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I just had my every-six-week retest at the gym.
People say that the bench-press is one of the exercises where you can show the most improvement, which makes it a lot of fun. But this is getting ridiculous.
Six months ago, when I started, I had difficulty with just pressing the bar, without any weights on it. (The bar itself weighs 45 pounds (20.4 kg). You can start with smaller bars, too, and work up to the 45 pounds. I was able to start with the full-sized bar, but just barely.)
Today, for the retest, I was to press 135 pounds (61.2 kg) for as many times as I could. I can do 135 fairly easily, but only for a certain number of times. We wanted to find out how many.
The highest weight I'd previously done was 175 pounds (79.4 kg) for 5 reps. Brian had jokingly put that into a "One Rep Max" calculator -- an online program which takes a weight and a number of reps, and figures out what, theoretically, you can probably lift once. It came out to 197 pounds. So Brian had joked that, for the retest, we could either do the 135 for as many reps as possible, or just see if I could bench 200 pounds (90.7 kg) once.
Anyway, we did the not-insane one. And I lifted 135 pounds EIGHTEEN TIMES. 18 reps @ 135 lbs.
And then I asked if we could try the 200-pound thing, anyway.
So we did.
I got it with relative ease. Brian stopped me as I was trying a second rep -- but I coulda done it. And probably without injury. And I did that AFTER doing the 135 lb thing.
People say that the bench-press is one of the exercises where you can show the most improvement, which makes it a lot of fun. But this is getting ridiculous.
Six months ago, when I started, I had difficulty with just pressing the bar, without any weights on it. (The bar itself weighs 45 pounds (20.4 kg). You can start with smaller bars, too, and work up to the 45 pounds. I was able to start with the full-sized bar, but just barely.)
Today, for the retest, I was to press 135 pounds (61.2 kg) for as many times as I could. I can do 135 fairly easily, but only for a certain number of times. We wanted to find out how many.
The highest weight I'd previously done was 175 pounds (79.4 kg) for 5 reps. Brian had jokingly put that into a "One Rep Max" calculator -- an online program which takes a weight and a number of reps, and figures out what, theoretically, you can probably lift once. It came out to 197 pounds. So Brian had joked that, for the retest, we could either do the 135 for as many reps as possible, or just see if I could bench 200 pounds (90.7 kg) once.
Anyway, we did the not-insane one. And I lifted 135 pounds EIGHTEEN TIMES. 18 reps @ 135 lbs.
And then I asked if we could try the 200-pound thing, anyway.
So we did.
I got it with relative ease. Brian stopped me as I was trying a second rep -- but I coulda done it. And probably without injury. And I did that AFTER doing the 135 lb thing.