Oh dear. This post would be better titled “Powerlifting regress”.
Last week I ended up with only one workout at my disposal due to work commitments. I used the session to find some new depths that I could squat to and deadlift from. As a result I went into this week with my eyes wide open. I knew that the previous week I’d only done one workout, the week before that I had been walking rather than lifting weights, and the week before that I’d been so exhausted from the program that I’d taken a week off training to do some max effort testing. Essentially I was going into the gym after a three week break and squatting to new depths so I didn’t expect anything wonderful to happen.
Workout one (Saturday)
I was meant to start out with sandbag carries. I couldn’t pick up the sandbag though. I tried and tried. I rearranged the sand inside and took out the 2.5kg weights plate that was in there. I tried again and nearly got it, except I couldn’t hold it close enough into my chest so it fell out of the top of my arms. Eventually I gave up and moved onto the rest of my workout – Good Mornings, T-Bar Rows and Glute Bridges.
Thankfully I found that I could work with the same weight as before my holiday on these assistance exercises, so I wasn’t too disappointed.
Workout two (Sunday)
I stomped into the garage to crank out my squat and bench press workout. This is probably the toughest workout I’ve ever set myself and I’m impressed that I previously managed to crank out two months of doing it twice a week (though also unsurprised that I was overtrained by the end of the two months).
Starting with the squat, I used the 55kg I’d concluded the week before I needed to start with for my new depth. five sets later I was dead. I couldn’t get out sets of three reps anymore and had to drop down to sets of two for the remaining five sets. I’d be sticking on 55kg for another workout. I think the problem was partly work capacity (I felt like I was going to decorate the gym due to the lactic acid building up in the system) and I could feel that extra bit of the movement created by the extra depth. It was getting through that first bit of the push back up from the hole that I was struggling with.
Next up was bench press. I’d not changed anything with this but I have a history of losing arm strength quickly whenever I take a break. I dropped 1kg to 34kg, having previously managed eight sets of four reps and two sets of two reps on this weight and done one workout with 35kg (but only got out a series of 2×4, 1×3, 7×2). Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so ambitious. All I could crank out of this was 2x3reps, and 4×2 reps. On the sixth set I failed to get the weight to move off my chest and had to stop.
After that I felt horrendous. Lactic was coursing through me and everything was aching, so I called a halt and left out my pull ups and glute bridges. I decided that I’d build back up to it slowly and sensibly by extending the workout to include these later in the week.
Workout three?
The DOMS from workout two lasted for two or three days, but in the meantime I got ill. I ended up taking most of the week off work with a temperature which kept coming and going so I didn’t make it anywhere near the weights room. As a result I’m feeling a bit bothered about next week’s workouts. I feel like I’ll be starting from scratch. Again.
Chris and I believe that the last program was a bit too much. It gave great results but I struggled to make myself take rest weeks and as a result I burned out in style at the end of two months, suddenly unable to face getting under the bar to squat one day. Ten sets of three reps on squat and then bench press twice a week, plus two workouts with heavy deadlifts or sandbag carries takes a mental toll on you which I don’t have the mental capacity to deal with right now.
We’ve adapted my program to give me a three workout week program for a while. The workouts themselves are the same size, but I only do it three times instead of four times in the week. This might give me slightly slower progress but hopefully it will have the capacity to work for longer.
Hopefully it will also give me some space to find the fun in my workouts again as well. I need to get some fun back in there.
Related posts:
I hear you. It’s easy to get caught up in the numbers and forget that THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN!
Plus, muscle memory is a marvellous thing
Fun has definitely been lacking in my workouts for a while. Absolutely hammering myself with a tough workout was fun, but only for about the first 4 or 5 weeks.
I’ve put the Farmer’s Walks back into my Saturday workout for a bit since that provides plenty of entertainment (the fear factor of not wanting to drop the bars and crack paving slabs in the garden and the fun provided by the patio being a bit short and having to turn corners almost as much as doing straights). Outdoor work is also definitely more fun while the sun is shining and when the cat tries to join in.
I’m counting on the muscle memory and neural pathways firing up again before too long.
Tweets that mention Powerlifting progress 2010: week twenty-seven -- Topsy.com // Jul 13, 2010 at 10:32
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Stefano. Stefano said: Powerlifting progress 2010: week twenty-seven: Oh dear. This post would be better titled “Powerlifting regress”. L… http://bit.ly/ajo6Rn [...]
This sounds so much like what I’m going though with my program. Good program, not so good recovery. I’m having to change things a bit too.
Perhaps it’s something to do with summertime. Maybe we all do too many other things in the summer and don’t get that concentrated effort on lifting which comes with the winter when we’re cooped up indoors. I’m sure the walking in the Alps completely knocked me for six physically and that’s just one part of the extra walking/cycling etc that I do in the summer months.