The Road To 315 - PR's

We've talked about landmarks and about goals but personal records are the best feeling you can have when your striving for your goals, and today I hit two of them!! I had a great workout this morning and felt very accomplished after setting not one.. But two PR's for myself!! Today was leg day and bench press so we started by hitting squats for 4 sets working down in reps and up in weight. First warmup set was 135 lbs for 10 reps. Next we hit 185 lbs for 10, 225 lbs for 8, 275 lbs for 6 and 315 lbs for 3. I have never hit 315 for more than 1 rep so it felt pretty good to rep out 3 with 315 lbs on my back!! Especially at a body weight of 275 lbs. 

After squats we hit 4 sets of leg curls and 4 sets of leg extensions. Just focusing on the contraction and pumping blood into the muscle. After finishing those sets we did a variation of dumbbell calf raises with toes on a plate to add a little bit of a deficit. 70 lb dumbbells for 4 sets of 10 reps. I really like this variation because it's not just about pushing as much weight as possible like seated calf raises or normal calf machines. It forces you to focus on balancing with the weight and activates the stabilizer muscles. 

At this point of the workout my body felt shot, The squats definitely exerted a lot of energy because I was READY to be done my workout and Eric reminded me we still had to bench press. This is where my next PR was set. Today was 6 sets of 2 reps again at 225 lbs which wasn't bad even though I was tired. On our sixth set both me and Eric went till failure. Eric went first and said he wanted to hit 10 reps which he cranked out. I went after him and of course my competitiveness kicked in and I was gonna hit 10 reps also. I finished my tenth rep and decided I needed one more. It took a little support to get the 11th rep up but it was still a PR!! I've never hit 225 lbs for more than 9 reps and this was AFTER an hour long leg workout and 5 sets of bench so to say the least it felt great!!

After a long road to recovery from my back surgery it feels great to get back in the gym and actually FEEL like i'm making progress. There is much more to come and I can't wait to see where I'm at in a year if I keep up with the track i'm on now and keep injury at bay!! The best is yet to come!

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