Mondays are usually the day I have to drag myself to the gym, but I totally looked forward to it today. I think I'm starting to get into a routine. Woot!

Squats - 70lbs 5x5, it's crazy that after watching so much form stuff, these feel easier than what I started with.

Bench - 65lbs 5x5.

Barbell Row - 60 lbs 5x5

20 minutes elliptical.

My crappy day started long before I got to work (i really shouldn't open business email before going in). I ended up taking a 3 mile walk during lunch just to try to decompress.

Unfortunately, I was still majorly stressed when I got home, and started my workout with my brain still tuned "to the job".

2X10@65# warmup squats. 10 min stretches.

SQ: 5X5@115#. Kept to 115 to work on my form. Watching the Rippetoe video and reading through the first couple of chapters of Starting Strength gave me a new awareness of my squat form. However, I still breathe opposite of what is recommended. Nearly lost the bar on the 3rd rep on my final set, but recovered in 20 secs to finish. Thankfully no animals were harmed during the exercise.

BP: 5X5@65#. Typically I slog through these, but I was actually energized after doing squats that I belted these out with less than 60s between sets.

PRow: 5X5@70#. I really didn't think I'd be able to do these pendlays, but like the benches, I drove through these with a lot of energy.

Held back on squats until I can find balance. Both Benches and Rows went up 5#s. I surprised myself with those. I'm also still doing my 1x5 assisted pull ups every morning.

Today was A day.

Squats warm-up plus 5x5 at 95. Legs felt a little bit stiff today.

Bench 90 5/3/2 3/4 /3/2 Why 2 3/4 you may ask? Hubs came to the gym with me today and spotted bench. I got stuck and asked for help. Then became un-stuck. No. Yes. No. Finally DH said make up your mind and lifted it up. Hilarious once I no longer had a bunch of weight on my chest.

Rows 5x5 80 lbs. Got stalled on this weight and had to deload, so hitting it felt awesome.

Wanted to foam roll afterwards but the stretching room had a spin class going on that I didn't want to disrupt. Also DH kept insisting that foam rolling is dumb. He just doesn't know yet.

Workout A today...
Squats - NIL, my calves are still killing me from Leg day with the hubby on Sunday!
Rows - 5x5@ 75lbs
BH - 5x5 @ 55lbs
Tricep pulldowns 3x12 @‌ 20lbs
Seated Row - 2x12 @ 60lbs, 1x8 @‌ 70lbs
10 pushups from my toes!! Hells ya!

And then off to work :-(

I shoveled snow for an hour for today's workout

Sumiblue wrote: »

I shoveled snow for an hour for today's workout

I heard you guys got buried!

Back in the gym this morning with Workout B:

Squats - 5x5 85lbs
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Overhead Press- 3/5/4/5/3 65lbs. These were real ugly. I had a feeling with how difficult 60lbs was last week that 65 would be the end of the road for the moment. I may try waiting 5 minutes between each set (including post warm up). As you can see, after 5 minutes, I managed to get 5 reps (barely), but any lower wait time, and I couldn't do it.

Deadlift - 1x5 135lbs

I feel good... After Saturday's debacle, I have a little lingering knot in my shoulder, but epsom salt baths, yoga, and rolling on a lacrosse ball have really been helping!

Went after my daughter went to bed, and the weight room was super busy! And almost all dudebros. Weight plates scattered everywhere, bars left loaded, etc. Sooo annoying. One cage had a loaded bar, plus various plates leaning up against it. Apparently in was not in use. Who knew? But - saw some guy leg press with 6 45lb plates on each side!! That was insane. Couldn't see who it was across the room, just saw the plates moving.

Anyways...

Squat 5x5 at 105 lbs.

Bench 5x5 at 65 lbs. This was my second time at this weight. Still hard, but I wasn't shaking like last time. If I go up in weight, I think I need to break out the fractional plates.

Row 5x5 at 70 lbs I did bent over rows as it was crowded and I didn't feel like stacking plates.

i worked out today, but it was at the Other rec centre, which often leaves me too scattered to properly remember what i did. my intention was to do workout b, and i kind of did. more or less.

squats: eugh. 2x5@45, not-sure x 5@65, i-can't-remember x5@70. i may not have done the full workout because my left shoulder was in really bad shape mobility-wise and could barely deal with the bar. i wasn't even really able to think about the rest of my form. possibly shouldn't have squatted at all, but a workout without squats is a problem in other ways too.

ohp: weirdly enough, not too bad. i did sets of 6 at 40lb since the barbells are fixed. every so often i feel like i'm 'getting' the finer form points from recent research and it's true that the reps when that happens are dramatically easier than the ones where it doesn't-quite.

deadlifts: i don't know, because i don't know the weights of these bars. but i put 45lb plates on the middle-sized one so it was at least 110 and could have been 120. not deadly hard but i was struggling all over the place on the form front today.

so not a good workout, basically. but it was a workout.

I've made a decision to keep my OHP at 45 lbs until I can bust out 5 sets of 10 reps. The hip bounce helped but my upper body strength is just not there yet...

This morning:
Squat 5x6 80 lbs
OHP 3x5 50
OHP 2x5 45
Deadlift 1x5 120

Standing Calf Raises 5 5 50
Convict Conditioning Step 2 Horizontal Pulls 5x8
I think I am ready to progress to Step 3 in the CC pull up progression!
Up in Squats and Deadlift!

@Dawn your lifts are so awesome!
@canadian any workout done [without harm] is a good workout!