Due to Coronavirus lockdowns, I was unable to go to the gym between the months of February and August. Now that I’m able to go again, I’ve found that I’ve lost a good deal of my previous strength. I’m keeping a training log to detail my training exploits, and to show how easy/hard it is to recondition oneself after getting out of shape.
In Week 1, I went to the gym twice. Here are my new training maxes.
My new baseline after week 1:
- Bench Press: 110lbs
- Squats: 95lbs
- Deadlifts: 100lbs
- Overhead Press: 105lbs
My Week 1 stats were:
- Bench Press: 45lbs
- Squats: 45lbs
- Deadlifts: 45lbs
- Overhead Press: 45lbs
This is a pretty considerable improvement. I’m not gonna lie: these weights are super, super light. I’m doing sets in the range of 15-20 quite frequently, when normally 5-10 is more normal. I expect going into next week I’m going to see a similar significant improvement across the board.
My eventual goal is to exceed my former max-strength. Here are my stats from back in 2018:
- Bench Press: 215lbs
- Squats: 275lbs
- Deadlifts: 320lbs
- Overhead Press: 120lbs
I’ve got a while to go to reach that goal, let alone exceed it.
I also have a plan to do cardio more. For the last few days I’ve been either jumping rope or riding my bike on my off days. I’m not doing much- just 30min of low-speed biking, or 10min of jumping rope. In this coming week I’m planning on adding some abdominal work to my daily fitness routine.
My present weight is 186lbs, maintaining a bodyfat percentage of ~16%. This is a significant increase in weight from last week’s 181lbs, but it’s expected as I’ve started re-using creatine as a supplement, and creatine has as a side-effect an increase in water weight.
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