My return wasn't as smooth as I would like but the difficulties were 100% expected.
Around 400 people have access to my gym but the floor area only has 3 squat racks and only allows a maximum of 8 people in the area at one time. So as you can imagine it can get full to capacity very easily.
I promised myself that I would stretch and warmup more thoroughly from now on to aid mobility but 20 minutes of stretching while waiting for equipment to become free is excessive. And the feeling of excitement to start working out very quickly turns to anger when you see all 8 people on their phones at the same time. I get that everyone needs breaks between their sets but this was taking the piss. So I did what I always do in this situation, walked home in a tantrum.
In hindsight going at 4pm was very ambitious and pretty stupid.
I returned at 10pm and there were much fewer people there. The mythical, elusive creature that is the squat rack was all mine.
Stronglifts recommended 50kg for squats but after trying it I felt like if I had continued it wasn't worth the (two) walks over. My legs are definitely going to make me regret this decision tomorrow.
Bench was interesting, I haven't benched 50kg in years, it was like a blast from the past trying to build up to the achievement of benching 20kg plates for the first time. I paused my reps for a few seconds each time and it was a lot more difficult than I expected. A lot of strength has been lost here.
Not today Satan. But probably soon as my gym doesn't allow spotting because of Covid. Genius.
I hate rows. As I increase the weight it feels like throwing weights around with it being very unclear if it was a good rep or not. I tend to increase the reps to 10 with lower weight and certainty that the bar has touched my chest, rather than chasing numbers and form slipping.
I also did some light reps of shoulder press to prepare for workout B on Wednesday. I've had a pretty bad neck injury from them before so didn't want to go into that unprepared.
The biggest observation was how bad my cardio fitness is now. During the rows I honestly thought I was going to be sick. I'm definitely going to have to include some running in the days between workouts.