Deth

Today was a busy day for sure. It started out with getting the grocery store out of the way since it’s going to snow. We wanted to beat the madhouse. After that we came home and I took a cup of coffee out into the garage and proceeded to work on my strength workout for today.

I started out with some moderate weight back squats. For the squats today I had to perform three sets of five at 215 pounds. They weren’t heavy or anything so I was able to work though the three sets with ease. I felt so good with them as a matter of fact that I decided to throw in next week’s twenty rep back squats and got through all twenty reps pretty easily at 200 pounds. That never felt heavy or anything like that. It was a little bit challenging cardio wise but that’s to be expected with any weight for twenty reps.

Next up on today’s gym agenda I had strict presses. For the shoulder presses I did five sets five at 102 today. The weight was light and they felt great which was pretty surprising for me I have to be honest. Yesterday’s two WODs I did were fairly rough on the shoulders. I needed very little rest on the presses and they looked and felt great.

Next up were the power cleans. For the cleans today I did five sets three At 150. A light weight and all but they felt great. I did one strict press at 150 after the last rep of the first set. I didn’t do any more of these because I felt my form was cracking on the press. The cleans though, felt great today. They were very explosive and I managed to get my elbows higher than the fast few sessions and certainly have been more patient with the pulls again. It’s great to know the past couple of power clean sessions were just a fluke where my timing was off quite a bit. That just wasn’t the case today at all.

For fun I threw in some snatch grip deadlifts at 150 before putting my bar and plates away. It’s been a while since I’ve done these but they felt good for sure.

Music for Strength Was Pearl Jam

Tough WOD with lungester and push up drags using the 40 pound dumbbells. For the lungesters (lunge left, lunge right and thruster) I haven’t ever done more than 25 pounds I think with the dumbbells so the 40 pound RX weight was a mentally tough to say the least. I’m not sure I even remember doing the push up drags with the dumbbell so they were a bit rough too. I am not super comfortable with either of these particular exercises bu at least now I am fairly competent and them.

The WOD was slow and I finished well beyond the goal time but I was okay with it today. My personal goal was to have a different sort of mental challenge than intensity using speed. I wanted to test myself with the typical RXed weight for a change with these dumbbell exercises.

The street parking WODs tend to have lighter weights than we had programmed at our old gym and sometimes I miss pushing myself out of my comfort zone using heavier weights. I realize I can always scale up the weights but I tend to hesitate doing that unless it’s programmed. With today’s WOD I did challenge myself in that way. I got through it and the form of the movements looked great during one of the later rounds and that’s the most important thing to me. Maybe if I push the heavier weights a little more often I can get more comfortable with doing them with speed.

I really haven’t pushed the weight in a WOD the way I did today since I first came down with COVID so it’s been a couple of months now. It went surprisingly well so that made me pretty happy.

Music For WOD was Skepticism because I knew the WOD would be brutal so I needed some funeral doom