This time last year, I couldn't bend my left leg at the knee joint past 90 degrees. (For those of you who are new to this blog, I sustained an injury during a charity tug of war event in late August 2007 of which is documented ad nausiem in earlier posts if you care to get yourself up to speed.) After months of rehabilitation and slowly working back into intense leg workouts, I decided to go ahead and push it a little bit further . . .
On Tuesdays I train my legs. Depending on the workout that I have planned, I typically begin with free weight squats. When I do squats, I perform three good warm up sets to get the mind and the body in sync. When I am ready, I put on 135 to begin my working sets. With each successive set I ratchet up the resistance in increments of 20 until I hit 175. For quite some time now, I've been squatting 175 without incident. Since I've been cranking through 12 solid repetitions at this weight for quite awhile I just knew that it was time to up the ante . . . raise the bar if you will.
For whatever reason, squatting 185 just stressed me right out. (185 is a 45 and a 25lb plate on each side.) It stressed me right out because at this weight you can see the bar flex and bend which makes me think about the load that I am putting on my spine not to mention my quads, hams, glutes, back, shoulders and to some degree my knees. (Although if you squat properly, the knees really don't get overly taxed. The movement begins at the hip and the knees merely follow secondarily to put maximum load on the quads.) I've been squatting now for years with excellent form. In fact, it took me a LONG TIME to perfect the squat and to this very day I REFUSE to increase the resistance until I can get 12 perfect reps. I have a great respect for the weights and realize the damage that you can do if you workout with improper and/or sloppy form. I never sacrifice form for weight and simply will not allow others to goad me into adding weight before I am mentally prepared to do so. I go at my own pace . . . PERIOD. And this approach has served me well for the past eighteen years so I don't see any need to change it.
Logically I knew that I could get 185. Certainly, if I could blast through 12 excellent reps at 175 without thinking about it, then I could get 185 for at least 8. That's the thought process but the mind is a powerful thing. When you are pushing to your maximum there isn't any room for doubt. You cannot afford even a split-second lapse in mental focus; once you commit to the set you have to stay in it, push through it and never give up. If the mind goes, the body follows and injury could very well be the result. I was determined to get 185 and just wasn't going to back away from it. Since I typically workout alone, I didn't have a spot so I made sure that I adjusted the bars on the squat rack just in case I had to set it down. Because my mind couldn't accept an additional 10 pounds all at once, I went ahead and put 2.5 pounds on either side raising the overall resistance to 180. After confidently powering through 10 solid reps, I went ahead and added another 2.5 pounds to each side bringing the resistance up to 185. I got 8 solid reps! I gotta say, at the moment I am pretty pleased! (Even though I know that it will only last so long before I feel the need to push it again and go to 190.)
Just in case you guys are wondering, I went on to perform three sets of heavy hack squats (I hate these) supersetted with a variety of quad extensions to really shape and develop the quads. After that, it was three sets of leg presses (single leg) supersetted with the seated leg curl. I wound up this little routine with a few sets for the calves and made sure that I pushed every singe set to the absolute limit!
And today . . . exactly two days later . . . my ass (along with my hamstrings, quads and calves) are postively KILLING ME! I LOVE IT!
