isn’t an exercise planned in my program, but my training is severely lacking in frontal plane movements, so I wanted to try incorporating something like this. If you watch the footage, you’ll understand exactly why I need it… 😢