Stronger and stronger - strength week 5 pt. 1

Sleep:
12 - 8, lots of dreams I think, but otherwise, sound - didn't even hear the alarm go off.

Warmup:
Hip Openers, air squats, good morning squats - 15# then 45#

WOD:
Back squats
45# x 10

5-5-5
55-65-72(PR)

57# x 21 - 60# next week

Bench Press
45# x 10

5-5-5
55-60-70(PR! - finally!)

55# x 21 (F @ rep 20! >:-( ) - same weight next week. I'll get it.

Cash out:
Forward roll and hand stand practice.

Comments:
Tonight, overall, was quite a good night. I got PR's in both my 3x5's with MUCH better form than last week on the back squat. Daniel watched every rep, and said they were much improved. I made sure to do a little skill work with the light bar before going for my work sets. I focused on trying to keep my elbows tight and my back upright. I also need to concentrate on keeping my knees out, but i found that i could really only focus on two things at once, and those were the two i chose. As a result, I don't think my neck is going to feel as horrible and bruised as it did last week, despite the fact that I lifted a lot more weight. I think it's pretty cool that my second work set was a PR worthy set just two weeks ago.

The bench press went much better today, too. I managed to get 5x70 almost easily. And I only managed 4 last week. I tried to focus on going a little quicker so that my muscles didn't fatigue between reps, and that really seemed to work. IO tried REALLY hard to get that 21st rep on my superset, but it just was not there. My arms were complete jello. At rep 16 with 5 reps left, I thought I was going to make it, and then I just failed. I know for sure that I will get it next week.

We decided to cash out with more forward roll practice on the big cushy mat downstairs, and I nailed my first one, so I decided to work more on the whole kicking up thing. I made some good progress. One time I had Daniel catch me and was able to hold the handstand position for a good 15 seconds or so.

For some reason I kept collapsing to the left, especially when I tried to get brave and think about kicking all the way up and over - my left arm just wouldn't stay locked out - and then I realized that, when I got nervous, I shifted all my weight to my left to protect my right - so of course it was collapsing. Daniel teased me about trying to perfect my one handed handstands. :-p Riiight.

I was updating my list of benchmarks and PRs (over there in the sidebar to the left) and thinking about just how incredibly far I really have come in the last 11 months. I have goals over there that include: hit the wall ball x just once with the 10# wall ball, jump into and out of the plank position for burpees. Things most people can do the first time they come to class without thinking too much about it. Now, I'm still not great at wall ball, and I'm still pretty slow at burpees, but I can definitely hit the x, and with the 14# ball, and there's no question about whether I can jump into or out of the plank position for burpees, and yesterday, for fight gone bad, I was able to use the Rx weight for the push-presses and there were several girls there who did not. I am no longer DFL for every WOD (just most of them ;-) ) but that's OK - because I know I'm making progress, and it feels fantastic.

Food:
8:50 - 3 egg cheesy scramble with veggie sausage, coffee w/milk
12:20 - cottage cheese, etc.
1:00 - 2 oz spiced cashews
1:45 - vitamins (multi, glucosamine, Omega-3)
2:00 - coffee w/ milk
4:15 - chicken parm stuff
8:20 - gordos super carnitas burrito w/ guacamole & tapatillo, 16 oz milk
10:30 - 2 zma