I’ve been distracted by other things the past couple days, so I decided to compress the log of three days into one. The pictures in this article are from the 4th day. Today I finished day 5 of a 30-day challenge to work out every day. Here are the exercises I did on the three days:
June 23
Stretches: about 2 minutes.
Squats: 100 lbs, 10 reps, 5 sets.
Leg press: 90 lbs, 10 reps, 3 sets.
Crunches (with plates): 30 lbs, 32 reps, 3 sets.
Side legs: 26 per leg.
June 24
Stretches: about 2 minutes.
Treadmill: I ran for 45 minutes, plus another 5 minutes of slower cooldown. I ran a total of 4.22 miles. I started at 3.5 miles per hour and slowly accelerated up to 6.5 miles per hour at the very end.
June 25
Stretches: about 5 minutes, lead by my girlfriend.
Bench press: 110 lbs, 10 reps; 8 reps; 105 lbs, 10 reps; 100 lbs, 8 reps.
Pec flies: 30 lbs, 10 reps.
Pullups: 1.
Dumbbell bench: 35 lbs per hand, 15 reps, 2 sets.
Crunches (with plates): 30 lbs, 34 reps, 2 sets; and an interrupted 3rd set.
Side legs: 27 per leg.
Observations
Stretching Together
I’m continuing to feel more energy, feeling better in general. I’m pleased with the familiar drowsiness which attends to weightlifting; I’m feeling that drowsiness pretty heavily right now. It’s a pleasant drowsiness, the type that says “everything is cool”, not the type that says “you pulled an all-nighter last night”.
When I did the 5 sets of squats on Tuesday, I knew I was going to pay for it. Whenever I do a large number of squats, a couple days later I start to feel really stiff, sore legs, and that continues for another couple days. Again, though, it’s a pleasant kind of sore, the type that you learn to love when you work out. Normally, I do less squats, usually 3 sets of 8 but with higher weight. The 5 sets of 10 was to compensate for using lighter weights to ease back into making squats a regular part of the week.
Today I enjoyed an unexpected benefit of workout out together with my girlfriend. She’s really flexible and really good at stretching routines, and was able to help me out with them. I felt a little silly having my gf guiding me through aerobic stretches in front of all the bike machines. It was fun, though.
Pullups
Today I faced my old sparring partner: the pullup bar. When I first started working out, a couple years or so ago, I couldn’t do any of these. How do you train pullups if you can’t do a single one? My powerlifter friend who taught me how, it’s all about using bands to make the exercise easier. At first, I hung two bands from the bar (think giant rubber bands) and put one foot in each. With the bands pulling you up, you can pull your weight up easily.
NEXT: Days 6-8