Vacation was... cute. No real training, and I let myself eat virtually whatever I wanted to. It was a nice break, but by the time I got home I was REALLY ready to get back to lifting some fucking weights. In addition, I don't think I put on any REAL pounds but even so, after such a long run of eating pizza, ice cream, Lo Mein, breakfast cereals, etc. I feel really ready to get back on the diet and go harder than ever. Which is good: the whole point of the time off is to keep me from getting mentally tired out, and give me fuel to kill both my training and diet in the upcoming cycle.
Me on vacation
Me, in the near future
My need to lift some heavy shit was so strong, however, that on friday I had a heavy legs day, just to get back to feeling the weight. In addition, I wanted to test my deadlift a little bit, to see how it's been doing in relation to my squat. This is how that day looked like:
Squats:
5 x bar
5 x 95
5 x 135
5 x 185
5 x 225
5 x 275
Deads:
2 x 225
1 x 275
1 x 325
1 x 365 (fail)
The squats were all without a belt, which means technically I hit a new unbelted 5rm. I'm very glad I didn't lose any of my newfound squat power because of the time off. The deads, up to 325, were also unbelted. That 325 is a 20 lb unbelted pr, and is only 10 lbs below my current PR (335 with the belt). On a whim, I decided to belt up and go for 365 (even though the 325 was a bit of a grind). It wasn't happening at all, I barely budged it.
In the end, I felt a little disappointed, which is completely fucking stupid - I pulled just under my current pr after a week off, with very little warmup to prime my body to move the weight, after having squatted a 5 rep squat PR, and without a belt. However, simply because I failed that last rep, I felt disappointed in the day, which just serves to PROVE something I've been thinking for a while now - that doing reps you KNOW you might fail on is a waste. It just fries your body physically and hurts you badly mentally. I'm not saying I won't push myself harder and harder every workout - that is essential to getting better. But I knew that 365 would be a miracle, and I still went for it because I was feeling greedy. There is no need to do stupid things like that - as Jaime Lewis says, training to failure is training to fail, and I agree. In the gym, you have to understand that sometimes it just won't be your day, and you might miss a rep. HOWEVER, those failures should be few and far between. Otherwise you're doing one of two things: disappointing yourself over and over because you're pushing for PR's every workout instead of seeing the bigger picture, or making yourself completely okay with failing on reps, which should be almost unacceptable.
Anyways, all of that was a long way to say I was being a dumbass, but it was a really good day.
I wanted to do an upper body day too, but unfortunately the craziness of life got in my way. But I'm very ready to get back to training. Hopefully I'll finally start making some bench progress, my squat will continue to improve, the heavier speed work for my dead will help that go up, and my body fat will continue to go down. The plan is: 6 more weeks on, then a cheat weekend for my diet/scheduled light week for lifting during finals. Then, once I'm home for the summer, I'm going to jump into a 12 week cycle, and see if I can handle that much time without a deload. I'm very excited.
Tomorrow is gonna HURT though. Worst thing about taking a week off is you forget how bad it hurts to train. It's gonna be a rough day.... can't wait.
And this is just cause it's awesome. Wolverine is a fucking badass character.
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