Deth

I didn’t know how well today would go after drinking a bit last night and a stressful couple of days. I felt well rested but that doesn’t always tell the story. Things got stressful thanksgiving when we had a leak. Nothing major or anything and thankfully it was caught early so I turned off the water then back on to fill the bathtub so we had water to flush the shitter. It’s fixed now at least.

The day started out with squats at 210. My knees are a bit angry from a bunch of running in yesterday’s WOD that we were able to do together outside but the squats went well. I didn’t even need all that much rest between the sets. I was moving fast and well so that was a great start to the day of lifting.

Then I had the dreaded bench press. I have always dreaded this lift. Even in high school with the teacher spotting me I was sort of hesitant at this. I could never see to re rack the bar so I always had it in the back of the mind that’ I’d drop the bar on my face. I’ve never practiced the lift all that much for said reason until the past year or so. I’ve gotten comfortable with doing it in the rack with safeties set.

Today for the bench press I had to do three sets of five at 200# which for me was going to be heavy. Hell, I am pretty sure that was just 5 pounds below my one rep max at the old gym. I sort of remember only making it to 205 pounds there. The first set went relatively easy considering it’s a pretty heavy weight for me. The second set went with no difficulty just like the first set did. The third set is where things went down hill. It started with the first rep being tough and they didn’t get easier at all. I made it through the sticking point in the third rep and then the fourth was slightly easier. The fifth rep was a big ass nope. Really was a fight at the sticking point and it started moving again but my hamstring cramped. I would have liked to have made it through these today, of course, no one wants to fail but I half expected I’d fail today and if not today I knew I would fail at 205 next time. Having realistic expectations is helpful.

I also played a bit with a new toy that I ordered and got here pretty late last night. I bought fat gripz hoping they will help me with grip strength. Grip is my weakness on deadlifts and also repping out pull ups and other stuff I’ve tried hasn’t seemed to really have helped. I was hoping that they would get delivered early enough yesterday to try them out but Amazon delivered them after 9 PM. That was both too late to be dropping the bar with attached neighbors and after I’d drank alcoholic slushies from Joy’s which isn’t a good time to try something new.

Today I played with some deadlifts at 145 with them. Holy shit that was a grip burner but it felt good. I am thinking these will be a big help to me. I’d been meaning to order them for quite a while but just never got around to it.

Music today was a flash back to Celtic Frost