A 529 and 540 on Heavy day !

robo benches big at ALKI 2004

The meet is next Saturday ...I needed to see if my new Katana shirt would give me a BIGGER explosive start,so one of the things we needed to do is see how it fit...I had visions of 550-560 going up today...But first, to play it safe I had to see how my year old shirt was 'popping'...after the raw warm ups, I put on the Ol' comfy one ...this is to see what to use for an opening attempt...so I loosened the shirt with 440 --then made an effort to really get
496 --it touched, I got it ....there's an opener !
--then I tried 529 in the same shirt--it touched paused,and went up like it wasn't there...
then 540 --it touched and went up HARD !, but smooth (6 pounds OVER my WABDL World record) so, the old shirt still has some GOOD life in it....

BUT,the greedy one wants BIG numbers, so lets try the shirt that I bought from Ken Anderson at the WABDL Worlds last year.....it fits well --relatively easy to get on, but it does bind me in the spacing of the arms so that I can barely get my arms apart and would be giving NO help to the lift off man....I'd be in the position for a 'nose breaker'...that is too much to risk with just one spotter...so, after setting up and deeming it too dangerous,we abort our attempt at putting on this nuclear slingshot...the only way we could do this is with a team of spotters and higher racks...so, my plan for Seattle??

Open conservatively in the year old Katana (bought from Priscilla's PLgearonline)
get a lift in (496) go for a moderate 2nd attempt (523 529)
go big, 540 for the 3rd attempt (not as big as my previous 551's in training just before Olympia) THEN should that go ( it IS a World record after all)
change into the 'dangerous' shirt and try a 4th attempt of 550 or 562 WITH aforementioned team of helpers ! available at the meet.

In today's workout I later, did some good raw bench presses and some reverse band work--felt strong and focused, need to keep it that way all this week !

I'm still bugged about traffic in the Seattle area,read the WDOT bulletins, due to construction on I-5 it'll be a sea of cars, so safe driving is almost as much in my mind as good lifting !

If you live near Seattle, or better yet, in West Seattle, maybe we'll see you on the beach !

(lifting across from Tully's 9am Saturday 11th Aug.)

BTW --Today, Nancy and Bruce both made big progress in their training with Personal Records in most of their exercises !