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| 135, full lock. |
I had planned on taking a couple weeks off from the weight room. The spring race schedule is just really tight, and to be fresh enough for the races, I can’t be blasting myself with deadlift workouts the day before. The plan had been to take this week and half of next off, and then get back hard on the weights and put my endurance training (bike and run) on cruise control for awhile. But that would’ve meant resting for two more days, and I really just don’t have the patience for that. My progress with overhead press has been a little unsatisfactory of late, so I felt like I couldn’t afford to let it slide for two weeks. Plus, when I don’t work out, I can’t eat as much (inner fat kid calling!), and I don’t sleep as well because of all the stored up energy.
So I put this up tonight. I remember a time when I used to dream of benching this weight. When I was a scrawny kid in high school (and for years after), I would’ve given just about anything to be able to use one of the big plates on either side of the bar. But I just wasn’t strong, I had no mass to work with, and was never taught how to train to get bigger or stronger, even when I wrestled. Now, I’m picking this up over my head, just because I wanted to.
Tonight, I put this up just because I could, after doing 3×10 and 2×5 working up to it. Then I drank some water, and hammered out 6×10 on lat pulldowns and 1-armed dumbbell overhead press. I’d only been at it for a half hour, so I decided on drop sets (80, 70, 60, 50, 40, 10 reps each) of easy bar rows, alternating (no rest) with sets of 20 decline situps with the bench cranked as high as it would go. I was burning pretty good at that point, but wasn’t satisfied, so I did drop sets of reverse curls (60, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10-15 reps each), supersetted with overhead tricep extensions, and alternating with sets of 15 double crunches.
That scratched the itch and burned the calories. I wasn’t destroyed when I left, but I’ll sleep well tonight. Which is good, because I have a 10k trail race tomorrow!