Squats At 280 Were Tough But Felt Great
I slept okay last night. Not great, but not bad either. During the middle of the night, I woke up with gas, and it took a while for me to settle down and be able to get back to sleep. I just couldn’t get comfortable unless I was on my tablet. I can’t sleep that way, though. Eventually, I took a crap and felt better. It wasn’t bad or anything, but instead, it was annoying enough to be a distraction to keep me awake.
I woke up this morning feeling pretty good. My shoulder that was pissed off yesterday felt fine. I self-massaged it last night and found a knot. Christie would have called it crunchy. Thankfully, it immediately broke up and was released. I am sure that was from my bench press feeling weird yesterday. I miss not only getting the deep tissue massages from her, but also talking to her. She was from Philadelphia and was just a great person. She moved back there.
I drank my coffee while reading Hacker News and then playing some XBOX. I knew I wanted to at least get a WOD in, if not my squats, but I was in no hurry to do so this morning. Unlike most times, I did things backward this morning, though. I did the WOD about 9:30 AM. Realistically, I knew it wouldn’t be much of one for me, and it really wasn’t. The EMOM’s are where you do this, and then something else is slower for me. Not only that, but with my wrist, I did take the burpees a bit slower.
The WOD called for lateral burpees, which I don’t have the space to do safely. Visually, they slow me down too much. I have to work out in a tight space, so I cannot afford to trip. Hitting the heater would be unpleasant, as would any of the other hard objects in the way. I just went with regular burpees.
By the time I was done and logged it, the sun was brightly shining, and the temperature was in the upper 50s. That meant that there was only one thing I should do. I had to go take advantage of it and relax on the patio. It’s only February, so it isn’t as if we’ll have many days like this for some time.
The sun faded behind clouds towards lunchtime. I had been debating on whether I wanted to get back to my 5/3/1 and start my next cycle today or tomorrow. It will be squeezed in this week, but I wanted to get back on my weekly schedule. I decided to give my heavy squats a try. If my shoulder bugged me, I’d stop.
I felt good with just the empty bar, but then when I added the plates to get a hundred and thirty-five pounds, I realized that my shoulder wasn’t going to be an issue. Not only would my shoulder be fine, but I was moving really well. As I added weight, the squats felt even better. I found myself working quickly up in weights.
The working sets weren’t that much different. I rounded the two hundred and twenty pounds up to two twenty-five for simplicity. The two hundred and fifty pounds certainly felt heavy, but doable.
The final AMRAP for five plus reps and two hundred and eighty pounds was going to be tough. I think my best was five at this weight, if I am remembering correctly, so I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy set. I got under the bar and lifted it off the j-cups, and it felt heavy for sure, but also felt manageable. It was fun but tough while I took my time working through that set, really focusing on treating each rep as a heavy single. I stopped at five reps, since I did want to avoid being overly aggressive today with such a heavy weight. I felt like I had another in the tank, for sure. Those squats certainly jacked up my heart rate! By the time I was done with that final set, it was in the hundred and seventies range. It was hard work.
It was a very rewarding day for me under the bar. Things felt amazing, even under such a heavy weight. I felt like I pushed myself close to my limits today.
Music today was Alice In Chains