Press Press Press!

Had a very nice day in the gym today. Slept okay, had a light breakfast and a little coffee and hit the gym right away this morning. Took a while to warm up (considering today is Chaos and Pain bench day). Here's what that looked like:

bar x 5

75 x 5

95 x 5

115 x 5

135 x 3

165 x 2 (felt crazy dizzy on this last set)

Then, I loaded up 185 and started my sets - 1 rep on the minute for 9 minutes. It went really smoothly - so well, in fact, that after my nine minutes were up I rested a little extra and hit it for a 10th single. This was BY FAR the easiest of the three weeks (for anyone who is slow, week 1 I hit 165 x 9 x 3, week 2 I hit 175 x 9 x 2). Perhaps that simply has to do with the fact that I'm getting stronger - or maybe the other two weeks are just really fucking hard, and the week of singles is more of a "Fuck yeah, look what I can do" week. Either way, it felt really good and was fun. 

Gotta say Jaime, I'm loving Chaos and Pain

THEN, if having a good bench day wasn't enough, I did my 5/3/1 press work - 110 for 5, 125 x 3, and 140 for 4. Honestly, after so much benching I was worried I wouldn't be able to get it off my chest for 1, never mind hit 4. And considering 150 is my current pr, I'm pretty happy with those numbers. GRANTED, strict press is fucking slow and a pain in the ass to make get better, so I'm not going to be too happy-go-lucky about hitting that 140 for 4, but still it's a good sign. If, in a couple months, I'm able to hit that 150 for a rep or two AFTER Chaos and Pain benching, then I can be pretty sure I have a new PR. we will see. 

ANYWAYS, I did 2 more max overhead press sets, one at 125 and 1 at 110, then did my bent over rows at 145 - these felt pretty easy, so I ended up doing them with a minute rest instead of the normal 90 seconds. I think I'm going to change these from bent-over rows to Pendelay rows in the next few weeks. My back needs to be challenged by heavier weights, so I'm just going to jack up the weight on my 5 x 10 tuesdays, then go nice and heavy on this day for a 5 x 5 of Pendelay rows. 

After rows was 3 sets of dumbbell benching with the 55's (got 15 on the first set), and then 5 x 10 lat pulldowns with 150 - I had to get out of the gym, so I was kind of rushing these, and even so they were easier than on tuesday. OVERALL it was a pretty kick ass day. 

TOMORROW I'm doing my mock meet. I think it will be a lot of fun, and I have the potential to kick some serious ass. HOWEVER, I need to go into tomorrow not expecting to shatter all my PR's. Instead, I just need to take tomorrow as a way to get a GENERAL idea of where my lifts are at, and get a feel for what a meet would feel like. But I'm going to try really hard to to have certain "numbers" in mind, and to just do my best with how I feel for the day - and not be disappointed, no matter what. SO I'm excited. LET'S GET READY TO MOVE SOME WEIGHT!