Food does the body good!

The holiday calories (actually more the quality than the quantity) continued to be atrocious through Sunday. Looking at my schedule for the next week, I knew I’d have to hit the gym for a rare Monday appearance. Personally, I think anyone who is serious about training should look a week or more out in advance to determine when they can train. Many fail right off the rip taking the one-day-at-a-time approach. Then as soon as something gets thrown into the schedule, “Oh, I couldn’t workout today because I was too busy…”. Then one day missed becomes, “I’m going to start getting back into it next Monday.” Then it’s, “next month”, then it’s “Jan. 1st!”

But I digress…

I wasn’t able to secure the power rack during primetime, so that meant I had to settle for the 45-degree leg press instead of Zercher Squats. While I’m not a fan of the LP, it’s the best I can do at the commercial gym if I need to go for maximum poundage. Today is actually my last week through this particular routine, so I really wanted to test my strength this week. My goal is to set new PR’s each day. Did it happen? Read on…the PR’s are in bold:

12/2/2013	Set	Reps	Weight
Leg Press	1	5	90
	2	5	180
	3	5	270
	4	5	360
	5	5	450
	6	3	540
	7	3	630
	8	3	720
	9	2	800
	10	2	800
	11	2	850
Military Press	1	5	85
	2	5	135
	3	1	155
	4	1	165
	5	1	170

I held back a bit on the LP as I was being cautious with my lower back, but overall, everything felt great! As you can see, I still got 2 reps even after the 50lb. jump on the last set. It was definitely a day when a partner to challenge me a bit more would have been useful, but perhaps stopping one-rep-short has allowed me to remain injury free over the last 10 weeks. But no matter how many plates you stack on the LP, it’s still the LP. You get no respect from serious lifters unless you are squatting/pulling a weight that’s bending the bar.

Last up was the military press. The power rack got clear for a brief moment so I ran to it like a bro in leopard spandex at the Arnold Classic when he finds out they’re passing out free supplements. Not that I’ve done that mind you…well, at least not in spandex leopard print pants.

I thought 165 lbs. was my target weight for the day, so I gave it a go. As soon as I tried to press, the weight just felt heavy and I barely got it up. I even then tried a push-press rep and could only get it half way. I was quite disappointed, made a note of it, and consoled myself by pointing out that my weight usually stalls pretty early on this exercise so I’m just glad I made so many weeks of progression with it, plus my elbows are still a tad sore, etc.. I took the 10’s off each side, rested, unracked and BAM, the weight felt really light. Then I realized that I had miscalculated the weight on the previous set. I was actually trying 175 lbs.!  So when I realized I just easily killed 155, I went back to 165 (my previous 1RM) and crushed that, then I found some 2.5 lb plates that people feel are useless, slapped those on the end and crushed 170lbs.! A few short months ago, I was struggling to hit 145lbs. for 1RM, and now I’ve added 25lbs. to this all important lift.

If I had been in my homegym, I would’ve had to blast this all-time classic from Pumping Iron:

I can watch this scene with Lou Ferrigno (The Incredible Hulk for you late Gen-Y youngsters) over and over again and get hyped every time!

I came home and then tried to overhead press Big Reg. I think he’s in the 150’s, but pressing a human from the floor in the living room is a lot different from a bar in the rack. Besides, I didn’t think about how I was going to put him down. I did get him up into pressing position, but I must work more on the technique and him being absolutely still instead of laughing hysterically which didn’t make things any easier.

Next up, pressing My Lex. However, the outcome was the same with her as well, but there’s no doubt that I could get her up as well.

So maybe that’ll be a test for:

a.) Me: I should always be able to military press more than my children weigh (I don’t think my progression can keep up with Big Reg’s scale progression, but we’ll see)

b.) Future Son-In-Law: If you can’t press my daughter’s bodyweight, NO, you can’t marry her! A guy who isn’t strong enough to do that could never keep her away from the zombies when I’m dead and gone…

CSD