Deth

Today was one of those fun days in the home gym where all of my lifts are on the heavier side. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them close to failure, but they’re heavy enough to require full focus for sure.

First, I had to do my front squats at 210 pounds. It’s certainly on the heavier side for me, but they were manageable. I would even go so far as to say they felt great for being on the heavier side. They looked great and were really fast and explosive. The uncomfortable feeling of the bar against my throat seems to be subsiding a bit.

Today I found I was squatting absolutely ass to grass. Basically, sitting between my ankles. I’m glad that’s coming back to me again, I had lost it somewhat after bitching up my knee a year and a half or so ago doing step-ups on the bench. The height of the bench was just below my knee cap, and I can’t count how many times I jammed that area into the edge of the bench.

I felt like I did really well with holding good positions throughout each rep. My tendency to allow my upper back to collapse at least a little seems to have become reduced to nothing more than an occasional sloppy rep, or I’m confident that might be my failure point near a one rep max. The three sets of five ended up feeling pretty excellent to me today.

Next I had to do my three sets of five strict press 117 pounds. These are approaching the heavier side of things for me, so I did put on my belt. I wasn’t certain how these were going to go with my one arm still feeling a bit on the weaker side, but they ended up going really great. I got through my sets with no difficulties today. I was going to do some extras, but I thought the smart thing to do would be pass up on that today since they’re heavier, and we’ll do our bro session later.

The Power cleans felt fairly heavy at 165 pounds today. These cleans weren’t necessarily at a heavy weight for me today, but it was one of those days that they felt heavier than they should have. They weren’t too heavy to complete the lifts or anything like that, but they required a bit longer of a rest in between sets than I might normally have taken. I finished them, so it worked out.

Finally, I am continuing with my hip thrusts. I did these thrusts at 185 pounds for sets of ten. Heavier than I’ve been going, but they didn’t feel bad at all. I did get over that mental barrier of body weight with these today. I did want to push myself out of my comfort zone and with them and break through that mental line, and I successfully did so.

Music for today was Pantera

Later on, we did our bro session. That felt pretty good. I stuck with 40s for bench press, with my elbow acting up a tad. I used 75 pounds for the rows. I could use more, but that’s the heaviest dumbbells we have. 40s for the curls and shoulder presses too. I wasn’t aggressive today, but it felt good.