On Tuesday, I maxed out on the bench press at 175 pounds, which is 5 pounds more than my high school maximum.

To be fair, I mostly screwed around in my high school Physical Fitness class.  We were supposed to be running or lifting, but by telling the coach that we were running in the back gym, we could do flips and jumps onto the high jump pit.  

My brother and I are 16 months into our work-out routine.  That’s the longest I’ve ever stuck to any fitness program.  Working out so consistently, I wasn’t concerned about damaging something by attempting a max lift.

I’m currently doing two sets at 155 pounds.  It’s rough, but I can get about 10 reps in for each set.  Based on that, I should be able to max out at around 200 pounds, but I want to slowly approach the max.

Conventional wisdom is to do three sets of 8 to 12 reps, three times per week.  We only do two sets to get more different exercises in.  Two visits to the gym per week gives us more recovery time.