Weekend Update and Some Thoughts

Monday

Bench: 205x3x3

Tuesday

Cleans: 242x1, 198x5

Wednesday

365x1, 305x3x3

Took a quasi-deload week this week.  One thing that I’ve always found kind of strange is that I usually feel crappy during a deload.  In talking to a lot of the swimmers that I train I found out that this is a normal thing when the body is given time to rest.  Ask any competitive swimmer and they will tell you that when they begin resting for a big meet- they call it a taper- they will feel good, then crappy, and then awesome.  They try to line up the awesome with when their meet is so that they can swim as fast as possible.  The same thing may be at play with lifters but I’m not sure.  Regardless of the reason I usually struggle through deload weeks.  By the end I just want to get back to doing what I normally do.  Who knows, maybe I don’t even need them.

The next phase I’ll be going back to four days per week lifting.  I’ve found that I can only do this for a short period of time before I need to back off the volume.  I can lift three days per week forever, but as soon as I add that fourth day I have a limited amount of time until I start feeling burned out.  I’m going to run this phase for six weeks and see how I’m feeling at the end to see if I’ll continue with four days or drop it back a bit.

One of the things that I like about this phase is that I’ll have to eat more to get the most out of it and to maximize my recovery.  I’m not going to be eating anything different, just more of it.  It’s going to be a lot of lean meats, fruits, veggies, sweet potatoes, and rice.  That’s going to be my winning combination.

I’m excited for it to get warmer out.  I love lifting outside.  It feels almost primal.  It’s a far stretch from a caveman lifting a log or spearing a sabre tooth tiger but a man can dream can’t he?

After I finish this six week phase of lots of volume to get bigger and stronger I’m going to up my conditioning.  I’m running the Warrior Dash in June with my girlfriend, her sisters, and a few of her co-workers.  She doesn’t know it yet but I’m going to beat her.  I have to make up for my mom beating me two summers ago.  In my defense I stayed and walked with my weakling of a friend Lance.  He’s such a baby.

Not much else is new in my world.  I’m just gonna keep on keepin’ on.  Hope everybody has a great weekend and a productive week.