Entry #532

To recap: Sunday, I woke up with excruciating back pain. However, it was within my upper-back muscles, not my spine, so it wasn't a continuation of previous issues. I had had a pretty violent dream (fighting demons from Hell again; won't they ever learn?) the night before, and I probably wrenched a muscle from moving in my sleep. I could barely raise my arms, at first.

Monday, the pain persisted in the morning, but by the afternoon, I felt completely fine, so I lifted.

Squats (ATG):
295 x 5
295 x 4
295 x 4
295 x 3
295 x 2

So it went up, but stamina remains a problem. Moreover, I failed under only 225 lbs. on bench press. First three reps were easy, and then my arms just collapsed on the fourth. A guy ran over to help, and I snarled, "Get away" out of anger. He backed off, but kept his eye on me. I could see that he had good intentions, so I joked, "I'm gonna get this rep even if it kills me!"  I lay there for several minutes with the bar on my chest, waiting for my strength to return. However, keeping that amount in that position demanded a fair share of deltoid flexibility, and I couldn't really recover like that. I rolled the bar onto the bench's safety mechanisms, which were about a centimeter over my neck, so my head was trapped. I had to roll under and onto the floor so I could rerack. Even if there were no safety contraptions, though, I would have just tilted the whole thing onto one side, like I've done before.

I start bulking tomorrow. My losses have gotten out of hand.