“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Monday, July 15, 2013

rest day + some random thoughts.

i'm sick. again. for the second time in 2 months. tried training through the last round. wasn't the best of ideas. ended up having a leaky nose for 3 weeks. and so I'm resting today.

anyways. finally posting the footage of my lifts from SPO'13 and some random disorganized thoughts about the meet and the cube cycle i ran leading up to it. 

lessons learned from the meet:
  • stay calm. listen to classical music. just chillout. 
  • warm up the same way you do during training
  • that said, it helps to have a short warm up so you dont have to hurry through it and get all stressed out
  • talk to other lifters. because theres always something to learn and something to be inspired by. 
  • if it's gonna be a close meet, plan a relatively big opener. puts you in a good position to plan your lifts according to your competitors. 
  • that said, placing well should only be a secondary concern. dont limit yourself by focusing on placings instead of totals.
  • made 2 small prs at the meet. not particularly satisfied though. plenty of things to work on.
the cube:
  • volume was way more than im used to. spent a pretty long time in the gym for each session. really taught me what working hard means though
  • moved the weights up for heavy days and the reps up for rep days. 
  • does more work = less gains? perhaps. but probably less to do with the work and more to do with my insanely little amounts of sleep. was averaging 4-5 hours of sleep every day. oh and the whole sickly spell probably didnt help either.
  • if im gonna increase the volume and intensity, make sure i can get enough rest. if not, learn to auto-regulate training and be less concerned about hitting targets because not every day is gonna be my day.
  • feels like the smaller accessory lifts dont move my main lifts as much. not at this point anyway. gonna use compound movements for mains and accessories from now on. 
plan for the rest of the year:
  • wanted to move on to oly lifts after the meet, but im so dissatisfied with my total i just cant leave it and start working on something else.
  • gonna try to hit a 640 total by the end of the year
  • moving back to a bastardized westside template, but with rest pause work incorporated. largely influenced by my time with 531. 
  • experimenting with technique, stances, and grips to see what helps me move my lifts
  • adding some conditioning work 2-4 times a week so i dont feel like such a slob
that's all for now. we'll see how things work out in a couple of months.

SPO'13 footage:



Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)