It’s been a minute since my last post, and I don’t have anything particularly profound to say about the Mavs-Heat series or anything else (the draft is tonight…maybe that will spark my creative juices or something) so I figured I would do a couple of quick-hitters again.
- 195 lb. isn’t usually considered a common benchmark for the bench press…225 lb., 300 lb., even 185 lb. or 200 lb., but 195 lb? It’s not exactly a nice, round number, so why is it a number of interest to me? Well, when our gym just recently installed a standard bench press station, it gave me my first opportunity to use a “real” bench (not a Smith machine or any other hybrid workstation) in probably 4 years. For the entire 3 previous years we had belonged to this gym, they had no such bench press station, and the year prior to that while at the gym we previously belonged to I was nursing an injured shoulder that prevented me from benching. Anyway, 195 lb. was my previous 1-rep max 4 years ago. I’ve sustained some other injuries since then that might have taken away some potential strength, but I’ve also upped my weight from 165 lb. to between 190-195 lb. as well. Even though probably 95% of guys who take weight training even somewhat seriously can bench 195 lb. easily, that number will still always carry a little extra significance for me. For that reason, as I try to reach new 1-rep maxes, whenever I cycle through a day at 195 lb. it triggers a little mental footnote in my head. So, while it wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire, when I was able to do 3 sets of 3 reps each (9 total reps) yesterday at 195 lb. without much difficulty, it reminded me of the progress I’ve made, as back in college 1 total rep for the whole day at that weight pretty much did me in…unfortunately, it also served as a reminder of what I still need to do to get where I eventually want to be. In other words, there’s more work to be done.
- Somehow 2 of my most recent posts involve me discussing the trials and tribulations of my Madden franchise…talking about Madden that much is probably sad and pathetic, but the only people who read this are me and occasionally Krissy, so who’s kidding who here? Anyway, I was given a little bit of false hope as I followed up a 0-16 rookie season with a still terrible but slightly better 2-14 season the following year. That false hope was extinguished pretty quickly early on in my 3rd season, as I’ve stumbled to something like an 0-10 start, and I’m not even sure if I’ve kept any of those games that close either. I believe there are 3 main reasons for this. 1st, my schedule has been ridiculously hard, as I think I’ve only faced 1 team under 0.500. 2nd (and this is something that happens in real life too), as I have begun to plug up certain holes on the roster, other holes have emerged as players have aged, gotten injured, regressed, etc. The prime example of this right now is Donovan McNabb, who even when I call the perfect play and end up with a wide open receiver is routinely spraying the ball 5-10 yards away from wherever the intended target is…sounds eerily familiar I know, but as I’ve mentioned before there isn’t much room for error against the super-human All-Madden CPU’s. The 3rd thing is that I’ve officially decided that I hate Mike Shannahan’s playbook. In Madden ’11 at least (maybe real life too), it’s stale, vanilla, and unimaginative. Maybe I would feel the same way about any playbook after using it for about 54 games, but it just seems like I could do better. Anyway, I finally broke down and started a franchise on All-Pro as well. I will keep the All-Madden franchise too as I do think it has helped me get better, but a guy can only be bludgeoned so much without any positive reinforcement. Case in point: in my 1st game in my new All-Pro franchise I promptly won 13-0 and unlocked a gamer achievement in the process for the 1st time in about 4 months.
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