Bigger, Faster, Stronger

Nothing is so strong as gentleness. Nothing is so gentle as real strength ...

Tuesday was a very good workout day. Due to some other commitments by Phil and myself, we had taken a few days off from lifting. I was also aware that this weekend I would be heading to Atlanta, so I knew it would be several days before lifting again. That made the decision to go all out on Tuesday that much easier. When I got to Phil's after work, Jon was there to workout also. It sounded like he was interested in joining us on a regular basis as his schedule permits. We started out with bench press and I increased my starting weight another 10 lbs. to 135. I start the first set with 15 reps and then lift to exhaustion for the remaining 4 sets increasing the weight by 10 lbs. each set. I always go for at least 2 reps during the final set and on Tuesday pushed myself to get 175 up 3 times. I would hope to increase the weight again within the next 2 weeks or so. We than moved to the incline bench press using 40 lb dumbells. I am still trying to get to 3 sets of 15 on this particular exercise. Tuesday I made it to 3 sets of 12 which is pretty good progress. I switched to the curl bar for the remainder of my workout starting with curls at 61 lbs. I'm working towards 3 sets of 15 on this also. Tuesday I got 15, 12 and 10 reps as the sets went on. I closed the workout by supersetting bent over rows and military press. Basically, you do a set of one exercise followed immediately by the other with little or no break. Then you take a short rest and do it again until you make your way through 3 sets. I use 81 lbs. for each exercise which makes it convenient for supersetting. I was able to do 15, 12 and 12 reps on the rows and 15, 15, 12 on the military press. All in all it was a good day and I'm very pleased with my progress so far.