… at 35 years old

It’s probably a bit ambitious to think I can be in the best shape of my life at 35 years old, but that’s my goal for 2013. I don’t want to feel like I ‘peaked’ at 18 and that I’ve been on a downward slide since then. In reality though, it’s not much of a stretch to say that it’s true. About 8 weeks ago, I had a ‘breakthrough‘ and started to reverse the trend. I got back to the basics in the gym and changed my diet. Suddenly the internal drive that motivated me to push myself throughout my teen years and early twenties was back. Some days, I feel like it’s only a matter of time before I break though the strength plateaus I’ve been hitting for years.

Getting old(er) is a weird feeling. Sometimes my mind tricks me into thinking that I can do anything that I’ve done in the past. It doesn’t matter if I did it 10 years ago. One thing that I’ve noticed is that I don’t recover as quickly as I did 5 years ago. For example, I used to do a standard 3 sets of 8 reps on bench press. I’d do each set to failure using the same weight of each set. If I do a set to failure now, I can only get 6 or 7 reps on the next set, even if I extend the rest period between sets. If I try a third set, I’ll often loose another rep.

After changing my diet and workout routine last fall, I started to approach my personal record (PR) for barbell bench press. The situation reminded me of a signature I saw on a car forum:

“Not as good as I once was, but as good once as I ever was.”

When I first started thinking about my fitness goals for 2013, I initially wanted to just break my 1 repetition max (1RM) for Barbell Bench Press, Dead Lift and Chin-ups. Even if my stamina/recovery isn’t what it once was, I thought that if I could get my explosiveness back, I’d be happy. Here are some PRs as I remember them. These were set when I was 18 years old and weighed 155 lbs, unless noted otherwise:

I’m confident these ‘raw’ numbers’ are attainable, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that I’m not really comparing apples to apples here. To truly be as strong as I was at 18, I’d need to reach the same strength-to-weight ratios. This makes the challenge much tougher. Here are the numbers I need to reach, assuming I weigh 170 lbs:

Thinking about my goals more, I started thinking, “wouldn’t it be great to be in the best shape of my life?” To be able to say this, I’d obviously need to add a cardiovascular element to my goal. Here are some numbers from my junior year in high school,

and some numbers from the one time I had my body fat checked ‘professionally’.

It’s going to be tough, but I’m looking forward to the challenge. I’m ~15 pounds heavier and nearly twice as old. I’m dealing with some aches, pains and injuries that I didn’t have at 18. My body doesn’t hold up to the running well. Despite this, I’ll give it my best shot. After all, isn’t that part of the challenge?

Better today than yesterday; better tomorrow than today.

Here are my baseline numbers as 2013 gets started. These are the things that I hope to improve on over the next 12 months.