Deth

Fitness and everything else

I Failed The 255 Pound Squats But Crushed The 190 Pound Bench Press Today

Although I failed the back squat at two hundred fifty-five pounds today for three sets of five, I am not all that disappointed. I doubted that I would get through the 245 or 250 the past two sessions, but I did. Today felt doable, but just soul crushing having the weight on my back. I’m just not used to heavy weight there now. Maybe I need to add in some heavy walk outs.

The first set of squats went surprisingly well. It wasn’t easy by any means, but each one was pretty fast and explosive considering that I knew it was near my max. Slowly I am getting more upright with them again. I had none of the upper back wanting to collapse like I struggled with for years. The second set wasn’t ugly. I would say the most likely reason I failed the 3rd rep is mental. As soon as I started to squat down, my brain knew it was done. At least I get some lighter weights for a bit to recover physically and mentally.

The Bench press at 190 went really well, and it was a pleasant surprise for me. I’ve always had mental issues, struggling with this lift. It was the visual struggle. I can’t see the j cups to rerack it, and never trusted spotters. I’ve never had a spotter fail me or anything like that. I think it just is more that I can’t see well enough to spot someone else, so my brain doesn’t comprehend people with good vision being able to do it just fine. I never got comfortable with potentially failing, since there’s no safe way to bail.

Setting up in the rack with the safeties set has been a game changer for me. I’ve been confidently pushing more weight and even being able to continue if I felt like I was close to failure. I’ve done a couple of practice fails with light weight to verify the height.

Today the program called for three sets of five at 190 pounds, which I thought I might fail since my non teenager max is only 205. The reps today at 190 were surprisingly easy. I didn’t even slow down on the last rep like last week. Next week should be interesting as I should be just above or close to body weight bench press then unless I really eat like an asshole.

After I recovered a while and the sun came out with temperatures pushing 70 ℉, I decided to do tomorrows WOD since that made more sense to do outside. I can drop the bar and not worry about ceiling height out there. Eight rounds of push jerks and 24 air squats. I was able to fly through that WOD, which felt good.

During the warm-up I had tried the jerks with 115 lbs, and they felt good, but I thought it may become too heavy, so I settled on sticking to 95 pounds. I was glad I did since about the 3rd round in the wind picked up, and it was spitting rain. The rain wasn’t enough to wet anything. The drops hitting my skin were just enough of a distracting factor to slow me down a bit, along with doing the jerks in the grass with tree roots making the ground uneven. Our setup is by no means perfect, but it’s ours, never closes, and we can make it work.