Last night's workout

I got into Starting Strength with the group last night. Jacqi came over again to do cardio, but actually my new dumbbells arrived and we spent the whole time putting the stand together. They're pretty awesome. They have a knob so you can set them to any weight between 10 and 45. They also have a handle that's just 4 pounds. I'm not sure why it goes from 4 to 10, and then units of 5, but hey, they're awesome and they came with the stand! A special shout out to my girlfriend for putting the stand together, and another shout out to her and our friend Serena for helping the fed ex guy get the weights into the gym while I was upstairs on a work call.

So the lifting itself actually went very well for me. I started again with 170 lbs on squats and felt much much better about my squats. As planned I'm going to repeat this again on Friday and move up 5 lbs on Monday, but overall I think my squats are getting better.

Bench was next and I added one more rep to 170. 3x5 and 2x4. Not all the way there yet, but officially better than Friday. Hopefully I can get to at least 4x5 on Monday.

Deadlift was next, and I did 200! Legitimately. I felt in control the whole time, and actually when I was done Vince asked if I'd been practicing. I hadn't, but he went on to say that they were the best deadlifts I've done this whole program. That was really cool. What's interesting is the last few weeks (like 8) I've only been able to go up on deadlifts when it's a bench press day. Maybe shoulder press somehow kills me for deadlifts? Not sure. I'm going to try to move up next week, but if the trend continues I'll be repeating 200 and moving up the following week.\

We decided to order food in, which arrived right around deadlifts, so I bailed on abs. I'm comfortable with that.

So a few updates. First off, it looks like the girlfriend and I will be starting P90X Lean on January 2. That's one of the main reasons I'm excited for the dumbbells. That, and I like working with dumbbells in general.

Second, some changes are coming to Starting Strength. The roommate is starting to go to his mma gym 5 nights a week after the first of the year which loses us a spotter. Plus 3 days a week has been a lot over these last 22 weeks. Yup, it's been 22 weeks already! So I'm trying to find a 2 day split program that we can do on Mondays and Thursdays. This would give me a lot more time to get P90X, homework, actual work and video games done, and would let me spend more time with my girlfriend. She's been awesome with letting all the people come over 3 days a week for 2 or 3 hours and I need to make that up to her (yes, I know you're reading this). I'm looking into Stronglifts 5x5, which is basically the program we're doing now. It says you can do it 2 days a week if you're working out on top of it, which I will be.

So that's the plan at the moment. More thought will go into this before 2012, so I'll keep you posted. Tonight I may do cardio, or I may get lazy and play video games. We shall see!

K, time to go to work. Bring it!