Frank: Ancient History (Summer 2005)

There are a couple un-named text files sitting around in my personal "training" folder (which generally contains articles I find useful, my food log, various e-books, etc.). When I opened them up, it turned out that they contained my logs from right after I graduated college in 2005. Here are some highlights.

Squat: 5, 3, 3, 4, 3 @ 225
Wow. My squats have always sucked.
Bench: 5, 4, 4, 2, 2 @ 205
Yes, my bench was almost equal to my squat. I was a bench and curl monkey for a long time.
Deadlift: 5x5 @ 300
I had apparently just barely gotten these, since it looked like I had failed the previous training session (5, 5, 5, 4, 4).
Press: 5, 5, 5, 4, 3 @ 135
Yeesh, I guess my shoulders have always been pretty strong.
Pullup: 5, 4, 4, 4, 3 @ 65
I have gotten no stronger on pullups, really. I guess I'm fatter, which means I must be a little stronger in absolute terms.
Dip: 5, 5, 3, 3, 3 @ 60
Eh, some improvement.

I'm guessing I was going for 5x5 across, since I distinctly remember doing a regular-old 5x5 straight weight across for a long time. Looking at my whole log, I seem to have failed most of my sets. Wow. I estimate that my Big 3 total back then was ~900.

Lessons to be learned? Well, for one thing, I was WEAK when I was 22. Pretty much all of you would have been able to kick my butt back then, and most of you have at least two years before you graduate. Stick with it, and by the time you're an old fart like me, you're certain to be really strong.

EDIT: Heh, I was also probably much like the people that you guys laugh at, so who knows, some people do learn...