Transform'd

Something I forgot to mention earlier today – I was doing squats today as a warmup, and we pushed the weight up 10 or 20lbs… 20lbs I think. To 205lbs. That’s a substantial increase. And I managed it. It wasn’t easy, but I couldn’t managed a few more reps than I did (I did 5).

Once again this is a huge sign of strength. I can’t remember what I was doing a while ago as my one rep max, but it was around 200lbs. Maybe 185lbs. To now be able to manage 205lbs on multiple sets. Wow. Strength is there.

This is quite impressive.

PS – reason I remembered about that achievement is that as I was taking my tee off for bed, I could feel where the bar was lying on my neck. LOL. It made that much of an impression

Today was hardcore. Probably similarly hardcore as the deadlift dropsets, but in a completely different way.

The legs dropset I’m working on right now is a lot slower. And a lot lighter. But it’s about large movements – lunges, squats, jumps, etc… So the feeling you get from the workout is wildly different to what you get on all the other workouts I’ve worked on. Not a bad things by any means – but just a considerable jolt to the system!

Which is good.

Adrian noticed a funny thing today – he mentioned how he now knows if he’s worked me hard, but I finally shut up. I thought that was cool. But seriously, after this workout, I could barely talk, let alone walk. It was INSANE. For lunch today I bought 3 chicken breasts! I just had to do it. I’m so exhausted and hungry. And this isn’t even the hardest workout – next week I have 5 sets to do. Today was only 4. Still – it kills me, but I’m not scared of it.

It’s weird – there’s this place I can go in my mind where you start to disassociate from all the crazy aches and pain that you’re going through. I started doing that in the final few sets of the lunges. Mind over body. Ouch. But it worked!!!

OK – that’s about it for now… more work and more eating. Lots more food

This is going to be phenomenally painful. Escalated Density Training (EDT) is up next after these dropsets. No fat loss program… just straight in.

BUT – there’s some respite. We’re going to take a week to week and a half off between the two. That means maybe 1 day in the gym in the meantime. Otherwise chilling, relaxing and primarily recovering and preparing for the hell that it to come

Bring it on.

This morning is quite nice. I’m sitting at home in front of my iMac writing this. Yes – I didn’t go into the gym this morning, and I feel good about it.

Reason why I didn’t go in – my legs were aching beyond normal yesterday. There’s a slight ache to them today. What you’d normally expect post workout – nothing too crazy. But still, if my legs are aching that much, I don’t want to push the body any harder than I need to. And given that today would be a cardio / abs day, it’s a good day to miss.

Adrian’s talked a lot about listening to your body – and there’s been a number of times when I’ve heard the body, but haven’t acted upon it. Aches were there, but not severe. I’d call this ache severe. I could barely walk! I was so bitchy yesterday – probably because of a number of things, but the ache would’ve certainly been a part of it. So it’s nice to know that I do listen to my body

One thing that I didn’t mention yesterday – chatting with Adrian, he was mentioning how a lot of his trainees are people that aren’t really committed. It seems as though they’ve spent the money on PT and are now forced to do something with it. I’ll say that’s what’s tough about a hard sales process – you’re going to convert people who don’t really want to be converted, or aren’t ready to deal with the implications of personal training (cos there are tonnes!). Sadly trainers have to deal with it…

It was one of the things that I noticed when I started training – during the conditioning phase (and I’m not not trusting that that was needed), but it was your same-old kind of training. It was good, but it wasn’t anything spectacular.

Now that we’re into the dropsets, etc… that’s where the training has really kicked up a notch. And Adrian mentioned yesterday that he’s only put maybe 10 people through this training plan, because he knows that most people couldn’t handle it. He discovers soon enough how masochistic his trainees are… seeing what they can put themselves through.

And we talked about ‘being good’ at training… about hitting that wall (lactic acid, mental, etc…) and just powering on through it. I can’t say that I’m that good yet… or if I ever will be… but I’m closer to that experience than I ever have been.

Question – do I wanna get that good!? Hmmm… maybe? It’s a new experience

Today was a really sluggish day. I was kinda out of it. Which actually worked really well at the gym – because we really pushed today. Pushed hard.

It was upper body – managed to increase weight on the close grip bench press – it almost felt light. Wild. I remember that I wasn’t able to do that before!!!

Did more of the push ups on the ball. Didn’t have any help from Adrian this time in stabilizing the ball. But managed to do all 8-10! I could hardly believe it! Then, of course, the dropsets kicked in. That was somewhat painful. But manageable.

Got it all done in about 1hr15. Not bad. Still – pretty damn fast.

And sadly – today my hamstrings are KILLING me. I’m fumbling all around the place. It looks quite funny really. I am starting to hate the day after the day after aches. They SUCK!!!! I can’t wait to get this one out of the way