Chest and Tricep Day with the Girl

This morning I woke up at 6:00 AM even though I could have slept in :( So, I hydrated and read more of Anathem by Neil Stephenson (very good book, but initially hard to get into) until the girl woke up, then we put on our gym clothes and headed down to do our work-out.

She started with 30 minutes on the elliptical machine, while I went over and kicked off with bench press, an exercise I haven't done first in my routine for awhile (been doing incline bench or dumbells for awhile trying to build up other muscles to hopefully get me through my plateau). I warmed up with 135 and 155, then went to 185 lbs. My first set was strong and I did 8 reps no problem. This got me excited until I did my next set at 185 and barely pulled off 6 reps :(. I did a third set and again barely did 6 (or was it 5?). Anyway, I was a bit bummed, so I threw myself into the rest of my workout.

I did incline barbells 55 lbs. next and did two sets fine. Then I did flat barbell presses at 65 lbs. for two sets, followed by one set of incline bench at 155, which I barely did 3 of. Oh, in between these I was jump roping to keep my heart rate up. I'm not tracking my jump roping yet in Gym Buddy... I need to figure out a good way to do this... I'll probably add them to each exercise and then time them. That's a good idea!

Anyway, the girl came over about this time and I started helping her through her leg workout. First she did seated calf raises at 40 lbs. which is 5 lbs. more than last. Then she tried to do the squat sled machine, but it hurt her knee too much (ballet injury) so we switched over to lunges. She did 5 lbs. in each hand for 5 reps on each leg, and I made her do three sets instead of just two since she skipped a squat set. Gotta get her in shape for snowboarding next week! Then it was on to some abs.

I pulled out the straps and after I did some hanging side leg lifts to hit my obliques first, she did her first set of hanging leg lifts. It was hard, but I remember my first time doing them, and that shit was hard! I jumped in to do 15 straight hanging leg lifts, and then she tried and barely did a second set (tummy muscles were already blown). That's fine for a first try. I'm going to do abs twice a week from now on, but since this is my first time to do them for a second time in a week, I went easy.

Next we went over to the hip abductor and adductor machines, which she did with no problem. I did some jump roping while she worked out, then started doing my cable cross overs once that machine finally cleared (it's a bit busy on Saturday mornings, so hard to get these machines). At that point, I said goodbye to her, she went home and I wrapped up my workout with flies (went up 10 lbs. to 200 lbs. - this is on a machine btw), dips (70 lbs. assisted... no increase there), skull crushers, v-bar pull downs and finally a few standing dumbbell extensions. Oh, and plenty of jump roping in between.

So all in all, not a terrible workout, but I really want to break through this chest plateau. It feels like I was a little stronger, maybe, but it's so slow. Next week I may try doing lighter weights for more reps, just to switch things off.

Forgot to weigh myself on the way out of the gym. Oh, and I need to start tracking the girl's workout better.