Its been a while since I have updated my blog. In October, I got a little sick. This led me to take a little break from strongman/power-lifting out of necessity. It also led to a drastic change in training schedule for the pure sake of having reasonable energy levels when I needed them most in my professional life.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little lost at first. I just couldn’t recover appropriately from the heavy compound lifts and event work that I had grown accustomed to. Until this point, I had been training for various strongman events and nixing those from the training agenda left me with little familiar frame work. I tried everything I could think of to keep training how I was accustomed to training with very little success and massive frustration. When I had burned through all my options, the only course of action I could take was to temporarily focus on isolation/hypertrophy work.
The first couple of weeks were absolutely an adjustment. Even in the past, when I had used hypertrophy focused programs, there was still a huge focus on going balls to the wall and keeping squats/bench/deadlift/OHP in the program in some capacity. I also had the underlying fear that years worth of strength training would be flushed down the crapper….and then it hit me…
There’s more to work on then strength.
So I dug into everything I had left. I started focusing on the hypertrophy work I could do. I started addressing some imbalances I have ignored my entire athletic existence. As mentioned in a previous blog, I hired Justin Harris to oversee my diet and thus far, I have slowly dropped 16lbs. I invested in the assistance of Amp nutrition to cook/weigh/package/label the meals I eat when I am away from home throughout the week. I started making a point to do the little things: drink enough water, cut back on caffeine, eat myvegetables, and consume all my meals as prescribed. I set a bedtime and stuck to it for the most part.
As it would turn out, the structured training/nutritional efforts bled into my actual life. I started being a bit more focused at work when possible. My time management went from reactive to proactive. I started setting time capsto focused work, and would get up and move around at different time periods as opposed to “when the urge strikes.” I worked to get all my computer/administrative work done for the day by the time it was time to go home, so I could spend my at-home time building and furthering my personal relationships that I value. I stopped working on relationships that were pointless to free up energy for things that mattered.
In addition to these lifestyle steps, I was able to do a few things in the past few months that are obviously not going to be regular occurrences: I paid off a student loan, I moved into a pretty sweet house, and was able to help people who helped me when I was a young’n.
I cannot say that all of this happened because I was under the weather. But it did happen because I was suddenly forced to examine the fine aspects of my life and take personal responsibility. In the past two weeks, I have put compound movements back into my training..and they feel pretty good. I’m sure there is some re-familiarizing that will have to take place, but I am in the best gym I know of to do exactly that.
Perhaps what felt like a setback was a blessing in disguise. We shall see.
Annie…can you share Justin Harris’s contact info?