Back On Track
Well, after a bitterly disappointing workout last time around, I’m back on track and I’m buzzing! This is how it should be!
What’s more is, I think I’ve learned some very valuable lessons recently… which I think are definitely worth mentioning…
I keep a tracking sheet for every single workout, and I jot down notes on my performance; how things felt, ideas on what to try differently next time, etc. And I think today it really paid off, and here’s why…
If you’ve read the last blog post you’ll see I put forward several ideas on why I felt I may have underperformed last time. Since then I’ve thought of a couple of other reasons why I may have floundered – and a few of the reasons were staring me in the face right on my tracking sheet!
I think if I would’ve been paying more attention to my notes on what was happening previous weeks, I wouldn’t have had such a bad time the last time around. But that’s hypothetical now, init.
The first clue I was setting myself up to fail begins on my squats on the 6th, before the truly ‘damning’ evidence on the 8th.
Squats on the 6th were:
Warm up sets: 35 kg x 5, 45 kg x 5, 55 kg x 5
Working sets: 70 kg x 5, 70 kg x 5, 70 kg x 5
No problem – I passed with flying colours.
Now – here’s where the cracks start to show… on the 8th Feb, I started by UPPING my warm up sets by 5 kg each set, doing 40, 50, 60. And then… after my first working set of 72.5 kg x 5, I’ve noted, I nearly couldn’t un-rack the bar on set 2, and nearly failed on the last rep. AND THEN… on set 3, I couldn’t un-rack the bar at all, and had to drop down to 70 kg to complete the final working set.
By looking at what I wrote at the time, it’s pretty obvious I was struggling even on the 8th. Anyway, onto the 11th – the disaster it was – it’s no surprise that when I tried tackling 75 kg for my working sets, beyond my first set which I think went ok, I probably had drained myself completely and couldn’t even lift what I had lifted convincingly only a few workouts before when I tried to drop down to 70 kg and still failed, and gave in.
What I think happened…
It may be that by upping my warm up sets by 5 kg on the 8th, I already made the difficult task of progression on my work sets even more difficult, which probably contributed greatly to my outcome on the 11th.
Another thing which I think is crucial, is, I didn’t stretch my quads pre-workout. I normally do, but only for a little while. I instantly noticed on the 11th, I’d spent a more time stretching. Upon doing some research, many believe stretching pre-workout only serves to take the tension out of your muscles – which you need for power – and does absolutely nothing a few good warm up sets doesn’t do without taking the tension away.
And yet another thing I did differently this time – which is more inline with what I usually do, is, rather than simply getting up, gobbling breakfast fast and heading to the garage to workout, I took my time. I ate a banana, had a glass of milk, and a glass of water. I allowed myself to wake up for an hour, before I headed off to the garage at around 11:40am.
As for my failure at benching, that appears to be clear as day now, too – again, on my notes. (Am I an idiot?)
On the 6th, with 40 kg x 5 rep x 3 warm up sets, I benched 60 kg for my first working set; clearly noting that I nearly failed the last rep. I then dropped down to 58.5 kg for the last 2 sets. Even the drop down was an increase of 1 kg to my last workout… so I was still pushing it even then…
And then on the 11th, my next benching session, what do I do? I try to bench 62.5kg for my first working set… and surprise, surprise – failed mid set.
It’s now pretty clear as day what the major factor in my disastrous 11th Feb workout was – my failure to read my notes from prior weeks, which would’ve told me everything I needed to know… a huge lesson learned.
Plus, consistency in my routine (as in, getting up, having breakfast, allowing myself time to wake up first before running out to the garage too soon), is no doubt another factor I should keep in mind if I want to avoid a repeat of the 11th.
Anyway, today I made amends, when surprisingly, despite my lapse on the 11th, I managed to up my weight on my squats from what I did on the prior workout on the 8th by 1 kg – without nearly failing on the last rep second set, and without having to down the weight on the last set. It was 73.5 kg straight across 3 sets. We’ll see how my next benching session goes now I intend on implementing my new found ‘wisdom.’
But, successes are not without their bad moments. Today was no exception…
After finishing my squats, I was taking the plates off the bar, like I normally do – safety catches on – when suddenly the safety catch DIDN’T catch the uneven bar, but rather bounced and unhooked, knocking the 20 kg plate from my hands, sending it crashing loudly onto some ladders, and the other still-fully-loaded end of the bar dropping straight to the floor – and bar-first though the lid of a tin of white paint, sending smatterings of white paint all over my bench and my weights!
Then the pain caught my attention…
Somehow, during the chaos, the bar had obviously caught my finger on its rapid decent to the floor and ripped a biggish flap of skin from the tip of my thumb… that stung!
So with my finger dripping a good bit of blood, turning the garage floor and my hand into a scene out of Hostel, I tried to stop the bleeding by dabbing on an old blanket, leaving dots of blood which come to resemble a platoon of unfortunate ladybirds after a napalm strike.
After a minute my finger stopped bleeding and I got on with the workout, thankfully. It’s a good job it didn’t rip my thumb nail off… that would’ve been a disaster… and thankfully I wasn’t even more seriously injured as could’ve easily happened.
Still, another important lesson learned: don’t trust the hooks on flimsy benches to work properly – they won’t!
