Wednesday, May 17th. My day off of work, even though it’s one of those around the clock jobs. Wednesday’s element is Earth, where we focus on our roots. We focus on creating a massive and insanely strong foundation, which generally means legs.

That is exactly what happened today. Legs happened.

The training session occurred at the Westchester YMCA and luckily, it was relatively empty. After some pre-workout rituals including a Monster and Tiger Balm, it was time to go. We’ve been doing squats and deadlifts without shoes lately, so today it was time to work with some weightlifting shoes. The big difference is an elevated heel and less slipping on the floor.

We started with volume, 5×10 at 135, but eventually decided to go heavier again, working up to a 315 pause squat and then a 355 clean single. After that it was time for deadlifts and they went better than Sunday’s session. We avoided going heavy and instead did a 135×30 conventional followed by a 135×30 sumo. Nice and loose. Smooth.

Those deadlifts got the heart rate up and really engaged the glutes and hamstrings, where my hip imbalance is really causing some pain and discomfort, etc. After that it was some superset leg press and toe press on the big bad machine, followed by a slew of other isolation exercises.

Seated leg extension – up to 250×10 (not quite the stack)

Prone Leg Curl – Started iso and went up to the stack for 5 reps

Toe Press – Different machine, up to 290×15 really working on a full rep

1:09 from start to finish and then we ended up going trail riding on horseback for our one year anniversary. Ate all of our meals at home except we went out for ice cream.

A relaxing day with only some stress and not much productivity before going back to work for three straight days tomorrow.

Earth.