8/9/11

You know, I had half-expected my latent hype to be empty placebo. Especially considering I was so overcooked that I basically went thud the moment I got home from work, let alone head to the gym.
I was pleasantly surprised. Looks like my old momentum is coming back to me as the warmer months fade for the year.
That being said, I owe a lot of my thanks to my Mother and one of my bosses, Mr. Hammonds/one of my workout buddies. Mind you, due to our differing schedules, we rarely actually see each other in the gym. But I regularly bounce off of him for inspiration outside of the gym. Without somebody, anybody, to do that with/to, I rapidly stagnate.
It's true that I'll rarely be the strongest...but from day 2 onward, perhaps even so far as before the final few hours of day 1, I'll never again be the weakest. I'm not even a year into it, and I'm up by almost 100 lbs with what I can do for one set of 30. Promising, no? <3

Bike(Cardio): 30 minutes. Started at level 10, added a difficulty level every 10 minutes. Ended at level 12 with an average of 89 RPM. There were two periods, one for 2 minutes, and one for 1.23 minutes, where I exploded into 133 and 112 RPM and maintained for the entirety of said period, respectively.
Who needs steroids when you've got a brain and an unending well of raw Willpower, ah?! >:D

Bench Press (115 lbs): 30 reps, no breaks. This was the one I was expecting to have to rack repeatedly, considering all aches were in the upper body from the dropsets the other day. I was pleasantly surprised...

Pec Fly(120 lbs): 30 reps, no breaks. I even went back an extra notch on how far I have to draw my arms back to do a rep.

Abdominal Fuse (120 lbs): 30 reps, no breaks. I was slow as hell on this one, but I got through just fine, all considered.

Leg Extension(120 lbs): 30 reps, no breaks. Powered right through.

Seated Leg Curl(120 lbs): 30 reps. My hamstrings kept trying to give out on me, but I sat there and saw it through.

Leg Press (120 lbs): 30 reps, no breaks. I never gained a solid head of momentum on this one, no matter. That'll be for next time. >)

Chest Press(120 lbs): 30 reps. I was surprised at how easy I found it to chain 10 reps together at a time without needing a couple deep breaths. Clearly...the creatine was the deciding push on this. It's been my only change, aside from the Protein powder.

Shoulder Press(120 lbs): 30 reps, no breaks. E-Z-P-Z.

Lateral Pull-Down (120 lbs): 30 reps, no breaks. "Soon", indeed...still was a mite too easy considering I just went up in weight. Those dropsets work fast wonders, apparently...

Lower Back Fuse(120 lbs): 30 reps, no breaks.

Seated Row(120 lbs): 30 reps, no breaks. Challenging, but not nearly as challenging as it's been to go up in weight on the first day.

Bicep Curl(30 lbs): 30 reps, no breaks.

Tricep Extension(35 lbs): 15 reps with the left arm emphasized, 15 with the right, no breaks. I corrected an error in form that I think I've been making. I've drawn the possibility that my issues with my tailbone may be due to how I bend my back while I'm doing this. So, today, I compensated with my back, only a little more forward than the backward bend I found natural before. As expected, the thin tearing feeling just above the tailbone was absent.

Weighted sit-ups: One 45 lb and a 5 lb plate on my upper chest, 30 reps, no breaks. I started gripping the 45 lber in the lame way that the State Troopers want you to hold the wheel while driving in the 2000's, and pushing it against the 5 lber to hold it stable on my sternum while I did these. On-the-spot improvisation, but I pride myself on my ability to think on my feet. It remains justified.
Also, I found this a bit too easy once I started playing ye olde mental iPod...so I'm going up next week.

Weighted back raises (Draping myself from the waist down across a bench, raising from the waist up until back is straight with a 45 lb and a 5 lb plate clasped on my chest) 30 reps, no breaks. This was too easy. I'm going up in weight next week.

Incline Elliptical(Cardio): 30 minutes, level 11 difficulty. Managed a consistent average of 122 RPM at 158-161 heartrate. All considered, I was expecting this one to be the one that gave me the most trouble at this stage of the workout. I was wroooong.... =]

Tonight's musics come from Super Castlevania IV, a game I grew up playing with my Grandmother. In particular, this track comes from a stage she normally resorted to cheats to get to so that I could have a go at it. When I was older, she had Cancer (and didn't know it yet), and was a lot better at gaming in general, having adopted her doggedly hyper-aggro play-style into almost all of my games, I was able to get to this stage without the cheats (Good thing, too. We'd lost the paper with the codes).
Everything about it was bittersweet for me. And, from that first time successfully getting to it, onward, I began hyper-scanning everything about the experience. Somewhere in my head, I'd associated the stage (Which itself was an upward climb through a complex clock tower/deathtrap) with overcoming adversity, against all odds, and spontaneously summoning the drive to outright crush all surprise factors from the equation, which translated from anything to coordination in said game, to sudden and overwhelming bursts of strength and speed in real life.

Anyway, enough of this melancholy. The musics in question!