135 over my head!

We got into Starting Strength last night and it went awesome!

First off, the group decided to go play basketball to warm up again. I'm not big on basketball, and with my there was an odd number, so I opted to stay in the gym and hit the bag. I got through four rounds of the boxing workout, and then took the gloves off and did 1 1/2 more rounds of shadow boxing. It went very well. I also figured out that I'm turning my body too much on my jab, which has been causing me neck problems. Now that that's solved, hopefully my neck will be feeling better too (though I'm afraid I'll lose some power in my jab).

I like warming up with the bag, and I think this will be a standard warmup for a few weeks.

After that we got into squats. I'm staying at 225 all week to work on form. The guys said I did a lot better, and even though there's plenty of more room to go deeper, I'm getting closer each time. After this week I'll move up, but I can't wait to see where I'm at on form by Friday.

Then we got into overhead press. I've been at 135 for about three weeks now, each time doing one more rep than the time before. This time I actually added 2 reps, one onto each of the last sets, finally making it to three sets of five. And actually, two of the other guys who have been at 135 for a week longer than me also completed it, finally! It was an amazing feeling holding that much weight over my head (see title) and I felt great when it was done. We're all going to repeat this one more time on Friday to really own the weight, and moving up to 140 next week!

Shoulder press is awesome! The shrug at the very top is where I feel a whole lot of power, and my shoulders felt great (destroyed) by the end. Very cool.

We finished with chinups. I did 2x10 and 1x8 last week, and my goal was to complete 3x10 this time. The last one or two were iffy, but I successfully did 3x10 and my goal is 3x11 next week!

The usual ab work came at the end, and then we were done. Overall it was a great day for Starting Strength, and week 8 is starting off very strong.

Tonight the girlfriend and I are doing Kenpo X, as part of her 4 week challenge. It should be fun. After that it's a video game kind of night, and I'm excited for that.

Also a quick note, the roommate and I were talking, and I think we're going to start doing that 5K training program I mentioned a few weeks ago. It's only 30 minutes a day, 3 days a week, so we'd go running around 6am on the 3 Starting Strength days. The plan is to start in two weeks, but it's still iffy. Also I want to start doing pushups in the morning, so after this run will be a great time to do that. My goal is 100 pushups, but I think I'll start with 50 and work my way up. This is all just kind of planning for the future, but I wanted it documented.

The juicing is still going well, and lots of fruits and nuts during the day. I feel good. Also I'm thinking after this week of taking 4 weeks off from supplements. I need to find a better protein powder, like hemp protein or something, that I can use for those 4 weeks after workouts. I'll let you know what I decide.

Lots of random notes in this blog post, so I'm going to wrap it up.

Bring it!