First off, things have been SO crazy. On a personal level, just last week I signed a lease for an apartment in Somerville. It was a long and stressful process....apartment hunting is not fun. But I'm SO relieved we found one and got approved...move-in date is Sept 1 (with the rest of the city, ugh). I can't wait to have a 20 minute commute as opposed to an hour and a half! On top of that, I've been under a lot of stress at work and at home. My car stopped working a few weeks ago (actually the same week we were looking at apartments, talk about bad timing). Luckily I won't need a car in the city, so we decided to scrap my old car. I'll be using my grandfather's car until I move. But for awhile I wasn't sure what I was going to do. And on top of THAT, trying to figure out all my expenses now that I'll be moving and realizing I'll probably have to pick up a second part-time job caused my stress to kick into overdrive....but onto the lifting!
Luckily my training hasn't been too affected by all the chaos. The back pain did come back, however we determined that might have happened because I decided to do some extra HIIT cardio that included stupid things like mountain climbers, burpees, box jumps, and jump rope. Not smart. My back has been in rough shape for about 3 weeks because of that...and I only did 3 workouts like that! Woof. After talking to my coach we decided that if I was going to add cardio in, it should be very low impact stuff. So I'm planning on waiting until my back feels better then I'll get into that. So my deadlifts have taken a slight hit since the back pain started, but hoping this is all just temporary. Other than that, everything is going really well. Right now I'm on my last week of the 3-month program. I'm max testing my lifts next week (convo deads, instead of sumo until my back heals), so fingers crossed! Here are some highlights from the past few weeks of training:
150x5 pause squats:
100x6 BOARD bench:
205x3 new 3RM:
100x1 new bench PR!
225x1 off blocks:
170x3 new 3RM:
So those are some of the achievements I've made so far in only 3 months! The 100lb bench was a huge deal for me. I've been stuck at 95 for almost a year now, but in the 2 competitions I've done in that year, I've failed to hit anything over 85. I've been really upset about my bench and I'm so happy its finally getting better! Moving forward is definitely going to be challenging, there are a lot of changes coming up quick, but I'm planning on continuing with John Gaglione because I've loved the progress I've seen with his programming and guidance. I just have to figure out where I'm going to be training once I move, and how it will fit into my schedule. BUT not worrying about that right now! Just gonna keep pushing forward and hope for the best!
I'm also probably going to start posting more stuff on here not necessarily related to my own personal training. I write a blog for work every week and sometimes I really love the topics I write about, so I might start posting some of them on here. I also have a lot of ideas for articles I'd like to write, so that may be happening in the near future! But in the meantime, stay tuned for my max attempts! I can't WAIT to test them out!
