Decisions, Decisions

Journal by Jeff Commings, Swimming World associate producer

PHOENIX, Arizona, August 29. SWIMMING World associate producer Jeff Commings, who will be the second oldest man to compete at the U.S. Olympic Trials next summer, is journaling his daily training regimen on his personal blog. We are reprinting those articles here:

I took a half day at work today, and when I woke up this morning, I decided to go to the gym after work for one my two weight workouts this week. About 15 minutes before I was to leave work, I figured I would be much happier if I went straight home and took a lengthy nap before my piano class (more on that later).

I forced myself to take a left turn instead of a right turn when I drove away from the office, and I found myself at the gym. The good thing was that at 12:45, the gym was half the capacity of the crowd at 5 p.m. I was able to breeze through my workout with more ease today than normal, which allowed me to finish everything in 45 minutes.

Five minutes shoulders warm up (with 5 lb. weights)

Sitting bench press: 15@110, 12@135, 10@155

Horizonatal legg press: 15@150, 12@170, 10@210

Sitting row: 15@90, 12@120, 10@150

Adductors: 15@140, 12@160, 10@180

Chest press: 15@80, 12@95, 10@110

Ten minutes abdominals and stretching

I'm glad I went to the gym. I felt very good, and not as lethargic as I felt yesterday in the pool. I was considering doing 10 reps on the bench press at 160 lbs., but I decided to stay at 155 at the last minute.

As I write this I am rewarding myself with a strawberry protein smoothie and a tuna salad sandwich. No time for a nap. Next up: a shower and a viewing of last night's episode of "Breaking Bad" before heading to piano class.

Oh, yeah. About that piano class. I'm taking a class at South Mountain Community College to learn how to read music and play piano. Mostly, I want to learn to read music, and being proficient at the piano will be a nice bonus. The class meets twice a week for 75 minutes, and I'm the oldest in the class by at least a decade. Maybe 15 years. I think the other nine students are full-time students. I felt out of place in the first class, but I got over that quickly. Right now, we've just learned about whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, etc., and I imagine today we're going to learn how to play those types of notes on the piano. I'm excited to learn!

Reprinted from Jeff's personal blog at commings.blogspot.com

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