Bench Press

For the past few months I’ve been hitting the gym with a degree of consistency. Today I accomplished a new personal best in the bench press: 285 pounds.

If you have lived under a rock, the bench press, as defined by wikipedia, is where “the athlete lies on a bench and a loaded barbell rests on stands built into the bench above the eye level of the lifter. The athlete removes the bar from the supports with the aid of a ‘liftoff man’, lowers it to the chest or upper abdomen and then presses it up to the full extension of the arms and carefully returns the weight to the rack.”

This year at the NFL draft, ” Ohio State defensive end Mike Kudla tied the Indianapolis Combine record in the bench press with 45 reps of 225 pounds Sunday. That tied a mark set by University of Texas-El Paso defensive tackle Leif Larsen in 2000.” It’s obvious that I’m not quite at that level, but it’s interesting to see just how strong some of the people are out there.

I’ve also been trying to increase the number of total miles I run per week. This has trailed off recently as my school obligations have increased with finals just a few days away. I’ve been keeping my totals with an online log with coolrunning.com. This is useful because it keeps track of not only my weekly, monthly, and yearly totals, but also things like total number of miles I’ve completed in my Grey Nike Airmax shoes.