My BodyBlog

I have a few more hours of work to do then I’m taking off for a late afternoon workout!  It’s upper body, incline and decline barbell bench as the primary exerices.  I’m hitting the gym early today because I’m taking my 6 year old nephew to the swimming pool tonight.  It’ll be my first time in the pool since it opened for the season.  I won’t be able to do laps tonight but it’ll be some cardio at any rate (and no stress on the calf either).  It’s the hottest day of the summer here so getting in the pool tonight will be wonderful!  I’ll report on the workout and swimming later…. 

It’s the next afternoon and I’m already sore in the pecs and triceps…what a great incline/decline bench workout I had yesterday!  Started with my favourite and strongest, decline.  My goal was to add at least five pounds to all sets.  After a chest/RC warmup I did decline sets of 185×12, 210×8, 220×6, 230×4.  Last two sets were tough and I really have to thank the spotter, he was great with encouragement and letting me work through the reps, not grabbing the bar too soon like a lot of spotters tend to do.  Next moved on to incline, my weakest bench variation.  I often struggle on this when doing it after decline, and it was tough today but again, with the added confidence of having a good spotter watching me, I pushed through and did all sets cleanly.  Sets were 145×12, 155×8, 160×6, 165×4.

Remainder of workout was some light chest work, light shoulder work with dumbbells, and some work on traps.  I really had the blood flowing, had a great pump and felt big.  Mentally, this was a fantastic workout too.  Strength gains are there, I look bigger outside the gym, I know I will continue to improve if I stay dedicated to the process.

Swimming was fun even though I had to stay in the shallow end with my nephew and dozens of screaming and splashing kids!  He is really coming along with his swimming, I can see that he is more confident in the pool and that leads to trying more things and learning faster.  Confidence in the pool or at the gym means the same thing…progress! 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 10:10 am 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.