I was really late on this!  I didn’t workout Sunday or Monday, but on Tuesday!!!  I didn’t feel like my body was ready until Tuesday…

I’m feeling a little off today with an upset stomach, my left knee hurts still, so I’m dropping off the last two exercises that I normally would do.  Seems like a bad week, but I’m kind of desperate this week…

These last few months I decided not to aggressively try to lose weight and instead I focused on gaining strength.  While I wasn’t trying to maintain a steady weight, for that most part that is what has happened, but now I’m ready to slim down.

Since I want to slim down, I’m going to keep working out with weights, but at the same time focus more on weight loss than strength gains.  Since I had one strength goal left for the year (bench press 250 for 1 rep), I decided to alter my plans this week and go for it.  I wish I would have went for 255 instead because the 250 lbs weight meant that I had to break out the 2 1/2 lbs weights to make the amount 250 lbs…  That felt weird…

This week was my big gamble to try to tap out on my strength goals for this year, so I could downshift to my weight loss goal from now on.

• Bench (I think I need to slow down on this, but it hard to do so):
  • 45 lbs –   8 reps – just a warmup stretch.
  • 135 lbs – 8 reps (easy set, but my arms are a little sore)
  • 185 lbs – 6 reps (easy set, but felt it both in my arms and chest a little, but still felt strong)
  • 205 lbs – 6 reps (Trying something different this week, the 6 reps I did felt easy)
  • 225 lbs – 5 reps (Almost got a 6th rep too, but had my son help me get past the sticking point, so really on 5 on my own)
  • 250 lbs – 1 rep (heavy for me, but felt pretty good overall, let out a struggling growl during the rep, good set).
  • 165 lbs – 8 reps (warm down set, good set with good form, but I’m pretty shot from the last set.)
  • * I’m purposely dropping the reps on my set to 6 just so I can do more heavy sets, esp for my 225 set.

• Curls (Arms are sore today…)
  
  • 25 lbs – for 8 reps
  • 35 lbs – for 8 reps
  • 45 lbs – for 8 reps. (left arm hurts in at the elbow.)
• Rows (skipped this week, left knee hurt)
  
• “No weights” squats (skipped this week, left knee hurt)
  • Skipped the 2 set of “no weight” squats for 10 reps each this week.  Left knee hurt a bit this week.
• Goals
  • All strength goals have been met for the year.

I was very surprised how quickly my strength came back in this 11th week.  Not too bad for a bit over 3 months of working out.  I’ll probably add a “Weight Loss” Tracking Topic on my next report.

Bests,

Don