Friday, February 13, 2009

When You Just Can't Bring Your A-Game

Out of the past four weeks on the Maximum Strength workout, the first three weeks have been excellent. I trained hard, increased weights every week and had energy to spare. It felt great. And when you feel good working out, especially at the crack of dawn before your day starts, it gives a sense of accomplishment that will carry you throughout the day.

Scheduled on every fourth week is a monthly back-off week. A week where the volume is considerably reduced to help your body recover from the constant pounding of the previous three weeks. So after three weeks of hitting the weights hard I was very much looking forward to an easy week.

Well, it didn't turn out to be so easy.

Every day I came into the gym with a positive attitude but left the gym drained. I just couldn't add any more weight to any exercise and could barely keep the same weights as the week prior. I was spent

So of course I'm pulling my hair out throughout just trying to figure out what the hell is going wrong this week. I couldn't let this go on. Here are the only things I can surmise:
  1. In the third week, or Very Heavy week, and leading into the fourth week, I didn't eat nearly enough what my body was telling me to eat. It's hard to gain strength if you're body's hungry more times than not
  2. I definitely wasn't listening to my body in the gym. If it was telling me to not go heavier, I put a sock in its mouth, kicked it in the arse, and tried to go heavier. Obviously that was not the brightest idea
  3. And what I think was most detrimental, was that I let stress get the best of me. I got stressed because I didn't accomplish a mini-goal (a good workout) in the morning, so that  feeling of defeat would perpetuate throughout my work day. Then I would have a bad day at work because I didn't feel productive there either. And I kept going round and round in this vicious cycle of non-accomplishments that completely screwed with my head
So what's the solution here? 
  1. Forget about it. I just won't let this past week haunt my mushy brain, let it fester and grow some nasty apathetic demeanor
  2. Listen to my body. If it says eat more, I'll eat more. If it tells me to sleep more, I'll (time allowing) sleep more. If it tells me to go heavier, I'll go heavier. If it tells me to go lighter on an off-day, I'll go lighter. If it tells me to kill the tough guy doing 10lb barbell curls on one of only two squat racks, I'll most certainly do it! 
New workout on Monday, new attitude. Now off to not think about stress.

On a different note, here's a little motivation of a seriously strong dude:




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