Say hello to my favorite ab exercise, the Double Crunch. You start out sitting perpendicular to a bench, then lean back and stick out your legs until you’re balanced in sort of an upright plank. Then just do a crunch! And try not to fall on your head. It’s challenging, it’s a constant burn, and it engages the whole abdominal chain, something that can’t be said for a whole lot of ab exercises.

 If you need to, you can hold onto the bench with your hands until you learn to balance through the whole rep. It takes awhile to master, but it’s SO effective, once you do. Try for five sets of 15-20 to really build ab strength.

Overhead press is a humbling event every week. My progress and overall strength on bench and deadlift have been consistently satisfying. I’m just happy to be doing squats again at all, so I look forward to them every week. Overhead press has been, well, more realistic. I increase weight slowly, and my rep maxes have come in fits and starts.

For instance, today I did this weight, 115 lbs, 10 times on my last set. I did the same reps and weight January 20th. Does this mean I’ve plateaued? Well, not exactly. January 20th was week 3 of my 4 week cycle, which is the week I lift my heaviest and hardest. Today was the first day of week 1 of cycle 3, which is the week after a deload, and the first lift building up to the next week 3. All of that is to say that the overall trend is heavier weights, and a stronger me.

I’d do well to remember that, honestly. It’s easy to get discouraged sometimes, just looking at the numbers and not thinking about what they mean.