Muscle rounds for back

[Scott Stevenson]

If we like planning, can we? Personally I enjoy walking into the gym knowing what I need to do and having some numbers already in my head. Since I train first thing in the AM I am sometimes tired and unmotivated. I find planning the session the night before (when I'm amped to go train be next day) forces me to do the biggest and most intense movements I can.

Sure, you can do that - whatever you like. (I'm not a dictator... LOL The only thing I will call folks on, simply to limit confusion and the fall-out of questions that I will / do / could get, is doing something I've not suggested as part of FT and calling it FT. I'm fine with people doing whatever they like.

R.e. the above - if your ego is driving you to make exercise selections that run counter to what your body is saying (the night before or the morning of training), then you may be losing out on the benefits of auto regulation, i.e., being a good coach to yourself. (You can ask yourself the question, "If I were an athlete I were training, what would I have him do here?...") Some people may err to the side of doing old familiar stuff when a new exercise might be better, the opposite of that, or what have you.

MR's are indeed to be generally programmed simply b/c the point of bodybuilding is to bodybuild. If one has weak (from an appearance standpoint) spinal erectors, then training them makes sense, of course. If, as an example to the contrary, your spinal erectors are ridiculously large and you need more lat mass to balance these out, but can't get yourself past the notion that a cross-cable lat pulldown is a foo-foo exercise b/c it's not a hard core weighed chin or free weight thickness exercise, then this may very well be repeating the training pattern (possibly focusing on strengths vs. building up weakness) that led in part to your current (imbalanced) physique development.

So, this is where checking in can help. If the above person could sense that the lats were not trained well ("mind-muscle connection is poor"), then using an exercise on a MR (or PUMP) set day is a smart move. This comes from a combo or realistic self-coaching as well as in the moment auto regulating (picking up on kinesthetic feedback like DOMS) literally when arriving at the gym and devising a strategy.

-S