5-10-14 – Last Heavy Bench Before the Meet

Just completing my final heavy lifting squat day a few days prior to bench day, this marks my final heavy lifting bench day before May 24th. Today, my AMAP is set at 150 pounds and my program reads “fight for 5”. My goal each and every AMAP week is to blow the written expectation out of the water. Now, on my final squat day, I fell three reps short. Therefore, I was excited to try and blow the “fight for 5” reading away. As for my warm-ups, all felt well. My arms felt very even in strength and length, giving me much confidence moving towards my final working set of 150. The weight itself for my final set didn’t feel too heavy, but not too light. I tried to rush my way through as many reps as I can before I was too fatigued to continue. On my 5th rep, I was struggling a bit so my spotter, Kevin, had the instinctive response of helping me. The only problem was that I still had a lot of strength and I knew I could’ve gotten it up by myself. Knowing I had no chance at a 6th rep, I went for it anyway because I felt I should kind of make up for losing the second half of rep five. Just as I expected, I brought the sixth rep to my chest and couldn’t get it up at all. Regardless, I may have not blown away the expectation on my program, but I certainly did match it with five reps. As for my accessories, all felt very well. Before long, Kevin and his sister, Becky, left and I was left to myself and my accessories. Jesse called me asking if I was at the gym, I responded yes and he replied saying he’ll be there shortly. I had already finished my entire program, but I figured why not just add three more. I included four sets of twenty pull ups, 3 sets of ten preacher curls, and three sets of ten Tate presses. This marked a rather large stepping stone since at my last meet I only made it to 160 on bench for one. Today gave me much more confidence moving forward to the meet in just a week or so.