It was a long and very stressful couple of weeks being out of town and not training only made it worse. Training is a stress, most of the time. We strive to have perfect workouts, perfect meals and everything is very structured. Still, just GOING to the gym doing half-ass workouts likely could have lowered my stress levels and allowed for a bit of an emotional release.
Usually, after a long and stressful time like this, I take a day or two to kind of get my head straight, get my ducks in a row and decompress. This time was different. I got home late Sunday night and hit the grocery store even before getting home so that I could prep my meals that night and be ready on Monday to get back at it.
I was running on about a meal a day (large meal, mind you) and certainly had not been fully hydrated. When I travel, I don't like to drink a lot of fluids because I don't like to have to use the bathroom frequently. I knew I had to get my meals going as soon as I got up on Monday and get hydrated, as well.
Why was I miserable?
I have detailed my struggle with getting enough food to maximize growth and try to push my scale weight up, at all, over the last few months. My food intake didn't really seem that it was all that high because the food was going down quite easily with the exception of the higher carb days on my non-training days. It didn't even take me one full day to ask myself how in the hell I had been choking down this amount of food prior to the last couple of weeks. I mean, I found myself eating with my mouth open and just hating every second of it. I kept looking at the portion sizes and thinking, "Did I make a mistake and not measure this food accurately??" By the time I got to the gym, I felt like I was pregnant and had to go to the bathroom twice before I could start training. Yay for me.
The workouts have been awesome, though. Strength was down a bit but nothing dramatic. I knew I had to be careful after not training for 2 weeks but after warming up, everything felt great. The few minor pings I had prior to leaving town were pretty much non-existent. I was happy about that. What I wasn't looking forward to was the crippling soreness. It didn't take long.
Holy crap. This was the kind of soreness that I typically would get after taking a few months off. At the same time, the soreness hasn't lasted very long so that is a good sign. I was worried I wouldn't be able to train a muscle group again for a week but the soreness has dissipated relatively quickly. I mean, it was only 2 weeks but I think the stress levels being so high, my sleep being crap, my food intake being horrible and not being hydrated, compounded me going from great shape to pretty much "meh." I've always said, though, that as quickly as I can lose it, at least I can get it back pretty quickly, too. As the days go by, I am looking like a bodybuilder again.
I anticipate that I will be close to 100% by the end of next week and progressing again by the week after that. We all hate to take time off but this was a necessity. Sometimes life just insists that there are other things that are more important and this was certainly one of those times.
I have spoken to my family and asked that no one pass away in the next few months because my gainz can't handle this type of downtime. They seemed to understand so I appreciated their concern.
I'm happy to be back at it and back into my routine at home. And so are my cats.
