Personal Best

Today I achieved a personal best doing squats. 205 lbs for two sets of six reps (my first set was a warm-up at only 135 lbs.). That's up from my 195 lb work-out last week on New Years Eve, which was a TERRIBLE idea because apparently lifting at your max on the same day as consuming large amounts of alcohol, sitting in a hot jacuzzi for an hour and playing Rock Band 2 until the wee hours of the morning do NOT mix well... I could barely walk for two days.

I followed up the squats with 80 lb walking lunges (basically, you lunge forward holding a 40 lb dumbbell in each hand, a bit like doing the Monty Python Silly Walk around the gym) for two sets of 16 reps, three sets of seated machine calf raises at 135 lbs, and three sets on the leg abductor machines at 180 lbs for inner and 150 lbs for outer. Then I did two sets of back extensions holding a 25 lb plate, because I realized I'd missed that one on my last back day. Actually I haven't been doing back extensions lately, so I'm still going light on the weight (can't be too careful). Before we left Madison, I was regularly doing them with a 45 lb weight, but while you can hobble around with destroyed legs, or have laughter turn into tears when you've blown your abs, I've found that doing the same to your lower back muscles by pushing them too hard is just not a good idea, so I went easy.

Anyway, it was a great workout, and even at my new max squat, my legs felt totally strong, like I could do more weight with no problem, so I'm probably going to do one more leg workout on Sunday and see if I can do 215 lbs before I get back on a low carb diet to "cut". I say before because the minute I go low carb, I've found my max workout weights drop significantly, around 20%. As my body adjusts, they slowly go back up, but never to where they are when I'm eating yummy carbs and sugars.

After my workout, I seriously thought about creating a fantasy blog called something along the lines of "You're a Fat-Assed Pussy!". It would be written from the perspective of a hard-core gym-rat/personal trainer named Hugh G., and contain actual useful information mixed in with extensive "motivational" verbal abuse. We'll see if I actually get to it or not :P