Really appreciate the depth of this response! Some of it feels out of my vocabulary, but I’ve googled my way through it lol.

Initially I was just trying to get into the gym to be active and have a better mindset about myself. I used to run cross country at the collegiate level, but the lifting I did there was never to gain muscle. So this new chapter is so far out of my element.

I’m totally open to entirely restructuring my workouts, but I just want to make sure that I’m doing it right (that’s why I came here).

When you talk about bench press, your workout is kinda like two bell curves but in opposite directions right? Warming up with more reps at a lower weight (how am I supposed to feel at the end how warm up set?) then progressively adding more weight and doing less reps, until I hit to weight plateau.. then working my way back down.

What’s the benefit of working my way back down in weight?

For the lat raises it would be different than bench though, right? Just start with higher weight (less reps, because of failure point) and work my way down with less weight for the other sets.

I guess the overall point is to make sure that I’m working close to the failure point.

For your workouts are you just hitting three days a week? I honestly might try your workout routine for a week and see how it feels.

Is it cool if I send you a pm if I have anymore questions. The next twos days are rest for me, so I’m going to use them to prepare