So We Begin

Well, I need to start somewhere so I figure that I will begin by sharing a bit about my Power Lifting. We've been doing Starting Strength for about 4 months now and we have made some fantastic improvements in that time frame. I have to thank Mr. Rippetoe for making his book available so that those of us who are not able to train with him can still benefit from his knowledge.

A huge source of inspiration, and who actually directed me to begin Starting Strength, was Gillian Mounsey though. Her article, A New Perspective, helped me to realize something that I knew but had not taken to heart. That I don't have to fit into this ideal of what a woman should be, and that I should flaunt the natural strength that I know I have.

Now, when I say we I mean my husband and I. We have had a lot of fun while going through our sets, even though they are getting rather difficult and we have had to reset a couple of times. Unfortunately, we are going to have to reset our squats because they are getting a touch high. We should be back up to where we are now fairly quickly though.

Unfortunately, for me, I'm very competitive and I despise missing or resetting. This is good and bad in a way. Eventually I plan to compete, so it's good because it will help to give me the drive to do so. It is bad because I have not yet learned how to focus my annoyance into my lifting most of the time. Once I can manage that, however, I'm certain that I'll have little trouble with most of my lifts.

Now, for my numbers. Some of them are somewhat laughable because I have rather week arms compared to my obscenely strong legs. This is something that's being worked on simply by doing my sets, but it will take some time before my upper body is where I want it.

Squats 225x5x3
Bench 110x5x3
Overhead Press 72.5x5x3
Dead lift 250x5x1
Power cleans 65x3x5

Now, the squats were up to 260, but since we weren't hitting parallel we opted to go back to 225 because we both know that we can hit parallel at that weight. My bench and overhead press would have been a bit further along then they are, but I hurt my arm doing power cleans and it was a little over a week before I was able to do them again. So unfortunately I lost some of my gains in all three. My power cleans were suppose to be 90 but I had so much trouble with the motion that I decided to reset it...again. That one frustrates me more then anything because I was so close to being able to start at a higher position.

That's pretty much it for now. I'll make another post with my next set of numbers after I go to the gym on Monday. Thank you for reading. Hope I wasn't too boring!