Heavy Squats Felt Great This Morning
Last night was certainly one of those unusual nights, for sure. I slept great. I slept straight through the night and felt wide awake when I woke up. Having the windows open helped, I think. I slept too well, waking up with not enough time to drink my coffee after taking my thyroid pill before Brooke got here.
We had fun when she got here. It started with me chasing her around the house with an empty water bottle because her water bottle had leaked on the couch yesterday. She thought she was in trouble, so I figured I’ll make it funny. At the bus stop, we pretended the pink flower petals from the tree are snow, and we were gathering handfuls and throwing the snow at each other.
Shortly after taking her to the bus stop, I got changed and headed off to make the long trek to the gym. It was hard opening the door today. I wanted to get out there before the sun came out, and it got too warm. It was fairly cool and damp this morning when I did my stuff.
The day began with my fairly heavy back squats at two hundred and fifty pounds for five sets of three. This was the heaviest weight that I’ve done for fives in a while with my ankle flaring up, then the stomach bug. They felt great today. Even though I could feel that the weight was pretty heavy, it did not feel crushing like it does at times and felt smooth and easy. I had nice explosive squats with nothing giving formwise at all. It felt outstanding to get under some heavier weight. My body and brain were telling me that there is definitely more in the tank. As it’s always been for me, it’s not about how much weight I can move at all cost. It’s more about how much weight I’m able to move well.
The bench press felt really good in the warm up sets. The first working rep at the hundred and sixty five pounds felt really wierd and I quickly aborted. I am ninety nine percent sure that I was just way off center no the bar but my shoulder that had been bothering me is the one that didn’t like it, so I played it safe and walked away. Being visually impaired as I am, it’s just so difficult to get the bench lined up right and centered right in the rack. It’s seldom that I get it right. If we were to win the lottery and had unlimited space, I would want a dedicated bench press station for that reason only.
Last of my lifts this morning were the good mornings. These felt nice and good for my three sets of ten. I went with the hundred and twenty pounds again. These aren’t a fun lift for me or one of my favorites, but I think they’re useful.
I drank my protein then I relaxed a while on my tablet trying to recover after those heavy squats. My legs didn’t want to work.
A while later, I decided to tackle a WOD for today. I wanted one that would be challenging, and I found one for later this week. My legs were feeling like jello for quite a while after my lifting session today.
How hard could it be? Row 250, 15 sandbags back squats and then with the rest of the three-minute rounds there were sandbag burpees and that total was the score. I used my fifty pound sandbag. It’s been a little while since I have used that, since I was having fun with the dumbbells.
Upon getting on the rower for that first round, I became well aware of just how drained my legs were feeling. The squats and sandbag burpees only exasperated that feeling. It didn’t take me too long to wonder how I was going to even be able to finish this WOD. I was really feeling it the first round and I had six more to go!
I dug deep and finished the WOD out. I didn’t make the goal, but I was not as far off from it as I thought I would have been. It was one of those good WODs where there wasn’t anything to slow me down that much, so I maintained a very high heart rate. It felt so bad to do that but so rewarding afterwards.
Music today was Die Apokalyptischen Reiter.