This past weekend was my scheduled one max rep test workout. I generally look forward to this workout, but this time I approached it with great trepidation because I’d been sick for the previous week. The illness really had an affect on my lifts.
I stepped up to do my squats, racking my previous max plus an additional 40 lbs. I unracked the bar and took one step back. I dropped down and asIi came out of the bottom, realized that I’d never get back up, so I bailed out. This was the beginning of my problems for the day. I backed the weight down to my previous max plus 5 lbs. I completed that easily. I proceeded to add 5 lbs. and did another easy rep. This continued until I was within 5 lbs of my initial attempt. This process drained my already exhausted body.
I wound up having problems with both my bench press and my deadlift. I learned a very important lesson about max lifts: always go backwards from the failure weight to find the max. I also learned that trying a max workout is a bad idea after an illness.
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