Today was the first day that I set foot in a gym in a looooong time. Despite the fact that I stated that I was throwing some traditional bodybuilding workouts into the mix, I found that I just can’t get away from Pavel Tsatsouline’s excellent techniques.

I started out with the core exercises from his book Power to the People since they are so designed to work the very important core muscle groups. Not having done these in a while and having back problems I started out very conservatively, but I still tried to do enough weight where I felt like I was getting a decent workout.

First I started with 3 sets of 5 reps of deadlifts, and then I went on to do the same with side presses. I always enjoy doing side presses at the gym because invariable someone comes up to me and says “that’s an interesting exercise” or “what does that do?” One thing I discovered is how tight I am on one side in the hip/lower back area. I was stunned at how inflexible I was on one side and the SP really helped to extend my range of motion there.

Once I was done with those I went on to work the rest of my muscle groups in the standard bodybuilding method, although for my shoulders I couldn’t help but throw in a kettlebell-style tweak, adding a clean to each rep of military presses to get my heart pumping and adding a ballistic component to the exercise.