With squats, that is. One of the most humbling things I have learned in the few months that I have been training with Kellum and his Krewe is that for the past 22 years, I have been doing squats WRONG. I have, in fact, been doing weenie squats, sometimes known as quarter squats. I've always tended to wuss out at the bottom of the movement and stop a couple of inches above parallel, telling myself that surely those few inches didn't make that much difference to the overall exercise, and really, partial squats weren't totally useless and even though my range of motion was only maybe a foot or so I was still gaining benefit from the exercise.

Yeah. Sure.

And perhaps I wasn't completely deluded about partial squats being better than no squats at all, but when I started training with Jesse, I had to start doing squats right, and by right I mean Deep. Thighs parallel to the ground or below. Ass to Grass. Suddenly, the 200lb squat that I was so proud of plummeted to a measly and shaky 95lb squat. On a good day. With low gravity.

Yea verily, I had to actually sit my fat ass all the way down, and lo, after a few weeks of doing squats the way God intended, my ass began to grow firmer... shaplier... stronger! My wimpy little 95 lb squat slowly began to grow... 115.. 125... I hit a sticking point at 135 that was purely mental--those big 45s on the ends were heavy, dammit, and surely there was no way I was ever coming back up after squatting all the way down. But, after some gentle and nurturing coaxing by Jesse Kellum, Sit your ass down! You're too high! C'mon you big sissy! Get your ass lower!, I finally got past that mental block.

So, last night was Heavy Squats. Jesse told us to work our way up slowly to a good heavy weight, and then stay there for five sets of five. I did several warmup sets of just the bar, then went up to 95lbs, then 115, then finally went ahead and jumped up to 135. Did my five reps, and discovered that it was... easy. Added ten pounds for my next set. Managed 5 reps of 145 without shooting a vertebrae across the room and embedding it in the forehead of a hapless gymgoer on the stairmaster. Next set I added five pounds to bring it up to a nice, even, intimidating 150lbs. Jesse tightened my belt up to a point where my spleen relocated to a spot near my clavicle, and I knocked out 3 reps.

(Nice expression, eh? LOL)

A couple of them were a tad high (and make no mistake, "a tad high" is still light years lower than I ever used to squat) but Jesse was quite complimentary on my form and my overall increase in strength.

Of course, I was not the only one doing heavy squats last night:

(He actually goes deeper than this, but I wasn't able to catch the picture at the bottom of the movement because he explodes up pretty quickly.)

Oh, and he did that weight for reps.

Finally after that fun and games, we went outside and dragged the sled back and forth.

The sled drag is deceiving and evil. The first hundred feet or so are not too bad. Then it kicks your ass. (At least it kicks mine. Some of these guys--including Jesse--can actually run the damn thing back and forth.) We did three sets of that, and then we were going to finish the workout off with three sets of truck pushes, but it was starting to get late, so we earned a brief reprieve.

Finally (after showering and various cleaning up) we all headed over to a local steakhouse where we ate all-you-can-eat Prime Rib. I ate two prime ribs plus a pork chop, a sweet potato, and about 73 glasses of iced tea. Oh. My. God. I don't think I've ever eaten so much.

And yes, since it was my day to run, I actually got up this morning and ran, even though it felt like I had a ten pound dumbbell made of red meat lodged in my colon. I managed a whopping 2.5 miles and was damn proud of it (FWIW, I'd worked my way up to 4 miles in the past week.)