I deal fine with stress.
That’s what I tell myself every summer, when work is relatively quiet and I can concentrate on my workouts and enjoying the good weather.
Come December I often recall my breezy summer comments and remember that time lessens unpleasant memories (this has been scientifically proven).
As well as dark, wet and cold days, December heralds the start of my “busy season” at work. How long the chaos lasts depends on what unexpected projects come out of the woodwork but the worst of it lasts for 3-4 months.
So I thought to myself that this year would be different. This would be the year when I cracked it, didn’t get stressed, and it wouldn’t impact my weight training.
How wrong could I be?
The last week of November
Things suddenly started to get busy. I was only doing a few more hours in the office, but I was working solidly when I was there: no proper break for lunch; long sessions of intensely looking at the screen; concentrating on too many things at once; and generally frying my brain.
With the intensity there was no thought left for my posture, so my shoulders started to hunch up with the excitement (?) of being busy and the adrenaline kept me clenching muscles tight when they should have been loose.
I started getting knots in my traps, but I rolled them each morning and told myself that I should be more aware of my posture in future.
While I still completed my workouts successfully that week, I felt drained. I assumed it was because I was nearing the end of a 4 week cycle of weights and so I decided that it was time for the new weights program, providing my body with some change.
Last week
Suddenly everything at work went crazy. Most days I spent 3-4 hours either driving to meetings or sat on trains getting to other meetings. Hours at a time spent cramped up behind the wheel of my Micra in traffic jams. The meetings themselves would go on for hours at a time with no respite to stretch out or stand up.
As the final abuse on my mind and body, the meetings took up so much of my working day that I worked extra hours each morning and evening to do the work I should have done during the day, resulting in early mornings and late nights. While I got 8 hours sleep each night, I’m used to more and my mind was too active to sleep well.
The time spent working detracted from the valuable “me-time” that I have when things are quieter. My rolling sessions ceased to be long drawn out self-torture when I could invest time in each little knot. Instead they became a cursory nod to the principle of rolling. Parts of my mobility drill were also ditched, in particular plate squats and thoracic extensions.
Gym mess
All the time I was oblivious to the slow but destructive impact that the stress was having on my body. So I had high expectations when I stepped into the gym on Tuesday night last week aiming to complete a PB push press weight (10 sets of 3 reps) that I’d been whittling away at for the previous two workouts.
By set two I couldn’t complete my reps. On set four I nearly took out the opposite wall because I couldn’t control the bar and had to drop it (thankfully it landed in the rack, though it took out part of the top of the rack in the process).
My workout was partially abandoned on the very first exercise and I had to morph it into one of my other workouts so that I could still get some decent work done in the gym.
What was going on?
My assumption was that I was unable to lock out my core and that my core and glutes weren’t communicating. It certainly felt that way. However, after deloading the bar slightly and being observed while I did some careful reps it was concluded that the problems went much further than that.
- My upper back was so tight that I was having to move the bar on a curved bar path to work round my body geometry.
- I had lost a lot of the thrusting force from my hips due to weakened glutes.
- I was unable to lock my core out once the bar was in the air.
- My forearms and wrists were so weak and poorly aligned (and the communication probably wasn’t there because of the tight back) so I was unable to straighten my wrists out. This was why I was dumping the bar so spectacularly when my arms were at full extension.
Unfortunately stress at work has a significant impact on my lifting and it seems I’ve not got the ideal solution yet.
What happens now?
In a word, rehab. More specifically:
- Taking an immediate day off.
- Thoracic spine extensions every morning and evening.
- Rolling the knots in my traps and upper back every evening.
- Continuing to roll my legs (all round) and hip adductors every morning.
- Squat practice with a deloaded bar as often as possible (at least at the start of my four weekly workouts).
- Try my hardest to delegate out as much work as possible and batten down the hatches for the next 4 months!
You’ll be able to find out how I progress (and whether this action plan works) in my Powerlifting Progress series.
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