Day 18, Lifting, technical stuff, and feeling tired

Today was a pretty simple and straightforward day. I had no run scheduled, my boxing workout was optional and all I really had to focus on was lifting weights. Today was scheduled to be a legs day so that was my focus. I missed my chest workout yesterday so I was hoping I would have enough energy to make it up today also since I was not committed to doing anything else physically.

I went to the gym. My legs felt a little tired from all the kicking and running over the last two days so I didn’t think I would have much strength for heavy lifts. My legs felt tight just walking around the gym and positively weak going up and down stairs not carrying anything so I figured today was going to be a very light lift day.

I was totally wrong. I didn’t go super heavy but I went a lot heavier than I have over the last two weeks whereas I thought I was so worn out that I would be having trouble with even light weight. I don’t really know where the energy (or motivation) came from, but I wound up doing my final squats at 130kgs for whatever reason and felt comfortable doing that without a spotter. I also went up a little more on straight-leg deadlift — my alternative because the hamstring machine is still broken.

I had wanted to get at least a little bit of a chest workout in today because I missed it yesterday, so I hopped on the bench after my hamstrings were done, but it was pointless. Even at 80kgs I felt unstable and weak, and I could only get 6 reps (instead of the normal 10) out of 90kgs and 100 was just a disaster. I was, at this point, incredibly tired feeling. It wasn’t as though my muscles were tired — my chest felt fine — but after a single press I felt shaky and had no energy. It was as if all the available energy in my blood was used up and it would take time to get anything back in there to use up.

This doesn’t really need a caption — but here’s one anyway

Squats:

12 reps @ 100kgs
10 reps @ 110kgs
8 reps @ 120kgs
6 reps @ 130kgs
12 reps @ 100kgs
10 reps @ 100kgs, 2 sets (close toes)
10 reps @ 100kgs, 2 sets (wide toes)

A better representation of this exercise than I posted before — sorry for butt-centric nature of this pic…

Straight-leg deadlift:

12 reps @ 30kgs
10 reps @ 40kgs
8 reps @ 50kgs
6 reps @ 60kgs
12 reps @ 40kgs

A decent angle to obscure my weird benchpress face

Benchpress:

12 reps @ 80kgs
6 reps @ 90kgs
3 reps @ 100kgs

I was hungry so I headed to McDonald’s for some Big Macs and a double cheeseburger.At this point I am really bored of eating burgers and fries, but when I’m hungry enough I’ll eat it all with gusto because, hey, its food. I don’t really like it anymore, but food is food to ravenous man.

Hunger alone can convince me to continue eating the same thing over and over and over and…

I wound up not boxing today, which was OK because it was optional. I just never could shake that weird fatigue after the gym so I decided to give it a rest. My shin splits were just waiting to be aggravated by hopping around the mat (not to mention using a jumprope) and I just didn’t feel up for getting clobbered because I was too tired to be there in the first place.

After working over a bunch of technical issues related to this project it was already getting way larer than I realized and it was time to go in for an evening meal. I wound up heading to McDonald’s around midnight. I ate, headed back home for a shower and turned in. I had a run planned for the morning, as well as lifting and boxing so I needed to get to sleep pretty quick. It is amazing how much time you can eat up dealing with technical details.