Deth

Not every day goes like this unfortunately but today was one where my lifts all felt great. Even the tougher ones felt great form wise and mentally. Sure it was challenging but I didn’t feel like I was going to break in half by doing them. Maybe the breaking in half part is a little bit of an exaggeration but sometimes the weight does just feel crushing.

The front squats were by far the heaviest and toughest lifts of this morning. I had to do three sets of five at 235 pounds. This was a five rep PR for me.

Keep in mind that when we were at the old Crossfit gym my one rep max front squat was a mere 225 pounds on a good day. I would say that at that I could have made that 225 seventy five percent of the time. Now I can hit that weight without warming up if I wanted to. My upper back was just so sloppy with front squats back then that I wasn’t comfortable with or able to really push it.

Sure the lifts were challenging but they felt more than doable today. My technique didn’t even crack a little and that’s what the most important part is to me. It’s far more important to me to move well under a pretty heavy load than to go for an all out max effort lift. Being in my mid forties I don’t want to risk injuries.

The warm up sets felt very good today and the working sets at the 235 pounds felt amazing. I was moving really well with them and the bar didn’t have that shoulder crushing feeling. My back, especially my upper back which used to round didn’t even give a little. I kept my knees out and remained very upright through without losing any depth. I was thrilled with them. I feel like on a good day I should be able to make the 240 pound at least on Friday but that’s only if it’s good day.

Next I moved on to the strict presses. These are still pretty light at 105 pounds so I got through them with no issues. The best part about it is my arm didn’t give me any shit while doing them. Sometimes it has been being pissy with pressing but not today. I got through the five sets of five that I performed pretty easily today.

Finally I moved on to the deadlifts. For them I went a head and used my belt as I wanted to push it a bit and do the five sets of three at the 265 pounds. While the weight is on the higher end of a moderate weight for me to be repping I felt good with the sets of three deadlifts today. I didn’t feel my form giving any and my videos of my working sets confirmed just that. They looked consistently great for deadlifts for me. Surprisingly my grip wasn’t giving out either. No mixed grip as always for deadlifts and I don’t recall using hook grip either.

Music for the strength was Candlemass.

A couple of hours after I recovered from the heavy strength I decided to give today’s WOD a shot. The WOD would have called for 100 box jumps. 100 box jumps is just plain stupid but they love programming them. They did offer eye level kettle bell swings instead though so I went with them. Me being me I opted to use the 32kg kettlebell. I’ve neglected to use the kettle bell very much recently and I forgot how that spikes my heart rate. It’s one of those movements that deceivingly simple. You can keep going but it puts your heart rate through the roof. Either way I got through the WOD on the low end of their goal time. Between the weighted lunges in the WOD and the heavy deadlifts and squats earlier in the day it sure made the kettle bell swings more interesting.

Music for the WOD was also Candlemass.

We also did our bro session this evening together. I didn’t do anything special with it. I kept the weights lighter since by then I was feeling like my body and brain were running in slow motion of some sort. I stuck with the 40s for everything today out of sheer laziness. I didn’t feel like switching dumbbells. Of course that meant I used them for the curls too so I went heavier than normal with them. We missed it on Monday so it felt good to do it again and even better since we truly enjoy spending that time together.

Music for bro shit was Acid Bath.

I can definitely say it was a good day in the garage gym but also pretty exhausting.