Exercise Log 12.23.13 (Leg Day + Cardio)

After yesterday’s chest workout (which is logged if you care to read it) I decided I needed a more time efficient workout. Something that would be demanding, but also not wasteful time-wise or excessive.

First after doing basic warmups I did front squats. Because front squats are just really getting down to business on leg day. It’s just such a complicated, powerful compound lift. Alright so to get extra warmed up, I did a set of 10 reps with the bare bar. Then I got to work.

Set 1) 5 reps @ 125lbs. Set 2) 5 reps @ 135lbs. Set 3) 5 reps @ 145lbs.

Keep in mind that my max rep before is 145lbs. So doing a whole set at that weight was very encouraging for me to continue. I felt pretty good too. So I upped it to 155lbs and tried for a rep, and got two out. Then I reracked and completed a set of 5 reps at my new max! So, yet again, adding +10lbs to a fundamental lift. Now a quick note on form. Every time you do a new max on a lift like this odds are form won’t be the best. I didn’t try to exceed 155lbs because I noticed on my last rep, I felt like my squat depth was suffering. Also while much better than previous weeks, I was beginning to do elbow dipping at the bottom drive up. So I knew going beyond this today was not wise but I felt pretty good not only making a new max, but making a whole set out of it.

So that was set 4 of 5 reps @ 155lbs (yay) and then I went to do set 5 of 5 reps @ 135lbs hoping to restore my form a bit. However I felt like the form breakdown and fatigue from the previous set really carried over. So I dropped the weight real low for set 6 and did 10 reps of 95lbs. I gotta admit, after doing nearly 38 working reps of heavy (for me at least) front squats (not including 10 extra bare bar reps I did for warming up) had me feeling a little qweezy. If I did anything more here I might’ve gotten literally sick.

So I decided I needed to continue with something I could sit down at, and did the seated angled leg press. Watched some videos this week about form on this press, so I decided to stick to a lower weight and just focus on that. This was a superset, as always, of one set of presses followed by one set of calf raises. So sets 1-3 were 8 reps @ 360lbs. Then set 4 was 6 reps @ 540lbs. For anyone reading this who might be confused about form on a seated leg press check out this handy Scott Herman video on a Cybex machine (same principles apply to basically all leg press machines).

Don’t let your knees travel forward past your toes, maximum compression is at when your legs are 90 degrees at the knee, push through the heels… got it.

Then I did a new circuit workout I found online which I thought was very fun, from one of Mike Chang’s video workouts. It was very rough, I did mine with a 40lb curl bar. My sets were 15 reps, then 8 each leg for the two middle exercises, and 20 high knees. I skipped the warmup session as I had already warmed up with those bajillion squats and leg presses I did earlier.

An explosive workout indeed, definitely wore me out fast

Alright after this great workout, which itself is composed of 4 major actions, I did a few Romanian deadlifts. Again before coming to the gym, I refreshed myself on form and the Romanian deadlift is one you can definitely do poorly if you don’t remind yourself on form once in a while.

This is definitely one of those exercises it’s less about how hard you push yourself and more about how well you do it.

Alright and that was it! About an hour. Not to neglect cardio I wanted to do something different today. So after 2-3 minutes of a brisk walk on the treadmill, I started sprinting intervals. Did one sprint of a little over half a mile at 7.5 mph, then took a breather for a minute, then 8mph, and worked my way up to 9.5mph. At that juncture, I could only really maintain a good run for .15 miles. The great thing about interval speed training is it helps raise your VO2 Max, which is the peak threshold for oxygen uptake for running. This can help to contribute to overall better runs at any pace. Total mileage for the interval training was about 2 miles.

Fun times! Wasn’t expecting leg day to be so fun. After I got off the treadmill, I was drenched in sweat and I got the qweezy feeling back. I also had a hard time getting out of my car on my way back… I’m definitely gonna be sore tomorrow. But that’s the point… right?