June 15, 2023 – Week 14, Day 3

T-Spine Reaches
bwx10/10

Andrew Lock Shoulder Big 3’s
10’sx10-10-10

Single Band Arm Archer Rows
lbx15/15
lbx15/15

Chaos Band Push-ups
bwx10
bwx10
bwx10

Single Arm Overhead Band Triceps Extensions
µbx25/25
µbx25/25

Bretzel Stretches
30/30 seconds
30/30 seconds

Stretching
 
Comments: As the past post would indicate, it hadn’t been a good week or day up to this point for me. Very stressed and irritable and then bad stuff happened all at once. The frustration such that I had the conversation in my head about dropping out of the competition and retiring from competing. Been a bit since I did that. About the same time as far as being out from Nationals when I had those feelings and I managed to have my best placing there ever by a good bit. So I guess recovering from that relies on my gaslighting myself. Only way I can see it as me still doing this when I’ll read of people saying that they are too beat up after this much time or need to take PEDs to get anywhere. And here I am trudging along drug free. Refusing to accept that this is my best and I’ve yet to peak. But it does have me taking a step back to look at things and potentially reconsider how things are done. I continue to be good at my good events but the gap with my bad events despite improvements seems to grow. And I seem to have to do more stuff to combat joint issues for the neck, shoulders and knees. Or at least having to be me more cognizant of them (like sleeping a certain way for the neck). Like having a high reliance on knee sleeves at this point for things like squats. But not sure what the solution to that is. As far as thoughts going into this competition, I feel that I’m where I can be as far as things like stone, bag toss, frame and Hercules hold. Press I have no idea as it has been going off of estimates from calculations rather than “real weight” so that I think is the most concerning for me as I feel like it isn’t anywhere good enough. Deadlift I knew I’d be behind and while improvement, I don’t feel it is enough here either to hit my goal with how the last session felt. Putting down the words of the thoughts so that maybe acknowledging those things in a way lessens the stress burden I hold inside myself and gives me some power/control of that. As might be expected, the remaining training sessions have been lowered in intensity so that I can recover in all aspects. There seems to be a trend where about 2 weeks out that my stress hits a detrimental limit and need to work on that as far as dropping the stress of sessions so that I can stay as optimal as I can with the work/training/life balance. This workout was listed as optional because of the blow up and idea was more to keep movement and blood flow stuff but to focus on getting myself to feel healthy in aspects not measured by weight lifted. I felt it was important to do some moving around and as an indicator that I can move forward with things. T-spine rotation to start things off. Not a change from before here. Still feel good. I might have done an extra rep on one side by mistake as distracted and focusing on just feel rather than a number. Lock Big 3 up next. No holds beyond just a brief one so I was able to do these with minimal rest between the different angles/lifts and stick to the same weight and reps. A variation of band row was next. This was kind of a different version of the alternating band rows. Idea being keeping thoracic mobility good. Split stance and rowing with rotation but keeping it to the upper body and core. No hip shifts. I think I got the hang of it. It was a little tricky to focus on all aspects and I think I got better as I went for the second set, like actively reaching with the other hand to increase the stretch. Moving on to chaos band push-ups. This took the longest of setting up but that was on me. These were to be 2-3x10-15 at low RPE (everything was to be RPE 3-5) and I usually when I do these use multiple bands so I can have a set point and not worry about the bands sinking under my weight so much. But I wanted to have just one band so that there was maximum wobble for the stability purposes. So I needed to set the band a lot higher than usual to get things set up and that was some trial and error. With how these felt, I stuck to 3x10 here. Felt better as I went. Only exercise I took actual break between sets (like 90 seconds). Triceps after that with bands. Single arm overhead stuff but no stretch component. Notes indicated to do 2x15-25 and use a micro band so as it is like nothing. I elected to play around with the hand position since the band tension was so light and even with a thin band, it didn’t put pressure/cut into my hand. Did the first set pronated and the second set supinated. To put emphasis on different heads of the triceps. Last thing was a stretch I’ve not done. I guess kind of but not this way. I had to relook at it a few times to get it in my head the picture of how this would go. I guess this was a combo of thoracic, hip and glute stretch. ROM increased a good bit by the second round. Put stuff away and got started on dinner. Workout took less than 30 minutes. Stretched before bed as well. Just need to get through Friday and then I got a longer weekend and a short week of work as taking off Friday to travel out to competition.