Smolov Day 3
Hurray! Today’s workout is different.
Workout:
I’ll be honest, when I first saw the workout, I was stoked. But then I saw the weights… and, I got a little nervous. It’s been a few months since I’ve touched anything close to this heavy. My legs are feeling sore, and air squats were a struggle.
I decided to do a couple extra warm-up sets, which—who am I kidding—doesn’t really count as a warm-up unless you consider five pause reps with an empty bar as “warm.”
The first two sets were a little rough—just trying to get the legs warmed up. I haven’t done multiple reps over 225 in almost a year, so I was nervous, but the weight moved well. No issues coming out of the hole.
285 was a different story. As I mentioned on Day 1, my home gym setup is… a work in progress. Here’s what I did to hit the right weight: I loaded a 45, 55, and 25 on the left side, and a 45, 55, and 10 on the right. That gave me 285 lbs. Bad idea. Having 15 extra pounds on one side when you’re at 90% of your max? Not the best plan. The second I unracked the bar, I knew I was in trouble. I started leaning to the left, had to yank the right side down with my arm, and push up with my left just to balance it. I still managed to hit the rep.
I never racked a barbell so fast in my life. On the plus side, my core light up trying to stabilize everything. I’ll probably experiment with this setup again—with lighter weights, obviously.
After the squats, I hopped on the rower for 20 minutes of Zone 2 cardio. I was on a bit of a time crunch, so I couldn’t hit the full 45 minutes today. Side note: I thought I liked rowing, but after 100+ minutes on the thing this week, I’m starting to loathe it. Maybe it’s the monotony, or maybe my ADD—who knows?
No Excuses. Just Work.