I have not made it any secret that I have not been happy with my training for the last 6 months. My body has rejected so much that I'd really like it to accept, like bodyweight. My injury rate has been HIGH and my energy has been low. Every step that I would make forward would quickly turn into a sprint backwards followed by a kick in the teeth. The truth is, I just want(ed) to quit. It took a close friend, Matt Ladewski, to turn around my thinking.
Matt didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know. In fact, he constantly reminded me, "You already know this because I learned it from one of YOUR videos a long time ago, but..." and then he would take me to school. A lot of people walk on egg shells when they are around me because they see how much I struggle at times just to walk across a room and don't want to hurt a sick man's feelings. And then the other half feel like they are in the room with a super star because of my YouTube fame. Matt is not one of those guys and has never EVER been. He has never had a care in The World who I am or what I have done, only how much more that I could be. So Matt sent me ideas for me to get back on track and I highly rejected 90% of them. In fact I think that I rejected all of them EXCEPT for getting A PLAN!
I don't have direct goals and I can't tell you "what works" based on the last 3 years of my life. I can't tell you which sport that I want to focus on out of the three that I like to partake in. I want to do Strongman, Powerlifting, and Weightlifting and I also want to run a business (two in fact), run a house hold (as a registered house wife), and I want to be World Class at all of them. Nothing less is truly acceptable. I don't have to compete but I do have to be World Class.
The amount of work that I have done is almost unbelievable. My "Rest Days" are only rest when I'm taking a nap because the bulk of my day is spent moving around and preparing for the next training session. TRX, acupuncture, e-stim, band work, stretching, tempering, smashing, rolling, flossing, etc... Non-stop! If I want to be World Class I have to be able to train like a World Class Athlete so I have to recover FAST! My flexibility and mobility and agility has to be planned out months in advance!
I even went to The Holy Table at my gym and spent some extra time there. You may laugh, but this stuff is important.
I began planning my accessory work as the most important part of my training. Every training session contains something for:
Lats
Triceps
Biceps
Rotators
ABS
With a torn Teres Major and Bicep, and where they connect to my shoulder runs down my tricep...none of this was pleasurable. I hate training these anyway but I can promise you that every single rep that I did I was thinking about the Atlas Stone that I wanted to load the next Sunday of Strongman Training.
I did a lot of moving and movement work in and out of the gym that will help me to become a better athlete. Tons of ankle work, one legged work, TRX work, jogging sprints for 10 feet, and a bunch of stuff that everyone else thought was stupid.
I did stuff to bring up more weaknesses, including cardio. I did heavy kettle bell swings in between sets of Dynamic Effort box squats that left me, every single time, laying on the floor.
I have had a couple of true friends show up to support me when I have been down. Even on a planned deload day of my training, knowing that they would out lift me because I was deloading, they still supported my deload and reminded me that it was my day to back off...even if they were in on vacation for Christmas.
I have pushed myself to the point of exhaustion, physical AND MENTAL. To the point of emotional tears. Wondering with each movement if this was going to be the rep that tore my arm completely off or if I could be PERFECT and keep things held together once again. And when success hit, tears fell.
Over the last month, I am VERY PROUD to say that I have set PRs on every single event on Strongman Sundays. Yes, I had to reset my PRs but as Matt Ladewski assured me..."sometimes life calls for a hard reset"! There is no shame in climbing back down the ladder to start at the bottom again, as long as we keep climbing. So I have broken PRs every single week (very tiny and cautious ones) and I have celebrated every single one of them!
Sorry, but I can't stay here much longer to tell you everything that I have done or that I have planned for the future. MY FUTURE. I simply can't, because I'm too busy working for it. There isn't time to talk, there is too much to be done.
Wait till you see what I do next...
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