Deth

I slept well enough last night, but I was feeling sluggish as hell today. My glutes are feeling a little tight too. I was not sore or anything similar to that, but they felt a little tighter than normal. I debated in my head while I drank my coffee if I was going to do my heavy squats today or wait until Friday. Generally, I like doing my lifts in the morning, and I wanted to do the heavy AMRAP one plus set while Molly was home. She likes to watch my heavy sets, so I wanted to do them when she wasn’t at work so that she could watch.

If it’s not obvious from the fact that I am writing this post, I ultimately decided to give it a go today. Friday, I may be tired from not sleeping well since we’ll go out for a few drinks Thursday night. Today was such a nice morning, and we couldn’t do anything since we had Brooke’s softball game early this afternoon, so I thought I’d get my squats in with the door open and fresh air coming in. There won’t be a ton of chances for that to happen this year.

The first thing I noticed this morning was that my legs felt like dead weight with the squats. Even the empty bar felt heavy to squat on. The plates felt like they weighted twice as much as the number says, but I still pushed my way through them. I thought to myself, “There’s no way that I am getting the three hundred pounds in today.” I still had to give it my best effort. If I had to, I figured if my back acted up from the tight glutes, I’d walk away and retry on Friday. I wouldn’t count that as a missed lift since I knew I wasn’t feeling 100 percent.

I took my time working up the weight while warming up with the lighter weight. Before each set, I thought that there was no way I’d make it, yet they felt good. Sure, they felt tougher than normal, but I made them with relative ease. As the sets went on, I was feeling a little more optimistic that I should get at least one rep at the final weight.

When I got to my last set, I had to do at least one rep and three hundred pounds. I was feeling pretty good about it, unlike the other few times in my life that I have gotten under that weight. It used to really get into my head, but today I considered it to be just another heavy set. The digits flipping really didn’t matter to me.

When I got under the weight, it felt heavy, but not crushingly so. While I only made one rep, I was extremely pleased with what I did. The one rep I made was very explosive. The only reason I bailed on the second rep was because I felt it loading my back a bit. I was not loading it, as in, I was using it to lift, but I think it was because, as I said earlier, my glutes are a little angry today. I got just past the sticking point on that before I aborted. Both the reps that I successfully made and the one I bailed out looked like great squats on the video. I am convinced that I could have easily had a triple on a different day.

I think the biggest reason I failed on my second rep was that the first one was so fast and explosive. It really got the bar bending and bouncing more than I am used to, and that felt unusual on the shoulders. It was making the weight feel alternately heavier and lighter. I just don’t get up into the bar to bending weights often enough to expect that feeling.

Music for my squats today was Dio.