Minor workout success

It's been 15 days since my last post, and three or four workouts with the dumbbell shoulder press. Today I managed 5 sets of 5 with 55 pounds. So it took me 15 days to add just 5 pounds to my tolerated resistance, which seems discouraging.

On the other hand, if I managed 2.5 pounds of extra resistance per hand every half month, in one year that's 24 * 2.5 = 60 pounds of added resistance. Of course, I've never seen progress at that rate in shoulder press in my life. But being able to shoulder press with 115 pounds in each hand would be damned impressive. Or while I'm having a wild fantasy, a 2.5 pound improvement on 52.5 pounds is 4.76%. If I magically managed a 4.5% increase in strength every 15 days, that's an 187% increase in one year, or from 52.5 per hand to 150 pounds per hand. I could live with that. More likely, if I'm lucky my shoulder press will be above 75 pounds per hand in a year. But I can live with that.

Now I must decide whether to increase the resistance per hand in a +1 pound,+1 pound,+0.5 pound progression (using the 1 pound and 2 pound wrist wraps I own and the 2.5 pound weights) or simply jump up in 2.5 pound increments and accept the dramatic drop in repetitions that comes with it. I'll try the small increments for now. I managed 4 repetitions with 56 pounds in each hand, about 10 minutes after the workout with 55 pounds.

Also: there was a 7 day gap in workouts and a 5 day gap in workouts in that 15 day period, because after several workouts with 2 and 3 day intervals, my strength seemed to drop. So I won't be afraid to continue with bigger intervals, if necessary.

Back to the first hand... #$^#($^#$# I may have hurt my right wrist. Certain positions hurt now! I'll keep an eye on it. If I hurt myself again... maybe I should just give up on everything but Super Slow. Dammit!

Workout - sequential goals

I read some other fellow's workout blog. One useful and intuitive recommendation he made was to tackle your fitness goals one at a time. He wrote of the very common case where a trainee decides to do 100 pushups and run 10 miles and do 20 pullups and shoulder press 300 pounds and so forth all at once, and then burns out.

I have a number of goals in mind, none particularly unusual. I'm going to try to tackle them in sequence. I'll attempt to continue my normal workouts on Tuesday and Thursday. My present goal is to bring my dumbbell shoulder press to 5 sets of 5, 5 minutes apart, with 75 pounds. Right now I can manage with 52.5. That's a huge goal.

My other goals, in no particular order, are 100 pushups in a row, pullups, one legged squats (which I need to work on my left ankle first to accomplish, because doing them now hurts my left knee), and doing interval training with jump-ropes or maybe running in place.