Bench-pressing at the CrossFit Gym

 Happy Sunday readers, 

This is Luke tuning in for another blog about my favorite workout of the week. I am writing this blog on Sunday afternoon, a little later than usual. That is because this weekend was Homecoming on Baylor's campus! It has been a tremendous weekend from the bonfire on Friday to beating Kansas yesterday in football. My favorite part of this weekend was that my parents came to visit me and we got to get together with my best friend's family as well. Overall, it was a very busy and successful weekend of Baylor activities. 

Getting into the workout of the week, my favorite workout was Monday's workout like last week. I believe that I like Monday workouts the most because it gets me going in the right state of mind for the week. That is, it gets me off my butt to get motivated and hyped up to work hard for the week. Like I have said in previous posts, going to CrossFit gives me an outlook to destress and to work on my physical and mental well-being. 

After this weekend, I have decided that I am going to give myself another goal in CrossFit: I would love to build up my muscle mass and be able to move more weights in the gym. Basically, I would love to be able to move up in weight so I can gain some more muscle mass. 

Here was Monday's workout: 

Primer: 

8 Minute EMOM (Every Minute on the Minute) 

Minute 1: 

• 5 Narrow Squats
• 5 Kettle Bell Deadlifts 
• 20 Line Hops 

Minute 2:

• 5 PVC Pipe Passes
• 3 Handstand Pushups 
• 3 Push-Ups 

Strength:

Bench Press

• 5 Reps every 2 minutes - 5 times 
• 3 Reps at 80% of max weight - 3 times 

Conditioning:

15 Minute AMRAP

• 3 Shuttle Runs 
• 8 Russian Kettlebell Swings 
• 4 Handstand Push-Ups 
• 2 Pistol Squats Per Leg 

The hardest part of this workout was the conditioning. One of the CrossFit instructors decided to join the class and she went through almost twice as many repetitions as I did by the time the 15 minutes was finished. One things that I had to moderate for this workout was the handstand push-ups. For a regular handstand pushup, you go into a handstand and lay your legs on the back of a wall. You then let your arm strength guide you down till your head touches the ground and then you push up. I do not have the strength to do a handstand pushup, so I would walk my legs up the wall and do elevated pushups. 

I was very sore after this workout and it was definitely because of the conditioning. I liked how bench press was incorporated into this workout because that is a great way to build muscle. I used to do a lot more bench pressing in high school and I think that if I incorporate more bench pressing into my workout routines I will be successful in gaining muscle mass. 

This weekend and last weekend were very nice with Fall Break and Homecoming. It has been good to get a little bit of a break from the normal, busy school routine and spend time with friends and family. I am looking forward to working hard this week and am excited to get into the gym tomorrow. I have a Business Law test this week that I will be spending a large amount of time studying for, so going to the gym will be a good way for me to take a break and break up my day. 

Stay tuned for next week's update!

Luke