Honestly, The last few weeks have been kind of a mess, but I'm still putting work in.
Right now I'm 11 weeks out from the XPC Finals, and it feels like I've never lifted weights before.
My bodyweight is down a few more pounds, and I'm waking up at about 188-189. I wanted to lose a bit more weight at the beginning of the training cycle so I wouldn't have to cut as much, but I'd have time to adapt.
I was definetly right about needing time to adapt... holy crap I'm weak right now.
All of my lifts are down, and every weight from 3 plates on up feels like a million pounds on my back or in my hands. I do NOT feel like I'm less than 3 months out from a PR performance.
But time under the bar has taught me that feelings are misleading, and you ultimately need to trust the process, which is what I will do. It's scary, but I've learned over the last few years that I'm better off If I back off between meets and allow myself to get weak. I just can't take the physical stress of trying to stay near peak strength year-round.
I know, not much in the way of training for this log, but hopefully there's a message someone out there can use. Maybe I'm the one that needed to read it.