Tuesday, February 12, 2008

The Bench

Weigh-In: 211.3 lbs

I just thought I would share with you guys the numbers for the first 6 weeks of lifting. These are just for the bench press. I think the numbers show that I'm improving every week. They also show what I already knew, that my upper body strength kinda sucks. Dan(my lifting partner) has already met his goal of benching his body weight. I think he weights around 220-225.

All of these numbers were basically "maxing out".

Anyway, here they are:

6 comments:

billy said...

I don't understand what the 35x3 part of it means. So, if you lifted 135, how many reps and sets did you do?

Brian said...

each week was 4 sets (except the first one). The first number is the weight on one side of the bar. the next number is the rep. Then I listed the total weight. The total weight is the first number times 2 plus 45 (the weight of the bar).

The biggest number you see is the total weight and the smallest is the reps.

I guess it might look weird, but writing it out that way makes it easy for two people looking at it trying to figure out how much weight to put on each side on the bar.

Brian said...

so week six for me for example was 4 sets.

8 reps of 125
6 reps of 125
4 reps of 135
3 reps of 135.

billy said...

OK that way makes a lot more sense. Usually people don't annotate the weight on each side of the bar, so that was making it confusing...

Jay said...

yeah, I was wondering about that too. I was having a hard time believing that you could only bench press 45 lbs.

Rob Tucker said...

I wouldn't sweat having a 'low number' on the bench. That takes time, and you'll be surprised how it finally all comes together one day. I was like you when I started - right around those same numbers. I just stuck with it, and started to add 10 pounds here, and 10 pounds there.

I do 3x10 sets of 225 now. It took me about a year, but it'll happen. Just don't let yourself get your head wrapped up over the number of plates on the bench. It's not what's important - you're doing awesome.