The First Setback

Everything was going so well. Until I turned up at the gym at 2.30 pm yesterday. To find it closed. So I did my shopping first, then tried to do the workout at home. I felt a bit weak and undernourished. I'd eaten with a view to training at 2.30, and here I was starting at 5.00.

The overhead pressing went fine. I managed three sets of five with 55 kilos - an improvement of 2.5 from last week. Plus, being at home, I had to clean the bar into the pressing position at the start of each set. So now I'm doing power cleans as well!

By the time I got to deadlifts I was feeling quite fatigued, but I warmed up to my first of five supposed sets of five with 100 kilos. After the second rep I almost fainted, so was wise enough to listen to my body and just walk away. There's a difference between pushing through barriers to achieve great things and flogging a dead horse, and sometimes you've just got to listen to your body.

I left the bar and weights out overnight, so I'd have no excuse for not doing deadlifts today. And so I did. Not a lot, but something is better than nothing. Today's workout was fives with 47, 67, 77, and 86; three threes with 100; five with 86 and eight with 67.

So no progress, no improvement, and not even an attempt at five fives with 100, but I did get in a session of sorts which engaged the deadlifting muscles and in the long term that'll do me the world of good. And if we never had bad sessions, how would we appreciate the good ones?

At home, the weight feels much heavier than it does in the gym. I'm not sure if that's down to environment, preparation (they say the journey to the gym gets you in the right frame of mind) or maybe using small hole weights takes the bar slightly closer to the floor, meaning it has to be lifted further and from lower down. I'll train in the gym when I can, and in the front room when I have to!

Again, when I was straining, it was the lower back that was doing the straining, not the legs. I look on that as a good sign. If the bad leg was playing up, this journey might be over before it begins. I'm not going to jeopardise my health and wellbeing on something that is supposedly being done to enhance it. But it's only my back, and that's because the back is weak through years of mollycoddling. And what's weak can be strengthened, and worked on in isolation away from the compound movements.

It's going to be hard. I know that more now than I did two days ago. But if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.