one more rep

i wondered, as i pondered how to present this post, whether repetition makes things boring. because, of course, i'm about to lay out for youse, faithful readers, a frequent whine of mine that you've heard before, that is, if you've been here long enough, and will surely hear again, that is, if you stay here long enough. and, of course, the answer came to me in the usual place: the shower. or was it on the drive to work? i can't recall. but the answer is this:

it doesn't matter if i say the same old thing, as long as i say it differently, it's writing. that's writing with a capital W. wait, no, this is writing with a capital W: Writing.

today in my humble gym, i chose to skip ahead a workout in my 5-lb/week deadlift progression so that i could pull 300. it came up easily enough, for two sets of five. 5x300 is not my personal maximum, that would be 320-330 for 1 rep (and indeed, the 1RM calculator indicates that 5x300 is equivalent to 1x330).

now, 5x300 is nudging the ceiling of difficulty for me, and it's a nice little psychological checkpoint: only 100 more pounds to go for my goal! 100 lbs! that's nothing! i don't even feel the weight on a deadlift until i'm pulling 200lbs!

sadly, the last 100lbs are quite a lot more difficult than the first 100lbs. still, it's a nice round number to plug into the "only X more to go!" formula.

if i can manage to add 5lbs a week that's 20 weeks to go which gives me a whopping 3 months of wiggle room. that's a lot of wiggling.

and now, the whine you've heard before: i'm conflicted in my lifting. heavy deadlifting leads to unrestrained eating, which i have not hit quite yet, though i'm ramping it up for sure. unrestrained eating leads to yoda-like predictions of suffering, or, in other words, fatness. and fatness has its own problems, not least of which is putting a damper on my burgeoning new twin hobbies of climbing and drinking. you see, if i'm getting all fat, even if it's muscle-gain-associated and totally unrelated to increased beer intake, i'll feel bad about building a kegerator, and i'll feel sluggish on the rock, and neither of those things makes me happy. i don't tend to pack on huge amounts of muscle (well, not on the old upper bod, that is, which is where most folks look for "huge amounts of muscle") and even when i do reach my 400lb deadlift, i do not expect to "look like someone who can lift 400lbs".

to break it down like your favorite DJ: any minute now i'm going to freak out about my pants being too tight and i'll want to switch over to a running-and-fat-loss-based workout routine, and thus, my deadlift will surely suffer.

i must therefore, "stay the course" so that in november i can claim, "mission accomplished". or something.

anyhow, i'm off to the lunch buffet.