More power

I have been lifting weights for three years now.  When I look back at the spreadsheet I maintained at the start of all this it tells me how much I lifted at the beginning and I can easily compare it to today, so my progress is charted relatively precisely.  At the outset my gains were extremely rapid, of course, and these days things are much slower, but improvement has not stopped.  Last summer I decided that I should add 10% to my reps for each exercise every so often, and I did that in August, October, and then again in February.  By the time this coming summer arrives I am sure I will be able to do that again, so I am on pace to add 40% to my rep count in a single year, which is a lot given how long I have been doing this.

I started out doing sets of 9 pushups, and now I am up to sets of 34.  My weight training has generally shown an increase ranging from 150% improvement to 200% improvement, and I can't argue with the numbers, but tripling my original strength does seem kind of nuts.

One reason these gains are strange is that my weight and size doesn't seem to track along with them.  I have added on about 13 kilos to my weight, just shy of 30 pounds.  That muscle is obvious, but my weight and size peaked more than a year ago and hasn't continued to rise.  I am still getting stronger, but nothing is changing visually, and my weight on the scale is generally flat.  I suppose that adding on more size is easy at the beginning, but eventually you have to rely on practice and training to improve the muscle you have, which is why improvements in performance take a LOT longer once you have been at it awhile.

The adjustments when I do push to increase my reps are hard though.  This past couple of weeks I have been adding in that newest set of increases and workouts feel terrible.  I have been nauseous and feeling gross a lot of the time during the workout because my body simply doesn't want to do this much in the time I am allowing for it.  This has happened before though, and I have always pushed through it and eventually gotten back to normal.  It just takes time to get accustomed to the new load.  Still, it sucks while I am doing it, no doubt about that.

I do find it odd to examine my motivation at this point though.  Since I am not getting bigger the motivation to look good is not really there.  I know that I can just cruise at the level I was at last year and look exactly like I do now - there isn't any impetus to work harder on that account.

I also have no need to push harder for health reasons.  I walk a lot and I lift for 40 minutes a day.  Lifting in general is good for me, lifting heavier is not bringing me any longevity or health.

All this increase in reps is doing is satisfying my desire to get numbers up and see regular improvement.  It isn't as though that extra strength becomes important in my day to day life - the world is not designed to require someone who can bench 350 pounds, a 300 pound bench is *plenty*.

But I keep on pushing for more.

I think that just maintaining what I have may be a difficult thing for me.  I want that improvement, those numbers going up, and eventually I will hit a wall.  I haven't yet for certain, but you can't just keep on adding 10% more reps every 4 months forever!  My age and physical limitations will stop me at some point.  I wonder, when I finally get to the point where more progress is simply impossible, if I will happily settle into a maintenance routine, or if I will stop at that point.  I suppose I will have to wait a couple of years to find that out.