It is currently June 20th and I'm supposed to have AT LEAST one entry here at EliteFTS every 7 days, and this is my first of the month. I can't offer up any excuses because any that I state will make it sound like I value EliteFTS less than I do every other medium that I use with ease so I'm going to take this time to tell you a little story that might just benefit YOU one day.
Social media is a great way for me to kill time and to think of completely pointless things, to totally zone out. I don't work via social media, I don't do anything meaningful via any type of messenger or private messages, etc...and if you are one of my clients I'm sure that I've done my best to make this clear to you on one or more occasion 🙂 If it is important, it needs to be organized and professional and sent to my work email address so that I can give YOU and your situation the proper attention that it needs and deserves. EliteFTS, for me, is one of those places where I tend to give very little attention or I give my all. Sometimes, especially recently, it has been very difficult to give MY ALL. Go All In, Or Quit...right? Crap...
So far this month my wife has spent most of it traveling abroad working to assist others in the field of Autism, making a real difference in the lives of people in need. When she is here she is either babysitting for me so I can train or she is researching for her PhD. I can't remember her going to sleep before 0100 the last month and she is awake every morning at 0630 to work. Heck, on the 31st of May she was in Germany and set a 13 KG PR on her Weightlifting Total, then went straight to the room and began studying through the night! But when I'm home the kids are mostly mine and my little dude can be well more than a hand full. I've mentioned before that he is Autistic which is compounded by him also simply just being age 3! I have no idea how the young man weighs 5 lbs as much as he runs through the house but somehow he is the weight and size of a 6-8 year old (yeah, I know, right?). My oldest is 11 and is super active in almost everything after school and is a HUGE help with his brother and anything else that I need around the house.
When I look at this week alone, it all centers around one thing and if you are a friend of mine you know what I'm talking about. We have been getting our house refinanced after a major banking collapse last year. When I say "we have been" I do meant that we began in September of 2018 and signed the papers not long after...and we have waited. And waited. And waited. Banks have changed our mortgage rate, changed our payments (by large figures), lost our children's saving accounts, required life insurance policy changes, and a lot more that just makes you want to pull out your...no...their hair. But Tuesday morning they called us bright and early (several times) to tell us to be there to sign the papers no later than 0930. All I can say is that the last bank sent their representative at 1 in the afternoon, he forgot his paperwork (again) and it took me 4 1/2 hours to initial two papers. At one point my wife cornered the guy and was yelling at him.
We came straight home and both passed out on the couches and begged my oldest son to just try and control the damage that our youngest would do for the next 60 minutes so I could close my eyes. When I woke up 1 hour later...the house was a disaster but everyone was alive, myself and all kids included.
Just a note...it is Thursday here and they still haven't sent everything through, which was supposed to be there 48 hours ago. Holding my breath.
Wednesday morning I woke up with a huge laid out training plan and the moment that I woke up (when my son had his 5 hours of sleep and woke me up) I realized that it was not my day to push. It was a day to do the minimum OR risk a major injury physically or mentally. People talk about OVERTRAINING all of the time but they often leave off the fact that LIFE is also TRAINING. Stress is Stress is Stress and everything that you go through in your daily life will change how your body performs and recovers.
I arrived at the gym and just sat there in silence for 30 minutes before I did anything. Before foam rolling, before I covered myself with hot creams and turned on great music. Just silence. It was the first time I'd had silence in so long I can't remember. After that I got up and began straightening the gym. Bands went here, chains went there, rubber mats went over here and my bench shirts got folded and put away again. And then I slowly got under a bar.
About 3/4 of the way through the session I realized that I was gasping for air and I wasn't pushing myself that hard. It was hot, but it wasn't THAT HOT. My body was just shutting down. My heart rate was climbing because my stress levels were sky high and my body couldn't tell the difference between me worrying about money, trying to find a place to stay in The USA in August, the mountain of work I have left to do at home, and the sets of dynamic effort squats I'd just done. My body just knew it was under a huge strain!
So I stopped. I skipped hamstrings, lats, and abs. Honestly...what else was I going to do, throw my body under a bus just so I couldn't recover from it? The point of training is to train ONLY to the point that you can recover from and not a millimeter more, so that is what I tried to do.
So we packed the car and I let my oldest son shift gears in the car as I drove home through the village. I parked the car and watched my youngest lay on the couch in near silence...which completely changed the moment that I walked through the door and he hasn't stopped (it is after 0200 now). As I wait for him to drift off to sleep I'm already thinking about everything that I'll need to knock out tomorrow and if I can do a recovery session tomorrow...but recovery has to be recovery and not more stress.
What do I want you to take away from this? If you are in a position where your life is stressed, don't stress it even more in the gym. Stay home? Heck no! Get to the gym, find a quiet place and relax in silence, and spend most of your time on the lifts that don't stress your adrenal awesomeness as much as you normally do. Give yourself a couple days to let your body and mind heal so that when you are ready and able to push like an animal again...YOU CAN!
And now...a glass of tequila.
