Last offseason, I always made it a point to track my weight and maxes here, regardless of what the numbers were. Now, I'm sure that nobody's noticed that I haven't even touched any of that in the past 6 weeks (again, not that anybody's all that concerned about it), but I know damn well that I have been avoiding it, and I know why. I've been hiding from an awful lot lately, so I'm calling myself out now and will start tracking this here...afterall, me being real in this blog ultimately helped me reach my goals this past year.
That being said, here's the deal. As always, I'm weighing myself on Saturday mornings and logging that as my official weight. As of yesterday, I am 136.4...22 pounds more than I weighed six weeks ago at Nationals. I pretty much got up to that weight in the first month or so and have continued to maintain. I've been following a structured off season plan for the past four weeks that's probably a little over maintenance-level calories. I'm noticing that my weight is continuing to sit around my midsection more and less on my ass like it usually does. I can still see the top part of my abs, but I feel like I've got an inner tube around my lower abs and lower back that 3 year old would love to use in the deep end of the pool. Since I'm all about being real today, any girl knows that cellulite is a very real thing. And that's usually been a problem for me on my toosh. But this year, even though arse is growing into it's offseason size, I still don't have the cellulite back that I used to get when putting weight back on after a show. Like many other women who compete, I can't say I like the weight adjustment, but I think I'm ok with where I'm at right now as far as an offseason weight/look goes (granted, that could change any minute).
As far as my maxes go, I wouldn't say I'm making steady progress each week, but I am making slow progress. Right now, my 5RM for squats is 200, which I got during this morning's leg workout. My dead lift max is 245, and my military press max is 105 (I'm just 1 rep away from a new max of 110). One of the more difficult things for me to swallow now is having to drop way back in weight on dead lifts and squats. I feel like I have to start from scratch, which I almost really have to do. Before prep started, my squat max was 225 and dl's was 300 (maybe even 305, but I'd have to double check). One thing I keep having to remind myself of is that for the last several months of my offseason, I was fighting the pain and numbness in my hamstring, and my reps on those exercises were focused more on working around the injury just to move the heavier weight rather than using the proper muscles to move the weight and feel the movement.
For the first time in probably two years, I had what I felt like was a truly productive and solid quad workout this morning. I probably could have gotten 205 for 5 on squats because I felt like I had good strength and feeling in my left leg. Usually by the time I get to my 4th set, that weight is heavy enough to cause the shooting pain, but not today. Today, my fourth set was at 175, and it went up so easy and so powerful, I was shocked. Even the 5th set at 200 felt solid, and I could feel the power and strength in both my quads. The rest of the workout went great, and I was so excited to feel new strength in my legs. It really seemed to reignite my excitement for training a little bit. Earlier this year, I knew I wasn't as strong as I could be with that injury and thus wasn't hitting the muscle the way I should be or needed to. I felt like I was spinning my wheels during my quad and back workouts. Now that I've been getting my hamstring worked on every two weeks and it's starting to heal, I didn't realize just how much strength I was compromising. I'm looking forward to seeing how dead lifting goes when I train back on Wednesday. I hope that by addressing this injury, I can start to bring up my weak body parts...my quads and my back.
So there it is. Lot's of rambling, but it was REAL rambling.
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