More PR's! (Strength week #3 Part 1)

Sleep:
11:45 - 7:30 - got very little sleep after 6am - 2 very restless irritating cats made sleeping difficult.

Warmup:Many many hip flexibility drills - a few air squats, some stretches, some lunges, some hip openers, some overhead squats, some dislocates for the shoulders. I was nice and warm when i started.

WOD:
Back Squat:
10 x 45# bar
5 x 50#
5 x 55
5 x 65# (PR)
21 x 50# - 55# next week

Some headstand work while we were waiting for a bench to open up.

Bench Press:
10 x 45
5 x 50
5 x 60
3 x 70 - failed on rep 4 - Still a PR!
5 X 65 (mistake! - I was intending to try for 70 again, but we'd moved the 2.5's to Daniel's bar, and forgot to replace them. We didn't realize our error until after the 5 reps. I was super excited while i thought I'd just whipped through 5 70# presses, and then I was a little ticked off.)
2x70 - failed on rep #3
21 x 52 - lost it at rep 13 and again at 18. same weight next week. - might be able to pull it off without extra sets beforehand.

Cash Out:
10 Step-ups R
10 Step-ups L
10 Step-ups R
*17 inch box

5 KB High-Pull L
5 KB High-Pull R
5 KB High-Pull L
5 KB High-Pull R
*1P KB

10 Min Stretching

Comments:
So remember last week how I said "Someday I will figure out this damn squat!"? Turns out things actually started to click into place this week! The midline stabilization videos we watched have performed magic on my squats! For whatever reason, I finally finally got the cue about keeping my core TIGHT through the squat.



The first set (from the side) is 55#, the second set (from the back) is 65#. My form issues are MUCH more apparent from the back than the front. I'm willing to bet that my knees were moving around nearly as much on the 55# as the 65# - it's just not apparent from the side. Also - my butt is uneven. I think that's probably because I'm still doing more work with my left leg than my right leg.

Still, these felt SO much better than last week.

Both benches were full when we went to use them, but one guy only had 2 sets left, so we decided to go use the empty yoga room to practice our head/hand stands. In retrospect, this was probably a mistake, because it really tired out my shoulders, and I think my bench really suffered for it. I still did not manage to successfully kick up on my own, but I was able to hold it once Daniel helped me get my feet up.

The past couple weeks, the bench is where I've had good progress, not so much so today. My warmup felt hard, and every set felt harder than it should have (except the set of 65# that I thought was 70# - that felt awesome). Still. I got three reps of 70# which is more than I have ever benched before, so that's still exciting. 5 Reps was pretty much out of the question.

I expect that I will be able to do 52 or even 55# x 21 next week without too much trouble, as long as I don't throw in extra sets beforehand.

I raised the step up box a notch from where it was yesterday, and they were harder again - I think they felt easy yesterday because the box was too low.

And I actually managed to get the KB highpulls pretty high on both the L & R side. No where near snatching height, yet, but definitely at least boob height for most reps.

Food:
8:00 - 3 egg cheesy scramble w/2 pieces turkey bacon, 10oz coffee 2/3 cup milk
11:00 - cottage cheese w/ almonds & cinnamon
2:30 - 1 svg chicken Marsala w/ Asparagus. Tasty! The crockpot is possibly the coolest invention ever.
7:00 - 16 oz milk
7:45 - Gordo's regular carnitas burrito 2/ cheese & guac. 16 oz milk