My BodyBlog

Just got back from the gym where I finished Cyle 3 of 5×5 with overhead barbell press @115 as my primary exercise.  This weight was hard but I didn’t come close to failure, I’m a little surprised.  Shoulders have been a weak area for me but they’ve come a long way this past year.  We’ll see how I do with 120 pounds next time!  Also did incline bench press 5×5 using 155.  The sets were tough but I did them all.  Also did some pull-ups, trap work, and cable crossovers, finishing up the workout with some cardio on the bike.

Here’s how I did on my other primary exerices during this Cycle:

Bench Press:  Working with 205, the sets were hard but I had really good form and I completed every rep unassisted until I got to the very last one…..AAARRGGHH!  Frustrating to come so close, I did 24 reps but couldn’t get the 25th…oh well, that’s how it goes sometimes.  It was a great chest workout though, and I’ll use 205 again next Cycle to see if I can finish unassisted.  In theory I should be getting stronger, so this will be a good test.

Squat.  I went with 250 and really liked how it felt and how I was able to maintain good form, going to parallel on all reps.  Next Cycle I’ll go up to 255.  I could lift more I know, but I want to keep good form so I’d rather a slow increase in weight so I don’t have to sacrafice any form to complete all 5 sets.

Deadlift.  I upped the weight by 10 to 290.  This workout was my seventh in 10 days, a really heavy stretch for me, and my energy was not as high as usual.  I compensated by taking a longer rest between sets, and I dropped one exercise from my workout that day.  I got through the 5 sets, and the hardest thing besides the low energy was maintaining a good grip for multiple reps with that much weight.  The weight itself I was fairly comfortable with.

I felt the deadlifting much more than any other exercise I did during Cycle 3.  I was sore for 3 days afterwards, in places I haven’t been sore before!  Including warm-ups, I deadlifted 10,400 pounds! That’s a big increase from my previous deadlifting experience, where I’ve been going for 1 rep maxes and would only lift in the 4,000 to 5,000 pound range every other week.  I’ll increase deadlift to 295 next cycle…this is going to get veeery interesting! 

This entry was posted on Friday, October 24th, 2008 at 7:38 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.