Today became leg day since my bench press partner was not going to be at the gym. For the third week in a row both smith machines were unavailable for squatting. Equipment availability at Planet Fitness is getting to be annoying. It also looks like my suggestion to buy ONE spare olympic barbell fell on deaf ears. Every day people are using the bars on the chest press benches to do other barbell movements. Would it really kill them to buy a lousy squat rack and stick it back in the corner where none of the “normal” gym goers don’t go? But anyway, I digress.
At first I tried doing “squatting” on one of the cable machines. After all they had a picture on the machine showing a good looking fitness model using it for just that. I threw about 60 pounds on each side and used the straight bar attachment that hooks into both cables. Well after 10 awkward and surely stupid looking reps I decided I would never try that again.
I wound up back on the leg press machine but after that I got it in my idea that I should do some dumbbell lunges, a movement I haven’t done this decade. I taxed my memory to try to remember how much weight I used to do. I recalled using 50 pounders at one point so I decided to scale back to 40’s. I could have scaled back more.
The reps, which I alternated legs on felt very challenging, especially on my cranky right knee. I tried to get my trailing knee to the ground each rep but a few times I was a fraction short due to fatigue. Two sets of 16 reps was enough to generate a few days of soreness I am sure.
Today’s Workout
5 minutes cardio/stretching
20 pull ups
Cable machine squats 120lbs x 10
Leg press sled – 315lbs x 10, 405lbs x 10, 495lbs x 5
40lbs Dumbbell lunges (alternating legs) – 16 reps x 2 sets
Seated leg extension with one sec pause at top – 110lbs x 10, 150lbs x 8
Seated leg curl – 100lbs x 10, 140lbs x 8
Seated calf extension – 250lbs x 10, 290lbs x 8, 350lbs x 5