June 4, 2019 – Week 1, Day 1

So I took a break. I needed it. Got frustrated and depressed with myself. My shoulder hurt from the sandbag and my motivation was just gone. I had overtrained. Trying to do too much. I had assumed I was ok from the injury in December but really, I was just burning the wick at both ends and continuing to push it with the compressed timeframe. I should’ve just taken a step back after the Arnold to get healthy. But I didn’t think that right after the fact so I lost 15.5lbs in a few days, dropped out of US Nats and kind of quit. I had messaged my coach and said I was done. This was tough. I was upset for days and it took a while to get out of the funk. I was going to try it on my own. I needed to find the joy in this again. A week later I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to do it alone. Trying to plan one training program was ungainly and it was not workable if I wanted to do another competition. I didn’t know if I wanted to compete again. Plan is to go back to things that were working so I don’t overtrain. 14 weeks of training and then compete in three competitions; NY Record Breakers on 9/8/19 in New York, Krank’d on 10/5/19 in Pennsylvania and Fullkerster on 11/3/19 in Maryland. All for fun contests with chances to qualify for both USS and SC if I want to do them next year.

5 Minutes Precor AMT

Mobility Prep

12” Log Clean and Strict Presses (1 clean)
90x3
110x3
130x3

150x3

170x3

190x3

210x3

Pulldowns
90x10
120x5
150x5

180x5

210x5

240x20

Precor Pec Flyes
85x10

125x7

165x7

205x32 PR+20lbs & 2 reps

Stretching

Comments: It’s been about 3 weeks since I had my little pity party. I finally wanted to get back to training and lifting. So I fully expected things to be a little rough. AMT to start off the session. 157bpm highest reading. A little expected to be honest with just doing brisk walks since I took the break. I’m glad my shoulder wasn’t really acting up on this. Felt good here. Nothing really ached. I’m not going to break down the movement prep. Some old, some new stuff. Dynamic stuff as well as short static stretches. Keeps the heartrate up so kind of like a continuation of the warm-ups. Idea being to get my body used to whatever I’m going to be doing for the day in the workout and make sure stuff isn’t bothering it. I knew that some of this stuff was going to make me sore from being detrained. After that was done, it was time to train. Not a lot of volume for right now. First up log press. Clean once and strict press for triples. Plan here was to work up to a decent weight. Don’t want any pain here. If it hurt, I was going to stop. Empty log and taking 20lbs jumps. Left shoulder was a little achy that first set and I was a little off balance but I got my groove down after that. Felt comfortable. I forgot my rehband belt so I just used the copper back wrap. I ran into Steve Kirit at the Y. Competitor in IFSA, WSM and Arnold in the early 2000’s. Also two-time America’s Strongest Man. And he kind of knew who I was. That was kind of surreal. Put me in a good mood. Maybe this was good sign. What are the chances? Topped out at 210lbs because my reps slowed down a little and wasn’t as automatic. Slightly over 85% of my best triple so good stuff and exactly what I needed to hit. Pulldowns after that. Regular shoulder width grip. Felt so weird compared to the wide grip that I was doing. Plan was to work up to 240lbs for max reps if everything felt good. It did but this was harder than I thought it would be. You’d think the shoulder width grip would be easier but I guess not. Goal had been 15-20 reps and I got 20. After that was pec flyes to end the night. I was a little leery of how these would go. I figured that these might be the thing that bothered my shoulder and I’d have to lower weight or not do them. But no, these felt ok. I wasn’t expecting a rep PR here as I was assuming my conditioning was a little down from not training (endurance seems to drop off faster than strength) but nope. Felt good with the workout and that I had left something to spare. I think that’s the idea for now. Home to stretch. Made sure to add stretches for my hip adductors and tibialis anterior as these have been tight and neglected with my stretching. Tasty Mississippi roast and bed.