Sunday, June 19, 2016

Training.

6/19 - shadowbox, stretch
6/17 - chins + pushups/gtg
6/15 - press, chins, pushdowns, cable curls, laterals, tricep dips, db curls



No More Sugar-Coating The Truth | Physical Living: "So, if you want to improve your health, fitness, conditioning, and quality of life, here are some hard truths for you… You’re going to have to change things about the way you live your life. Change is hard. Accept it and move on. You will have to use your body – vigorously and regularly. You’ll have to show up every single day. Showing up is only the beginning. What you do today should always be more difficult than what you did yesterday. That’s how growth happens. You are in a constant flux of always training, always recovering. You cannot stop this process. Ignore it at your own peril. There are no days off, and there should be no easy days on. Period. Sometimes, it will hurt, and you’ll have to keep going anyways. What and how you eat is just as important as how you train (ie critically, vitally, unavoidably important). So, you’re going to have to eat good food that supports your goals. Yes, you will probably need to do some research. Yes, you will need to plan some meals. Yes, you will need to try some new recipes. Yes, you will need to do the shopping yourself. Yes, you will need to buy the best foods and ingredients that you can afford. Yes, it may even cost more. Yes, you will need to prepare it yourself. Yes, you’ll get to eat it yourself (yay!). And yes, it will take time. Yes, yes yes. Stop making excuses and stop ignoring the elephant in the room. Buck up and get with the program. Your life depends on it, and we’re counting on you. You are capable of more than you can imagine. You’re going to have to find time or make time for the important stuff – just like everyone else does. The details do matter. You’re going to have to give up some of the things you love. It won’t be easy."



Are You Overtraining?: "If you had asked me a year ago how often one is capable of training, I would have said 3 days per week in the gym, and doing something physically active the other days like riding a bike, going for a walk, or playing recreational sports is enough. Anymore and you risk throwing your stress levels through the roof...

Over the course of the last year I have slowly increased my volume to over 800 competitive lifts in a 4 week period. You may look at that number and wonder how I am still standing. I actually have never felt better (knock on wood). In the beginning I was constantly sore and doing a plethora of soft tissue work. Now, my soft tissue work is very minimal and my warmups actually only take about 10 minutes to complete. How can I go from feeling like I have been hit by a bus, to increasing volume and end up feeling better? The reason is that I adapted...

One of the signs of overtraining is not feeling like you want to train. Increased muscle soreness is also a sign of overtraining. I have felt like this many times in the last year, but I was able to train and hit all of my numbers with no problem. I have even hit a PR on my deadlift when I was sore and tired from testing my squat and bench the day before. My deadlift test is also superseded by some volume benching. Loss of performance is also a sign of overtraining. If we are still hitting PRs are we really overtraining? Even with that sign of overtraining it misses the mark. Strength gains do not always move in a linear line. Sometimes weight decreases before it increases. 3 months before I pulled that deadlift PR I had a scheduled test day in my program. I was not able to pull what I had pulled at my previous meet, and actually had to grind out 30lbs less than my best lift. I had begun working with Boris Sheiko after my October meet last year. This was a few months into working with him and my body was not adapted yet to the programming. I was not over trained, even though I felt sore, tired, and weak, and my performance was declining. I was undertrained. My body was not adapted to the new program. I continued to train through this and ended up putting 100lbs on my total in 6 months. As I am writing this today, I have never felt better while participating in any sport, and my volume has only increased since we started. This does not mean we can just start lifting heavy every day of the week. We need to allow our body to adapt. The amount of volume we do needs to be carefully selected. Too much volume and you will get injured, too little volume and you will not adapt as well. I was wrong in estimating how much volume we are capable of handling...

The take away of this is do not be afraid of overtraining. It is very unlikely that you will get there. The body is an extremely effective adaptive machine, and we tend to not give it enough credit. If you are just looking to exercise to feel better, 3 days per week in the gym and doing active things on the other days is more than enough. If you are looking to compete in the strength sports or CrossFit games, take a look at your program and be honest with yourself. Are you doing enough work to truly maximize your potential, or are you doing less being scared of overtraining?"

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