Reevaluation
By
Brent Moody
Recently, I’ve been on a 10-week decline in the gym. It began with a
powerlifting meet that I entered back in November. I had been sick the entire
week leading up to the competition. I had downed almost two bottles of NyQuil
and felt about as run down as I’ve ever been.
My initial course of action was to pull out because I was pretty sure that it
wouldn’t be anywhere close to a record setting day for me. However, a late night
phone call from one of my training partners persuaded me to suck it up and head
down the next morning to lift. It was a push-pull meet so I figured I could pull
off a decent day and maybe hit a PR or two in the process. I should have known
better.
Warm ups were rough. Every weight I took out felt heavy. I was shaky on all
of my repetitions. Long story short, I made my opener and then proceeded to get
buried on my second attempt with a weight that would have been a 5-lb PR. I
passed on my third attempt and pulled out of the meet. I didn’t see any big
deadlifts happening that day.
I was as mad and frustrated as I had ever been about anything in my life. I
was mad for trying to compete when I was sick. I was mad that I barely made my
opener with a weight that I had repped only two weeks earlier. I was maddest for
wasting time, energy, and mental confidence by competing in a meet that I wasn’t
prepared for. I made it up in my mind that I would train harder and smarter than
ever before starting that very next day.
My first few training sessions went well because I brought plenty of
intensity with me each day, and I had a well thought out plan for each workout
that I executed with precision. I decided to begin training in the mornings as
opposed to the evenings because the crowds at my gym were out of control. I also
figured that the change up might spur some new growth because I had been
training in the evening for so long.
The first few days went okay, but as the weeks passed, my strength levels
started to drop off. I tried to offset this by once again moving my training to
the late afternoon, but I ended up experiencing the same if not more strength
deterioration. I then decided that the training environment needed to be changed
because I was becoming more and more frustrated with the crowds and douche bag
trainers instructing their clients to perform paddy cake, hold my hand lunges on
top of a stability ball. I joined a fantastic facility that had excellent
equipment with an atmosphere that was conducive to hard and heavy training.
Still, my lifts continued to plummet.
Everything from my deadlift to my floor press to my T-bar row was decreasing,
and I was extremely pissed about it. What the hell was going on? I trained the
same (if not harder). I ate the same, I slept plenty, and I kept the rum and
cokes to a minimum. I was completely baffled. It was affecting my attitude at
work. It was affecting my relationships with friends, co-workers, and even my
wife.
So this is the part where I tell you how I persevered, how I now lift more
than I’ve ever lifted in my entire life, and how my plans to take a run at Matt
K’s total in the 220-lb class came to fruition as well as my plans to try out
for the Packers and fight Kimbo Slice. The truth is that even as I write this, I
am still trying to figure out how to proceed. I started by submitting my sob
story to Jim Wendler because I figured he’d been through this type of thing
before. After first advising me to up the dose, he went on to provide some great
insight into this fairly common predicament that we all face from time to time.
His remedy was simple. He told me to take time off, reevaluate current strength
levels and new plans to increase them, take some time to do only what you enjoy
doing at the gym, and most importantly to me, quit putting so much pressure on
yourself.
The last one—quit putting so much pressure on yourself—hit home for me more
than all the others. I didn’t consider the gym and my lifts as defining who I
was. Or did I? Was the fact that my squat had dropped off really so much a part
of who I was that I was acting differently toward those around me? If I had a
bad day at the gym, did that excuse being an asshole to my wife that night? I
realized that I had been struggling with this for quite some time and hadn’t
even realized it. Most likely, this was the biggest factor in my 10-week train
wreck of a training cycle. I just needed to cool it, plain and simple. I needed
to regress back a couple of years to a time before I started competing, when
lifting was just an activity that I enjoyed and a tool that I used to take out
anger and relieve stress.
I decided to take a completely new approach to my training that mirrored my
days of old. I purchased
Jim Wendler’s three-day a week book to begin using the
5/3/1 template because everyone and their sister’s cousin seem to be raving
about it. Will it work? Time will certainly tell.
I plan on writing a follow up in 12 weeks to see where I’ve progressed to. I
am confident that the gains will come back. Changing one’s entire way of
thinking and altering a training mentality that has been etched into my brain
for the past seven years hasn’t and won’t be easy. My peace of mind comes from
knowing that my old ways of thinking and stubborn approaches to training are
what got me to the position I’m in now. I’m pretty sure things can’t get any
worse, so what the hell, right? Besides, if it doesn’t work out, I can always
take Wendler’s original advice and up the dose.
Brent Moody currently competes in the SPF and WNPF in the 220-lb and
242-lb raw divisions. He has somewhat overcome inferior genetics with best lifts
of 500 lbs, 405 lbs, and 550 lbs. He is a founding member of Team ME based in
Atlanta, Georgia. Brent earned his bachelor’s degree in risk management from the
University of Georgia. In his spare time, he enjoys doing dumbbell rows without
straps and has plans of one day breaking Matt K’s one-arm dumbbell world record.
When not doing dumbbell rows, Brent enjoys hack squats with knee wraps.
Elite Fitness Systems strives to be a recognized leader in the strength
training industry by providing the highest quality strength training products
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