December 23rd - Nice Bench, doubles

 23.12.2025

I wanna say it's the 22nd but it's not. My whole workout is past midnight - or very, very early in the morning, you could say 😁 That's the logic anyway, that's the only not-quite-traumatic way to change your sleep schedule back to normal. Just have very long days.

It's late. I'm about to run out of coffee - only about 50 grams left in the bag I surmise. But of course there's almost instant coffee with a gimmick - 90% instant and 10% ground, which, I believe, is a scam and that ground coffee is not fresh. It tastes okay, more or less! I had one conventional 35/420 and now one big cup of instant coffee, the old metal cup, nostalgic for 2024 - boiled the water right in it on the stove.

Now I am writing. It's a little too late so I can't have the music playing loud - that'd help me focus on writing rather than switching to videos all the time. Time to prove I don't need it.

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Managing to write - took off the headphones, heh, let the jizzy jazz play real quiet. But also wroking out already!

Warmups - some wall pushups, pulling on clothes

Workout

Bench

20 - 50 - 100 - 120

153 for 2 a little awkward

163 for 2 much better

168 for 2 - nice, mini PR 😁 +1 rep

168 for 2 - pretty nice, but the break was too short; I actually felt like could have lifted better if I waited.

168 for 2

168 for 2 - nice, solid

118 for 12

118 for 13 - on 118 I came up with the idea to vary my degree of "control" over the bar, pump out some reps for muscle too; on every other rep I brought the bar to a "near lockout" and even sort of held it there (on the second set), and I made sure to do a full 180 lockout on the rest - that's how I had to do 13 on the second set 😁 So, today I had a nice mini-PR with 168 for 4 sets of 2 - never done it for 2 OR for 4 sets. Feels good! That's a peak of this fairly light microcycle, I have to say.

Overhead press, super long range, focusing on the "torso lockout" at the top - 20 for 10 and 10

I wanna do more stuff. Anything, just the tiniest bit. Tomorrow I'm gonna do OHP, cleans and press and Squat - try it. Today I'll do something.

Neck - forehead wall rolls

3 sets of 20 - chose this exercise cause it loads my calves a little as well 😁

Reminder to self: do neck extensions tomorrow. Don't wanna do them right now for some reason.

General neck moves/stretches - couple sets

Squats, BW

10 - 20 - 30 - 40

It seems my ankles are more or less even. But I got a patch of thin skin on my right foot where I used to have a big wart back in the day. I think my weightlifting shoes aggravated this part of my leg, as well as the fact that I now wear them more often and it kinda cuts off bloodflow for a couple hours. They're healing, slowly but surely. Thank you for your prayers! Please keep em coming 😃

Tomorrow I'll focus less on cleans - I think I'll only do them up to 90, then it's back onto the rack so I can do a real nice musclebound springy press. BUT I'm also thinking of doing heavier high pulls after all this. And I wanna do squats, that'll need to be remembered.

Also, I've been thinking. All I ever lift nowadays, I do it with bracing, complete utter bracing, holding my breath all the way. Why don't I do breathe in-and-out on reps anymore? You do need bracing, yes, but it doesn't always contradict breathing. Just something I'm thinking about. I've done my 30 reps and 40 reps on BW squat focusing on breathing while lifting. It's pretty reasonable. I won't stop bracing when I really need to. I just feel like it's an underrated skill, to breathe while lifting rather than always holding it in. Interesting - a beneficial habit created sort of a problem.

RPotD - pretty epic animal! Genet kat (Genetta) in Witsand nature reserve - Zuid Afrika