I Finally Broke The Bench Press 3 x 5 Plateau
Today was a decent day in the garage gym for my lifting this morning so far at least. I did some things slightly differently than I have been doing and also broke a long standing plateau.
Starting out with the back squats I decided to do them slightly differently than I have been doing. I thought this time around since I reset the weight I’d give it a go wearing my romaleos lifting shoes for a change. I’ve been trying to mix up the back squats slightly as I am resetting the weight. The shoes are not quite as tight now. Maybe I lost fat in my feet also? They felt great for the squats with the solid heel and extra stability. I didn’t really need them for mobility.
Next up was bench press. I had to do three sets of five at 195 pounds today. I haven’t made it past this weight since I began doing the 5x3 early this year. I had made it to the last set and failed the the last rep this spring but I haven’t been able to break the plateau until today. They went well today and didn’t even feel all that difficult. Yes they were challenging and certainly felt heavy but it was moving fairly well 90ish percent of my one rep max. it really felt like there’s a little bit more in the tank. Maybe I can make it another five or ten pounds.
After the bench was done I had to do my good mornings. I finally bumped the weight on those to 85 pounds. I’ve been using 80 for months and just am in no rush to increase the weight. It still felt light but this is more about going for perfect movement rather than heavy weights.
A little while after the lifting I decided to go ahead and do tomorrow’s WOD. The WOD was 4 rounds of 20 weighted step ups and 20 sandbag burpees. At least there was a rest between rounds. The sandbag burpees aren’t that big of a problem for me but the weighted step ups are still somewhat challenging and a movement for me both because of vision and the fact that I don’t feel safe to use the RX height of 24 inches inside of our garage. It brings my head too close for comfort to the ceiling and I have in the back of my mind that one of these times it might catch me off guard and cause me to step wrong and trip off the box. The whole vision vision deal big factor in that too.
Either way I did the WOD and didn’t really red line it and ended up with about a three and a half minute PR from last time we did this one six months ago. I am thrilled about that.
In the evening after the Eagles’ clusterfuck of a game I did a WOD with Molly. This week’s sandbag WOD which was bunch of shoulder to shoulder presses and single arm rows then, you guessed it, more sandbag burpees! That was rough after the earlier WOD and heavy bench press having my shoulders feel wrecked. I picked my way through the WOD though and ended up with a time well short of the goal so I’d consider it a nice success.
Music today was a flash back to the 1990s with Testament