Tired but Went to the Gym Anyway

After two nights of going out past my bedtime and enjoying drinks, getting up at 6 AM this morning to hit the gym was pretty hard. I almost decided to sleep in and do my legs workout along with chest tomorrow, but in the end I got my ass out of bed. I checked with the girl to see if she was coming with me or not, and initially she was going to skip today, but after a few minutes I think she felt guilty enough to get up and get ready.

I was tired, and I didn't expect much from my workout, but it actually went well. I started with squats, doing a couple of warm up sets, then jumped up to 185 for my first heavy set, then managed to do 205 for two more sets of eight reps. Yay! I was a bit worried I might not be able to do 205 lbs. this morning, or that my number of reps. would be low, so when I pulled off 205 with eight reps I felt really good. Hopefully I'll be better rested next week and pull of more reps at that weight. When I am able to do 10 to 12, I'm going to switch up to 225 lbs., and that will be awesome and huge because I'll be lifting with two 45 lbs. weights on each side of the barbell... which is just very manly :P

The girl wandered over from the cardio area as I was wrapping up squats to start on her lifting, so rather than doing leg presses on the sled machine thingy next, I moved on to lunges, which I could do in the free weight area and between her sets. She was tired, but managed to get through her lifts, and I was happy because I did my lunge routine with 90 lbs. (two 40 lb. dumbbells) for 8 reps on each leg. I'm definitely getting stronger down there in every way.

We wrapped up her workout on the assisted pull-up and dip machine where she complained that she wasn't able to do as many reps as last time, but I reminded her that we usually use that machine first, before the free weights, so the problem was not that she is getting weaker or not making progress, but rather that her muscles were already tired by that point. Next time I'll have her do the machine first and hopefully she'll be pleasantly surprised with her progress.

After she left, I went back to my workout and managed to pull of 495 lbs. on the leg press sled thingy for 10 reps, then went up in weight on all the other leg machines (leg extension, seated leg curl, lying leg curl, hip abductor and hip adductor), which was cool. Since I wasn't really using the machines before, I'm experiencing very rapid strength increases on them as my body gets used to them, which is quite satisfying. I wish I could get those kind of results on my pull-ups, bench and shoulder lifts!

So chest tomorrow, and I think I'm going to throw in an ab workout as well because the girl needs to do hers (along with legs). I'm also going to try and switch up my chest workout a bit to try and break through the plateau I seem to be at. My goal is to bench 225, and I haven't been making much progress towards that (not for a lack of trying though). I didn't use triceps during my last shoulder workout (I didn't do the Arnold barbell lifts), so perhaps giving them a rest this week will do the trick and I'll see some gains on bench. We'll see in about 24 hours!