I'M BACK

So, it has been a WILD couple months. In terms of training, I have dealt with quite a few setbacks, both mental and physical. I needed a break, for my mind and my body, and some time to create a new relationship with training. And, although I trained in one way or another through the last 8-10 weeks, it is NOW that I finally feel ready to return full force. I know now, more than ever, how and why training is a part of my life, and I am extremely excited to be back at it.

To give a quick summary of the time I have been missing - First of all, my back injury needed rest, and secondly my mind was simply not in a place to put the focus and energy into training that I needed to be putting into training. I needed to rest my body to try and make it heal, and I needed to put more time and energy into friends, family, fun, etc. Physically, the time off did not do what I hoped - I tried to come back to squatting and deadlifting after a long hiatus, and unfortunately my back immediately started bothering me again. However, mentally I am finally feeling great again - I am ready to be training my ass off again. Unfortunately, because of my back I can't train the exact way I want to (the way I always have), with heavy weights and lots of squats and deads.

SO, the new plan is simple - I'm going to avoid movements that load my lower back. This means no squats and deadlifts for a while, and only very light stuff when I do come back. HOWEVER, aside from that, I am basically just going to MURDER my body every workout, and work to get as big and aesthetic as I possibly can. I lost around 20 lbs total over the past few weeks, so I'm sitting around 225, and I think my goal over the next 8 weeks or so will probably be to try and stay at this weight, and just make myself as lean and huge as possible. That means tons of high-rep leg press, leg extension, hammy curls, air squats, back extensions, glute bridges, light squat and dead variations when I feel healthy enough. For my upper body, I can still bench, but I am also goign to try and focus more on movements I tend to neglect - more back work, more shoulders, more dumbell work. Basically: focus is not on strength and the big 3, but rather on getting an insane pump and simply KICKING MY ASS every single workout. I can use the big 3 to get there, but I need to keep my focus elsewhere.

So the goal is to basically get as big and aesthetic as possible. I want to look like a fucking cartoon character by the time I come back. For the next 8 weeks, I'm not going to set any real goals except to try and work my ass off every single workout. Then, once I graduate and settle into a new rhythm of life, I might set some more concrete size goals - Right now I have 30 inch legs and 18 inch arms in mind for starters. I also would like to set a waist goal, as I have been carrying some extra belly fat for a long while and it would be nice to increase my leg/chest/arm size and get my waist down a few inches. Kill two birds with one stone, and go from looking okay to looking awesome.

I think, since I am just getting back on the blog, I am going to keep my blogging goals simple too - I'm not gonna type up every set and rep. Rather, I think I'm gonna rate every workout out of 10, give some brief explanation, and leave it at that. Rating will be based on intensity, productivity, how I'm looking, etc. I'm so excited to be back.

SO to start: today was legs.

Rating: 8

Good workout. I worked really hard, for the first time in forever. Pre fatigued with sets of 20 leg extensions,  then sets of 20 leg press, air squats, hammy curls and finally back extensions. I would have gone heavier on the leg press for more sets, and the air squats, while hard, don't seem very productive to me - I feel like I'd rather do sets of 15 with 95 or so, although I'm not sure that's a good idea yet. Definitely a very intense workout, and I'm happy with it for a first workout back. But I think it will be more productive if I push the weights a tiny bit more. Lets keep at it.