Great Weight Lifting Week!

This was a pretty normal week after being in Mexico for a week (see my "workouts in Mexico" post and some family photos from Mexico post). This past week was a VERY GOOD training week, which I feel like often happens subconsciously after a "smaller" or "not normal" week of training. My strength work is really where I worked extra hard this past week!

My “normal” upper body workout is probably 5-6x every muscle group, done as chest/back for 5-6 sets, pull-ups/shoulders for 5-6 sets, and then biceps/triceps for 5-6 sets. (And I also do 8 minutes of my old physical therapy back/shoulder exercises in the middle of my workouts that I’ve been doing regularly since I had a slight shoulder impingement when I started swimming after some time off back in 2016.)

Tuesday I had a good upper body day at one of the college gyms where I used to teach (I haven’t taught there for a few years, but my card access still works!). I did a normal routine of 7x everything, which is extra killer when I’m at a gym vs just doing it at home. Then I ended that workout with 2 extra sets each for my shoulders and lats. That was 67 mins of hard work.

Thursday I did a bike workout really early (which is unusual), so then I had time to get to the gym AGAIN (twice to the gym in one week is rare!). This time, I did 8x everything, which was great! I started with a better-than-average workout of 7x everything, and then added a final circuit set for everything at the end. That was 70 mins of wonderful torture.

And then today (Saturday), I did my normal “Saturday circuits” at home: I do 30-35 push-ups, 20 dumbbell back rows (per side), 8 pull-ups, 30-36 bicep curls, 30-35 tricep dips, and 10-15 shoulder flies... then I repeat that 7-8 times. I did that 8x today.

That means with 7 sets Tues + 8 sets Thurs + 8 sets Sat = 23 sets for my upper body this week! That’s a PR! (And that's not including the extra 2 sets I did for shoulders and lats on Tuesday as well - they got 25 sets this week!) There was a 2-week stretch in 2021 when I did 20 sets one week and 22 the next that felt huge, but I’ve never done 23 sets in 1 week. (Which is funny because I don’t deviate from the norm too much: a week of 18 sets would seem pretty small [5+6+7 sets], but 22-23 is huge.)

Happy training!