This week has been crazy but a lot of fun. I don't see my Dad very often (haven't seen him in almost 2 years) so he is in town for my oldest daughter's graduation. I have not wanted to spend a lot of time in the gym so I trained my 3 days all in a row this week to get it all done up here at the area Recreation Center near the house to save the roughly 2 hour round trip commute time.
The Rec Center near our house is at an elevation of 9200 ft above sea level. It is not a very well-equipped gym and the first day I went in there to train all I did was bitch, piss and moan about how small the place was and about how the guys were metaphorically pissing on the equipment to mark their territory. It is odd how guys act when someone new comes into "their gym", but I digress...
After moaning the first day, I decided to take a different approach after looking at the pics I took of the gym. I was looking at it the wrong way: Basically looking at it like this was a commercial gym that only fits about 5 people comfortably when I needed to look at it as my own personal home gym and a couple people might come in every now and then to train briefly. The 2nd and 3rd day I trained there, I was the only one in the gym and THAT was awesome. Dead quiet, too.
If you have not squatted at a high elevation you have no clue what I am talking about. This shit is BRUTAL. Even my warmup sets of 135 had me sucking air. There is no fast pace training at this elevation. You better wait between sets until you are sure you are recovered before going at it again. I did warm ups and 7 sets of working sets along with hamstring curls and leg presses. The pump was other-worldly. Now, that might be from the mk677 but I have been using the mk for a couple of weeks and did not notice a pump like this until just this week. I am not usually big on "pumps" but when it is skin splitting, it should be noted.
Strength was not up much, if at all, this week. That is fine but next week I plan to push my strength up as much as possible with this new training schedule starting. With the increased frequency of sessions, I need to be very sure that I don't hit too much volume and end up not recovering - especially considering the amount of time that is involved in my commute just from adding an extra day ( I commute an hour to the gym both ways).
Condition going into this training structure change is pretty good. I am still holding a lot of water from the mk but by the next morning I am dry again so I am not too worried. My weight is holding pretty consistently at around 210. I anticipate that strength will be picking up very soon - possibly even this next week.
Anyone that comes out to Colorado to train with me in the next few months is going to get talked into this squat session over 9000 ft.
Hope you all have a great weekend!
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