New Workout and Fractional Gains

Back in June I added a new workout. It hits the same muscles and the current one, just with different exercises. The weights on all the exercises have flattened out so time to share the latest workout (all weights are what's on the bar, as usual). Three sets each of:

1. Partial Deadlift: 8x110
2. Barbell Military Press: 8x15
3. Seated Cable Row: 8x75
4. EZ-Curl Barbell Curls: 10x38
5. Overhead Tricep Dumbell Extension: 10x32.5
6. Gripper: 15x7,1

Some explanations:

• A partial deadlift is where I set the long pins in the power cage to just below my kneecaps and put the barbell on top of that. I don't like deadlifts all the way down with a straight barbell. Someday I'll get some kind of trap bar.
• The barbell curl is moved over from the other workout. They have been replaced with dumbell curls over there.
• The tricep extension is with a single dumbell.
• The "7,1" notation for the gripper is from the chart I wrote about in my last post.

So what's up with "38" as a weight for barbell curls? Two words: fractional plates. Love 'em. They go down to 1/4 lb. See, with some barbell exercises, a 5 lb step up is just too much--for me, anyway. Enter fractional plates and I, typically, only go up 1 lb when I use them. I have been using them with the military press and barbell curls. So nice.

I have encountered one problem, though. I have a little niggle in my left hip. I suspect that increasing the weight every workout on the deadlift was too fast. So I'll take a few weeks off from that exercise to let the soreness die down. Then I'll dial back the weight and go a lot slower upping the weight.