The day after my run, it was time for upper body work. My regimen is a raw strength-oriented bench press, supplemented by muscular endurance work. This particular workout, it happened to be bench, dragon flags, pull-ups, heavy bag work (punching and elbows with a bit of kicking), barbell side bends, and push-ups. I ended with a bit of yoga.

My bench suffered most. While a couple weeks ago, I was able to do 3-4 paused reps of 210 lbs, now I was struggling to do the same reps for 200 lbs. In fact, my first set of 205 was actually a failure, and I had to re-rack the bar on the first hook, not six inches from my chest.

Surprisingly, the rest of the session went pretty well. Dragon flags, even pull-ups weren’t that difficult (although I did scale them down slightly just for safety’s sake), and although push-ups were trying, I did them at the very end, so that’s to be expected. My round with the heavy bag was cut short, however, since a spin class was about to begin, and the side bends were a little lighter, since the last time I did them, I was fairly sore the next day.

I’m disappointed with my bench, even though I know it was likely to go down with my body weight and no training. On the other hand, I was glad to see that I mostly didn’t lose my endurance, even as I declined to take creatine before the gym. We’ll see how leg day goes, which is my real concern.