So as I continue on this journey, I surprised myself, it is almost the end of the year and I was able to squat the most weight I have ever done so in my existence on this earth. It was a great feeling and will be a great start to the new year. I am 5 pounds away from a 300-pound squat and 295 lbs under the bar felt really good.
So I think I will be able to accomplish my goal by year-end. Although I am not sure how practicing jumping is going to go as I feel just terrible jumping around at home just to see how my legs feel and they feel awful.
The End of Squatting Every Day
I had to quit squatting every day, it was taking a toll on my knees, and felt that warming up took way longer than the actual working sets and on top of that my knees were really sore during my waking hours moving around in life. Taking a day off between workouts has helped my knees tremendously, my knees feel good.
Now you can tell me that I told you so, but if I didn’t squat everyday initially I would have not achieved my personal best in record time. I am still going to incorporate it to a degree I’ll explain below.
What I was able to do in 5 weeks was incredible to me, starting with 135 lbs and placing 5 pounds every workout and squatting 3 sets of. I broke a personal best and yes I am much heavier but I did it in record time. In less than a week, I am 5 pounds away from squatting 300lbs and 55 pounds from my ultimate goal of 350.
I will be attempting the same thing this year now with the bench press. Hoping to reach the goal of 225lbs never have I done it before seems like the benchmark.
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Progress is really slow Now
So its obvious my progress is starting to come to a halt, instead of upping the weight every workout I do it every 3rd workout.
Day 1 – 3 x 3 = 295lbs
Day 2 – 3 x 3 = 295lbs
Day 3 – 3 x 3 = 300lbs etc.
I may try to go back and do squats every day when I drop the weight, in the new year, and use the progression of taking 4 steps back and 5 steps forward to change things up. I may do the first 2 days of this new approach back to back days but it might not matter in the long run. It looks like this…
Day 1 -285 lbs 3 sets of 3
Day 2 -290 lbs 3 sets of 3
Day 3 – 295 lbs 3 sets of 3
Day 4 -300 lbs 3 sets of 3
Day 5 – 305 lbs 3 sets of 3
Day 6 -290 lbs 3 sets of 3
Day 7 – 295 lbs 3 sets of 3, keep going until you reach 310 lbs then drop down to 295 lbs.
This has me in about 3 months hopefully smoothly reaching 350 lbs. The weight at around 280lbs feels light. So I will be trying to push them out of the hole as fast as possible.
The reason I ended up not squatting every day also was the fact the weights started to feel really heavy. I just did not want to take any chances of getting injured. But I honestly do feel I will be back doing it every day with lighter weight. So I could do the first 2 days back to back and then once I reach the last 3 steps split them between a day off.
Still lacking flexibility
I realize I hate stretching, it’s annoying and I know if I did it, my muscles would feel a lot better. Time is flying by and I would hate to look back and say I should have been stretching all this time. It doesn’t take long, but the more I think about it the less I want to do it.
I have read studies that deep squats do help with flexibility, but I mean if the surrounding muscles are also tight then what’s the point. This reminds me, I am going to have to get more hamstring exercises in as I don’t want to have imbalances which I am sure is the case right now.
Well I hope to report back later next week, I know there isn’t much going on except weightlifting, the jumps hopefully will follow up soon. But I doubt the my vertical increased with all the weight gain I have acquired due to inactivity during covid.