I'm a little surprised with how well things are going with my weightlifting. Months ago as I was telling myself I needed to get back into doing squats and leg presses I was envisioning myself lifting some big weight, my pelvis giving way and my femur flying out the back of me. Luckily it hasn't worked out that way.
Prior to hurting myself, I was squatting 10 reps of 225 pounds. Now that I'm again getting closer to the maximum strength phase of my lifting program, I'm again reducing the reps and increasing the weight. Last week I squatted 4 sets of 10 reps of 255 pounds with good form. When I looked back at my 2007 season lifting data to see how much weaker I now am I was really surprised to see that I was in fact now lifting 30 pounds more than I was back then.
The next 4 weeks I'll be increasing the sets to 6 or so, reducing the reps to 3 to 6, and increasing the weight. Hopefully 4 weeks from now I'll be able to break my previous max of 320 pounds.
After that things move into strength maintenance, the goal being to retain the strength gains of the past couple months through the end of the racing season. The sets will go back to 3 per session and the reps will move back into the 10 to 15 range.
