Days 1 and 2

So far I have completed the first and second days of my new schedule and I really like it!

Day 1:

Today went pretty well! It was my first time working up to a heavy triple for squats in about 6 months, so I was nervous and excited going into it. I ended up doing 115# x 3 x 1 which is pretty good considering I basically took 3 months off serious exercise and only got back to it last week. I definitely feel like with the confidence I'm gaining I can get to squatting 120, 125 pretty easily for 3. My 1RM for squats was 140 in April or May, so I'm hoping with some more training and confidence building I can blow that number out of the water in not too long.

Bench felt pretty solid too - I'm looking forward to my heavy bench day cause I have never tried any kind of max before with bench. I did 70 x 5 x 3, and I know I have done 75 x 5 x 3 in the past, so hopefully I'll be good with 80 or even 85 soon.

Day 2:

Today felt AWESOME. I was feeling super sad and Sunday Blues-y and hitting the barbell was exactly what I needed. First I did standing over head press (military press) which is kind of a nemesis of mine. It's the weakest of any lift I do, and I tend to try and over do it every time. Today I stuck with the weight I did last week and it worked surprisingly well! Last week I could only strict press 2-3 of the reps of each set and I had to push press the last few. Today I manage to strict press each rep of each set, and I actually felt pretty strong until the last one. I could definitely feel it in my abs! I'm gonna try the same weight next week and hopefully 60 x 5 x 3 will finally be comfortably challenging, and I can finally move on to 65.

Today was also light deadlifts, which felt hard but solid. I worked up to 150 x 5 x 3 and definitely also worked up a sweat. Oddly enough, my back hurt pretty badly yesterday after all those squats, but today by the end of my deadlifts it didn't really hurt at all. I hope that means I'm making progress!

Finally I did some lat pull-downs (I still can't do pull ups and I haven't ordered any resistance bands to work on them) and farmer carries. I was surprised by how hard the farmer carries were! I did three sets of two laps of the lane of ellipticals carrying a 25# kettlebell in each hand, and it was seriously uncomfortable by the end! Hopefully a few weeks of this will make noticable differences in my deadlift grip strength, because I think that is one of the things really holding me back from a more aggressive deadlift.