Wednesday, December 16, 2009

After four days of leg work...

Last night was an upper body workout in the gym.

The main event was an attempt at a new bench press PR. Last winter, my best was 165 (yes, that's pathetic, but I'm mostly a runner and skier with no upper body strength), and this winter I've done 170. I did a single rep at 165 last night that felt almost easy, so I decided to try for 175. I pulled the bar down and headed back up. And then, it just stopped moving. If I'd made it one more inch, I would have finished the rep. But, after what seemed like a minute (maybe 5 or 6 seconds), I asked my spotter for help. I'll get it next week.

My bench press sets were as follows:

Warm-up
6 x 145
1 x 155
6 x 145
1 x 165
1 x 175 (failed)
10 x 125
18 x 105

I mixed in bent-over barbell rows between the bench press sets. After that, lat pulldowns, dumbbell shoulder presses, windshield wipers, incline reverse crunches, and dips. After skiing three straight days, doing my first run in a couple weeks, and then hitting my upper body last night, I'm pretty much tired everywhere today.

Tonight is squat night at the gym. If my legs are feeling strong, I'll try shoot for a lift of 280 or higher, which would be a new PR.

I made minor progress towards Christmas last night. I bought our tree. We'll decorate it Friday night. I wanted to buy it yesterday before our weather put us into a deep freeze, which would have all the trees stored outside frozen solid.

Luckily, there's still plenty of time until Christmas, right? Nine days? Plenty of time.

2 comments:

Harriet said...

I'm not all that confident I could do 175; I did 205 in 2007 but I am very, very weak right now.

Good job.

ollie

Damon said...

My goal is 225 by the end of the winter. Essentially, I want 2 wheels, 3 wheels and 4 wheels on the powerlifts. I'm closest on squats right now - 275 vs. a goal of 315. My dead is 355 vs. 405 - 50 pounds. But, my bench press is is 55 pounds away, and a very high percentage of what I'm lifting now.