Do you have a goal that you’re working towards? I have a list of things that I want to do this year and I’ve been crossing a bunch off the list lately. The Kid and I went to a murder mystery dinner the other week. I tried a new hair color with highlights for my birthday. I made a loan through Kiva.org and a few more items. I’m definitely the kind of person that works best with a goal in mind.
Even though I have a list of random things, I’ve been floundering for a while on fitness goals. I’m waffling back and forth on doing another contest. There’s one on October 26th that may be possible, but I’m sitting on the fence. Can I do this again? Do I have enough muscle yet? Do I have a chance at a trophy? In my personal experience, indecision usually indicates that I’ve made the decision but I just haven’t mentally accepted it yet.
In lieu of a contest goal for now, I wanted to work towards something else in the gym. Right now since I change the number of reps that I do from week to week, it’s hard to tell if I’m making progress. I decided on a goal to track my one rep max for the main lifts in my plan and work towards increasing those numbers each month. My ultimate goal is to squat 1.5 times my bodyweight. Ha, yeah. I’d better start working on losing weight. 😉
As with any goal, baby steps first. The first milestone I’m going to aim for is to squat my bodyweight by the end of this year. Seems reasonable. Now you may be wondering what the heck a one rep max is. Your one rep max (AKA 1RM) is the amount of weight you can lift for a single rep of an exercise. One rep with good form at a weight where you couldn’t possibly do two. You do your 1RM right after your warm up and before any other exercises. That way you can track if you’re making progress or not without wondering if the exercise you did right beforehand tired you out.
Since I don’t have a spotter, I couldn’t safely do an official one rep max test using one rep but luckily there are calculators all over the internet that allow you to put in the weight that you lifted and the reps you did to estimate your 1RM. I spent the last week figuring out my 1RMs for squat, bent over row, deadlift, and bench press. I did a few warm up sets of each and gradually increased the weight with each set until I couldn’t do any more than 4 reps total. I recorded the weight and then entered it into the calculator. Voila, 1RM estimations just like that!
Now that I’ve got my starting point, the hard work starts of squatting, rowing, benching, and deadlifting my heart out. I’ve put together workouts around these basic lifts and am going to be doing a 4 day split with some yoga and fun stuff thrown in. I’ve gotten a few questions on my workouts lately so I’ll be posting them in case you’re curious. I’ve got my first workout coming up on Saturday. I’m so excited to see the results of the first month so I can gauge just how realistic squatting my bodyweight might be. My backside hurts just thinking about it. 😉
Maybe I’ll buy myself the socks as a reward. Do you plan rewards for meeting your goal? Any suggestions other than the socks for me?
It has been a long time since I’ve actually tried to see what my max is. I like the idea of squatting your body weight (or more) – maybe I will work on that!
Good luck and let me know how it goes. I like the idea of having a goal that’s pretty challenging but mentally feels possible.