Background: I work at OSU as a graduate teaching associate and lift at Ludus Magnus. I am a raw lifter who competes in the 105lb weight classes, and am currently prepping for my next meet (when grad school finally gives me a weekend off) . Currently, I am in the process of trying to accomplish my lofty lifting goals,survive graduate school, and teach undergraduates about what I really love, TRAINING..

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Concentric Block,Wk 3: ME lower (Sunday April 5th)

Warm up-general
1.Stepper

Warm up-specific
2a. x 20 lunges forward
2b. x 20 to the side
2c. x 20 backward

Training
3. Max effort squat (no belt, no wraps)
up to 250 x 1
WHAT THE HECK huge PR a few days before my thesis was due!!
then downsets
200 x 2 x 1
At this point my back was bugging out so I shut it down

4. Front Squat
3 x 3

5a. Reverse hyper
3 x 20

5b. Lying leg curl
2 x 20

 

The end of a training cycle 🙁

So this training cycle, a lot of good has gone down amongst the bad.  Since this was the end of my macro cycle (16 weeks) here are my reflections on the mesocycles:
Weeks 1-4 eccentric block
-sick once
-but never felt overtrained
-crazy sore
Personally lots of wavering on decisions, a lot of work, and was not stressed but acting pretty unpredictable. Very little sleep was occurring.

Weeks 5-8
-sick once
-felt overtrained
-Had more work, but more sleep (for me), and less unpredictability (lots of hard times). Continuously interviewing.

Weeks 9-12
-sick once for half the cycle
-hit multiple PRs
-reduced hard times, less sleep, more work prepping thesis

Moral of the story: you adapt to personal and physical stress and eventually, both no longer become stressors.  I believe this is called super compensation. It applies to both training and your personal life.

That being said, let's talk about the PRS at the end. I would say this is 100 percent (with standard deviation though) related to letting go of my training ego. You see, in training I would want to get a PR SO BADLY that I would be too stubborn to stop my max effort lifts at technical failure. By letting my ego get in the way, I would reinforce horrible technique with my final attempts.

Now, I know some people say you need to strain and I agree; BUT, if you keep perfect form  you can still strain.  Heck, the relative straining occurring could very likely be the same.  Plus, by dropping the absolute load, you reduce further reinforcing  a terrible motor pattern.

Think of it like this (at times when you check your training ego):

If you walk through a forest, it takes a long time at first to get from point a to b because you have all these weeds in the way.  But as you walk from a to b over and over, the time it takes to get there decreases, which is essentially what happens as you train a motor pattern. As you accumulate more and more reps, getting from a to b becomes increasingly easier to do.

But what happens if you want to take a new path to b (Same distance nearly but slightly shorter).  Well it's pretty hard.  For one, since it's new, part of you wants to just go back to the quick and easy (and at this point faster familiar path).  All that weed chopping down takes forever!  However, if you can just keep walking the new path, eventually it gets to be the quicker one.  BUT I only if you repeat it over and over.

So essentially, that's what it takes to fix your form.  You have to stick to the new path and have faith its shorter.

For once I did that, and this training cycle it heavily rewarded me.

As for next macrocycle, all have updates on that in my next post. I know this one was out of order, but the last two weeks have been a mess and I didn't realize I never pressed "post" on this.

So, to adapt is to not adapt...