Strength Day

6/22/12 - Friday Night

Paused Squats
315x3
315x4
315x5
315x3
315x5 (20 total reps)

Overhead Press
135x4
135x5
135x6
135x4
135x5
135x6 (30 total reps)

Chins
BWx5
45x5

Notes
Girlfriend is in town.  She squatted and pressed with me.  It was a ton of fun.  She started with the bar on squats and is now up to 105 pounds.  With overhead she couldn't even do the bar once, so we started with DB overhead.  Now she is up to bar x 5-6 for multiple sets.  She loves barbell lifting.

I've introduced pure barbell lifting now to a number of people.  Everyone that starts barbell lifting correctly soon recognizes the superiority of this form of exercise.  Amanda, a former beauty pageant girl that did endless hours of cardio, now squats three times a week.  It is completely her choice to exercise like this.  I always said I just wanted to teach her the right way to do this so she would always have something to fall back on.  Precision, focus, drive, confidence, and a hard body.  Pure barbell lifting develops all of these qualities.

Jim Wendler recently wrote how it took him years to really learn what focus is in the gym. If you watch any true veteran of strength training, you will learn what focus really means.  It is not just getting psyched up for a lift.  Anyone can do that.  Focus is the few moments before the lifter approaches the bar, and of course, precision while performing the lift.  Focus has a different look that only comes from years under the bar.

I say all of this knowing the above workout means nothing in the grand spectrum of the strength training.  Its not about that anymore.  At least not right now.  There will be periods where life allows me to lift 4x a week and focus on getting stronger.  I'm performing three lifts twice a week right now.  Why?  No matter what I'm doing, I want to get better.  That is what makes strength training fun for me.

I've been able to do the above workout for years.  But, last night I lifted the bar with more proficiency than I ever have.  Regardless of the weight on the bar, I'm getting better.  That is the whole point.  You can't be on a constant track to hit PR's every 4th week of your life.  I wouldn't even want a life like that. Then, lifting would have to be the center of everything.  That's kind of fucking gay.

I believe, no matter what you are doing in life, you should strive to get better.  Getting better doesn't mean being the best.  Getting better doesn't have to mean adding 5 pounds on the bar every week.  That is the end  goal of course, but in the mean time you can still improve.  When you teach yourself to perform with precision, and when your focus improves over the years, regardless of bar weight, the times you can attack PR's will be much more fruitful.

So, what I'm saying is I'm not just going in and punching a card right now.  Just because I'm not implementing wave periodization or RPE does not mean I'm not trying hard.  The weights listed on this page says nothing about my mentality in the gym.  When I come out of this twice a week training phase, I will be a better lifter.