Vacation Training
Last week, my wife and I were in Clearwater, Florida celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary. The vacation was fantastic. A lot of fun and funny stories. As it relates to training, my body was feeling pretty beat up (and I was due for a deload). But I wanted to train at one of the powerlifting gyms down in Clearwater and I wasn't going to just do deload work, so I programmed 3-4 sets of doubles at 90% of my training 1RM and I'd keep the assistance work down to a minimum. I thought that if someone wanted to show me something, I'd do that ... and that's about it.
I ended up training at Gorilla Bench Training twice which was an old-time powerlifting gym in a long storage/garage that had no A/C, but a crap ton of strong people, including someone I follow pretty regularly ... Jenn Rotsinger (one of the strongest pound-for-pound raw woman lifters in the country). The owner, Rich Ficca, is a pretty strong guy as well, and his crew (and Jenn) were very welcoming to both my wife and I.
Sunday - Deadlift: 385x2 x4 sets ... these weren't my best pulls, but under the circumstances, they were rewarding ones.
Tuesday - Bench: 180x2 x4 sets ... got some new cues for me to try and incorporate into my bench.
Because Thursday was my last full day of vacation, we decided to get in the squat training earlier in the day so that we could have fun afterwards. The Gorilla crew trained later in the evenings, so I did my squats at a commercial gym in Clearwater. Owned by a former WWF wrestler. The gym was alright, but the squat rack had a moderate slope, and the guard rails were high (which made going below parallel a challenge). But surprisingly, the squats felt pretty good.
Thursday - Squat: 300x2 x3 sets; 315x1 (belt-only).
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Deadlifts: The gym was hot, humid, and I was not feeling it. Three hour flight delay the day previous, ugh. And then training at 9am. But, being around a bunch of people training like me, gave me the spirit to move the weight. Heh!
Bench: Again, hot, humid gym ... nutrition/hydration was a little off going into this workout as well.
Squat: A/C, commercial gym, not one of the best racks for me to squat 90% off of, but the weight felt pretty good. Maybe because I was fully in vacation mode at this point and feeling physically and mentally rested? I was a smidge above parallel, because of the high rails, but I would have had no problem hitting depth the way I was feeling that particular day.
