My BodyBlog

This is it, I’m officially a gym rat.  On a hot and sunny Sunday afternoon I headed to the gym for my bench press workout and there was not another soul there!  Either I need to get a life, or I am living life to the fullest by staying committed to something I love so much.  I’ll say it’s the latter, LOL!  Anyway, being alone at the gym with no spotter to watch me through my lifts and the failure test posed a problem.  I wasn’t going to postpone the workout which would put me off my schedule, so instead I worked around it by setting up my bench press in the power rack.  First time I’d done bench press with it, and I have to say I wasn’t nearly as comfortable as the normal bench and rack.  I had to set the safety rods so that I had a full range of motion, but yet allow me to fail on a lift and be able to get out from under the bar.

It worked out ok, but I noticed that if I did not have the bar perfectly level on the descent, then either one side or the other would touch the safety rod before I reached my chest.  This was a minor annoyance that took away from my focus somewhat, but I still completed all the required sets and reps, and on the failure test using 215 I did two good reps and failed on the third.  That means I stay on the same level in the progression table for my next workout, which is great.

After benching I did some box squats, stiff-leg deadlifts, hamstring curls, and some biceps work with cables and dumbbells.  A great workout, and I was beat at the end.  I have five bench press workouts left in the program, and I’ve timed it so I’ll finish up right before I go away for a week’s vacation at which time I’ll take a break from lifting. 

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 5:10 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.