{"id":4562,"date":"2014-02-12T23:59:35","date_gmt":"2014-02-13T04:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/?p=4562"},"modified":"2024-11-20T14:45:27","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T19:45:27","slug":"thing-a-day-12-bench-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/12\/thing-a-day-12-bench-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"Bench Progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posting to my blog every day for the month of February is only one commitment I made this month. The other is do a cycle of 5\/3\/1, a weightlifting program developed by Jim Wendler<\/a>. There are several programming volumes for 5\/3\/1, which you can have calculated for you at a wonderful site called Strength Standards<\/a>, whose front page asks you a few questions and predicts your 1-rep-max weights for the 4 major barbell lifts: bench press, deadlift, squat, and overhead press. <\/p>\n

I’m doing the lightest volume of 5\/3\/1 – just 6 sets of each of the main lifts, each on separate days. I enjoy strength training, and I’d like to have a total of over 500 lb (that’s the total of your max in bench press, deadlift, and squat). I’m close, at around 450, but I’m in no hurry. I am more of an endurance athlete by inclination, and hitting each major lift once a week is plenty for me. I am finishing Week 2 of this 5\/3\/1 cycle, and it suits my goals perfectly right now.<\/p>\n

\n
\nI took this photo in the Arboretum in Seattle in 2008.<\/i>\n<\/div>\n

Right after I graduated from college, I started going to a gym, looking to gain weight, and when the trainer asked me my blue-sky goal – something I’d always imagined but never thought I’d be able to do – I said “I want to bench press my weight.” We got me there – on a technicality. I benched my starting weight once, for 1 rep. (The real success was that I’d gained almost 20 healthy pounds.) Then I gave up the bench press.<\/p>\n

Over 20 years later, I’ve taken it up again. There are other lifts that interest me more, and for more than 6 months, I just didn’t bother with it at all, because I could do other lifts at home but didn’t have a bench. But I got a new rack and bench last fall, and I’ve been pretty consistently benching once a week. <\/p>\n

The 5\/3\/1 programming is based on percentages of your theoretical maxes, and it’s been telling me my bench is higher than my last test (in October, at 102.5 lb). So tonight I tested it again. And I benched 110. So close to that 120! But my strength is much less brittle now, and I know I’m going to blow right past it this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posting to my blog every day for the month of February is only one commitment I made this month. The other is do a cycle of 5\/3\/1, a weightlifting program developed by Jim Wendler. There are several programming volumes for 5\/3\/1, which you can have calculated for you at a wonderful site called Strength Standards, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,11,13,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fitness","category-neat-stuff","category-pictures","category-thing-a-day"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4OKzG-1bA","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4562"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5535,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562\/revisions\/5535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}