Hello – How are you FitFam?
Remember when I told you I was going to do some PR’s and figure out my 1RM’s and what not? or did I not tell you and kept it to myself? LOL. Either way, I did it today. I made today the day, and decided I would share some good news, hopefully all of you will proud of me, because I am proud of me in the gym so far. I did my 1RM for: bench press, back squat and deadlift. I haven’t done my 1RM testing since like college and so it had been awhile and I needed to figure out where I was in order to continue to grow strength and excel at my goals. I will go through each one, and then I will tell you the rest of my leg day workout I did today.
1RM results:
- Back squat: 175 lb (185 lb fail – almost had the bar land on me, but was careful) lol Now while I was in college, I was doing 200 lb + and doing really well with it. Since not being able to use a barbell for a while and then after graduating not keeping up with strength gains when I had them, I lost a lot of strength and for awhile I was only able to squat less than 100 lb (YES IT WAS THIS BAD & yes I was very pissed off at myself) but since working on it and doing what I had to do, I was able to go up to 145 lb for about 6 reps. Now I am able to do a solid 1-2 reps with 175 lb. I increased my squat by 30 lb.
- Bench press: 95 lb. (105- fail) Again this decreased by like 4 lb since college, but I am happy I am only 5 lb away from 100 – this is very good. I was stuck at 60-70 lb for a long time. My bench press increased by 25 lb
- Deadlift: 225 lb. ( 230 lb -fail) This was VERY VERY difficult for me, since I had not always worked on my deadlift and didn’t start really doing them until about 4 months after graduating college. When I had first started deadliftng, I was only doing about 80.. or something like that and then after a while I would add more weight and was doing 105 10 reps easy, then increased it and was doing 160 as my highest. Now my deadlifts have increased by 65 lb. This was amazing to me.
To say the least I am proud of myself for how far I have come in my strength and my progress. I realize being able to do even 1 rep for my max means a lot to me because now I will start again training with these new numbers in mind and have them written down to keep track of progress and plateaus. All of these results reign from having to use a smith machine -_- because my gym doesn’t offer barbell free weights that are in a rack – so in all honesty, it would mean it would be about 15 or so pounds less for each of them with a free weight barbell (realistically) but even so, I would have still PR’d in all of them except for the squat since 200 lb was with a free weight barbell. For right now, we will have to just keep in mind that until I purchase one of my own or find a gym that offers one in my town (until I move) I will have to resort to the smith machine. Don’t give me too much shit for it. LOL
The rest of my workout……
Superset:
- Goodmorning: 3 x 10, 40 lb
- Jump split lunge: 3 x 10, 10 lb( dumbbells)
Superset:
- single-leg deadlift: 3 x 12, 15 lb
- pistol squats: 3 x 12
Superset:
- vertical crunches: 3 x 10
- roman sit ups: 3 x 10
push up challenge: 40 reps
All in all, I am happy with my progress, wish I could be using more free weights but still able to get gains using the smith machine for now. Honestly, I don’t hate the smith but because I am not used to it, it can be hard to do some workouts on it, verse what I would normally do with a free weight barbell, but I use my resources 🙂 hopefully all of you enjoyed my good news and will continue to show your support and cheer me on.
New Goals:
- Bench press: 100 lb
- Squat: 200 lb
- deadlift: 245-250 lb
I want to hit these within the next 3-6 months at the very least, so we shall see what happens.
For more exercises, click here
Your Fitness Blogger,
Shay-lon xxoooo
Be the best version of you 