Recovery Week

Finally heading back to the gym today after a rough recovery week last week. After the meet, I had a lot of back pain due to my max deadlift. I usually only deload and recover for half a week, and go back to the gym the Thursday after a meet, but I couldn't this time. Saturday was the first day I woke up with absolutely no back pain. Then I was also having some issues with my hamstrings....when I say "issues" I mean I strained both of them while teaching a bootcamp class on Thursday. So annoying, but that's what I get for doing nothing all week (exercise-wise) then jumping into teaching and demoing. My legs are still in a lot of pain, so I'm going to start this week with upper body and see how I feel by Thursday. I probably will only bench and squat this week, just to give my back a little more time to make sure its 100% better before I try to deadlift again.

After talking to a lot of people, I've decided that for my next training cycle I'm going to continue doing my 3 main lifts with lighter weight and higher volume, and focus more on assistance work to try to fix all my weak spots. I was going to completely take a break from powerlifting and do a hypertrophy cycle, but after talking to John Gaglione we decided that it wouldn't be a good idea to do that. I need to keep doing the big lifts to keep it in my body, and I really should only be working out 3 times a week because my body is so beat up already. So I'll be doing a lower body day (squat focus), upper body day (bench focus), and total body day (deadlift focus) each week. I'm going to start out by working at 65% of my max. And I'll be doing twice as much assistance as usual. I'll probably do this for 6-8 weeks, but it all depends on when my next meet will be. I'll need 12 weeks to train specifically for a meet, so after I figure that out I'll have a better idea of how long I'll be on this new cycle for.

I've also decided, after having a week to process the competition, that I was way too hard on myself last week. Most people don't PR 2 lifts plus their total in one meet. When I think about how far I've come since October, it's amazing that I did. I had a lot of obstacles that I had to push through, and where some people may have just given up, I never did. I trained completely alone, and I'm so proud of myself for doing that and sticking with it. I may not have PRed by much, or totaled 500, but only 4 months ago I was starting over from the bottom. It just goes to show what hard work and perseverance will get you. I want to thank everyone that has supported me and helped me from afar these past few months, I seriously could not have done it without you all. Now....I'm definitely gonna need to find a training partner because I don't want to train lone wolf style anymore! If I can PR on my own, just think about how far I'll go with someone else by my side! 

In other news, I spent this past weekend in Wareham, MA getting certified as an Intrinsic Biomechanics Specialist. It's a certification that is required by my company, but I'm actually really glad I did it. It's basically an assessment screen that determines if any of the deeper muscles around the pelvis and shoulder are in spasm. There are 8 tests, and each one has a corrective exercise that goes along with it. It's very cool, because it really shows how everything in the body is connected. If you have a problem at the pelvis, it will likely affect the shoulders or the knees and ankles. Correcting the main problem with the corrective exercises will help set everything back to normal. I can't wait to start using this at work in our initial assessments on new members. I also think it makes me a lot more marketable as a fitness professional in general. So excited to add more to my growing arsenal!