I’m not sure how many posts I’ve written setting out a ream of goals that have fallen by the wayside.  Lots probably.  Anyway, this year, while my running goals have now fallen by the wayside, I’m doing well on the financial side of things, and starting to really feel the benefits of the low carb high fat (LCHF) way of eating and lack of sugar.  Importantly i’m back at the gym and loving it.  At the moment the programme i’m following just has two sessions a week, but on the 27th March I’ll be starting a new 6-week programme that will take me to the gym three times a week.  I feel I need it actually as twice a week is fine but already feeling like it’s not enough.  I do need to remember though that i’m only really back at the gym after a long (too long) hiatus, and building back up.  Also whilst i’m adapting to a LCHF lifestyle, I can expect my training to suffer a bit initially.

However, despite all that, I feel that I want to set myself some strength training goals.  I can’t tell you how much I love lifting weights, even just on a small-scale.  I’m not doing any Olympics lifts at the moment, but actually I’m just interested in building strength at the moment, so I’m good with that.  I’ve only been back at the gym for 4 weeks, so i’m kind of right back to the start in terms of my strength journey.  So, as a bit of a benchmark against which I can measure progress, here are my current stats:

March 2017
Bodyweight: 104kg (it was 115kg last May, fook!!)
Bench press: 30kg (8 reps)
Back Squat: 45kg (4 reps)
Deadlift: 55kg (8 reps)
Press-ups: 0 (can’t do a full body press-up yet)
Pull-up: 0 (YOU try lifting 104kg! 😉 )

I’ve not tried to do any 1-rep max testing lately, but that’s what I’ve been pushing/pulling etc. in the gym in the last week.  Happily my weight is coming down slowly but surely, and there will inevitably be some plateaus along the way, but overall it should drop.  Therefore I’ve set some goals in a couple of different ways:

Goals for next 6-12 months
Bodyweight: 88 – 72kg
Bench Press: a) 50kg  b) 0.75 x bodyweight (BW)  c) 1 x BW
Back Squat: a) 75kg  b) 1 x BW  c) 1.5 x BW
Deadlift: a) 100kg  b) 1 x BW c) 1.5 x BW
Press-ups: 10 in a row
Pull-ups: a) 1!  b) 5 in a row c) 10 in a row

So there you have it.  It may be that some of those will take longer than 12 months (e.g. some of the c) goals!) – I’ll be able to reassess as I go as to what’s realistic.  For the deadlift, the BW lift might come first if I lose >4kg before I’m lifting anywhere near 100kg, but we’ll see.

At the moment I’m just working my way through old training programmes that my personal trainer wrote for me, and once I’ve finished those (in about 16 weeks or so) then I’ll resume the personal training and take it from there.

Alongside this I need to introduce regular stretching and mobility work, as I’ll soon come a cropper if I don’t look after that side of things.

I’ll report back on progress, and I’m happy to say this is definitely the most excited I’ve been about a goal in a long time, so I think I’ve actually found the right goal for me.  Woo hoooo!