Only gonna go back a few days with training so as not to bore you to death.
Here that is:
1/16
- Stepmill 15 mins
-Some activations with planks, bird dogs etc 4 rounds each
-Regular dumbell press. This felt rather ok today so worked up to a couple of heavier high rep sets at 80lb which up till today my left arm was being a asshole and not cooperating.
-Used some yoga blocks to do some dips for alittle different feel 5x12
-Decline press to finish 4 sets regular press, no tempo this time
-Kb one arm swings. Still working on getting in some reps in for Pavel's thing at the end of the month in Atlanta. 24kgx 30 per arm, 28kgx30 per arm, 28kgx 50 per arm
Few more activations to loosen up and keep my neck from seizing up
1/14 Lower
-Activations and usual plank/bird dog routine
-Reverse Hypers 4x12 to loosen up more
-Deadlifts close stance raws, bunch of triples and then 455 and 500 for some singles then a drop set back to 405 for 2x3 reps
-Kb snatches 20kg x 15 per arm, 24kx15 per arm, x 50 per arm(bout 4.5 mins so on pace.
-Reverse hypers 2x12
Ok so off the reservation time. Awhile back I talked about getting steamy and mad some and doing some activations to deal with it and how it toned it back down but not really killing it all as it had for the previous two months. Physically my body hasn't felt this good in years. My head however has become a different story. I describe it as my body feels great but my head feels like a asshole or I have also said it is like a giant ingrown zit you can't pop. Constant angry pressure. This pressure was reminicient of the old days when I had four stores rolling and constant employee issues. Things that hadn't bothered me in quite some time came back to roost.
So to finish this story, late I know, the pressure cooker of my own doing reached a explosion point right at the time we had planned a trip up to Chicago to see one of the doctors from the Be Activated seminar. The whole point was to discover why the activations were not bringing me down mentally as they had for the prior two months. Again physically, fantastic, the joints felt good, nothing had ripped or popped lately so from the chest down, awesome news for me. The doctor had only emailed us that there were many many layers of dysfunction and pretty much nothing else. But he is really really good so we knew what he meant.
He only does this on Wednesday afternoon , so with had to leave out on a Tuesday and come home Thursday. It wasn't near the funner trip it was the first time. This consultation was for both me and the wife. I got to start it off with him questioning me for about 30 minutes trying to really nail down why we were here. Both of us were stressed out pretty good but my stress and attitude gets everyone else wired up including her.
After about 15 minutes, it became pretty apparent that my long time (all my life)issues of taking things personally with employees and pretty much anyone around me who I felt had done me wrong, in reality had hurt my feelings so much and I could not understand why employees and close people would do those things to me that it had manifested itself in what i call asshole head. Essentially, I had no where to vent them on the heavy weights or some goal like a BB show to take it out on. Physically, I felt like these issues and internal problems had no where to manifest like they did in the past which I mean both in my body and in my head. So my brain was just trying to handle it but that is like a 250 mega hertz computer with IPhone type stress-way over capacity at the time.
These problems are nothing new and basically it comes down to boundary issues which like most I am not good at. Everyone wants everyone to like them(usually). It takes alot to say your feelings are hurt and when I realized what he was saying I also understood what I was doing. Other people are never gonna totally see things the way you do. The way you grew up. What you were taught and what they were taught mean different things to each. In other words. your own personal meaning may be completely different(and usually is) even though the subject is the same. So the essence was, make it 100% clear what you want and how you want it. If the person can not do it or won't then they may just not be able to do the job and you go your way and I will go mine. He also said they may be doing the best they can which in that case, I have to determine whether they stay and I accept it or they go. If I don't then I will only get wrapped up in it again the same way. This was not at all what I wanted to hear. I thought there must be a activation to save me-there must be. I was alittle pissy he was telling me this at the time.
He then proceeded to test my psoas which held ok during the muscle test. It had been fully connected and working a few weeks prior. He then asked me to sing while he tested and my psoas just gave right away. So my jaw was driving the anger ship along with some very jacked neck muscles. He worked on those, some energy meridians and several other parts that were not covered in the Be Activated seminars(This was also why I was here as well). Once he was done shredding these parts, he retested my psoas and it held like a steel beam.
One of the last things he did is more hocus pocus but the story is funny. It is not a anything earth shattering or science provable but it works. Basically you take five very deep diaphragm breaths and exhale just as long. On the last breath you exhale all the way and hold your breath. Now to explain this further, I had been practicing some Wim Hoff techniques for about a month prior to this meeting. One of the techniques is 30 deep breaths with shorter exhales but letting it all out at the end and holding your breath for as long as you can. I bascially made it about a minute or minute-fifteen best time. Wim's are designed more to help you control your body and reach a deeper parasympathic state which keeps you out of the stressful-flight, fight or freeze sympathetic state I had been in prior to seeing him. Eric's version was to bring you down a notch or two but also to help to get rid of the stress. Upon the last breath and then holding my breath, he tapped many meridians on my body and chanted in many ways to release and let go of the tension and stress. So the main idea is you let go of the pressure and stress or you die by not breathing. Obviously you are going to breath at some point but the idea is you choose to hold on and die or let go. Now, here is the kicker, I have never been able to hold my breath for more then a minute and honestly that has only been recently. It has really only been 45 seconds in the past. So you kinda understand, I have some paranoia about not breathing all my life. No idea where that trauma came from but it is ingrained deeply. Getting back to the last breath. As I laid there thinking I would be only holding it for a minute , he kept saying things about letting it go. It was me, the wife and him in a small quiet room at the hospital-no distractions at all, just me and him and the wife. He kept on tapping and asking me to let it go in many ways. So a minute passes and I am not even freaking out. Minute and half go by and I am still fighting his words. I hear everything he is saying and I feel stronger and stronger holding my breath. As you can tell , I want my shit sandwich! It is mine, damn it! Around the two minute mark, he says let it go less and less but I fight on and on. I think I finally get to two and half minutes and finally gasp for air. Truthfully, I think I could have made it to three minutes but I was tired of keeping it so I let it go. I really don't want to keep it. He did say that was one of the most impressive things he had seen in awhile. The wife said nothing but as soon as I gasped she was relieved. She had a recent quote she said to me, "When you make up your mind to do something, you are like a bulldog and nothing will stop you from achieving what you are after." In retrospect, she meant she thought I would hold on no matter the cost meaning not breathing to win! Luckily, I did not this time. But it goes to show how far we will go to keep our misery and hold we can manipulate our bodies if we really really want to.
Upon standing up after all of this, the release was very palpable. I told Eric it was like the end of Day 2 of Level One Be Activated. It was not a 100% gone but the majority of the stress and tension was gone. Although not a 100% satisfied either, I knew that he had done what I needed in the end-realization and enough release to move on. Oh and alot of new activations and how to look at them and address in the future. The wife's time is her story and her stresses are alittle similiar but different to her. She felt much better as well and we both learned somethings about ourselves that we kinda knew but not how to address them in a better and more healthy way.
To celebrate, we ate a awesome dinner at Ditka's Steakhouse. The waiter told me they only had one 23 oz bone in ribeye left and you know what that means-it is mine....Even though i know he was probably duping me to get the steak, it was by far the most awesome steak I have had in a very very long time.
Next up-recerting in kettlebells in Atlanta!
Spud