#renaissanceperiodization

I can hardly believe it, but we’re down to single digits. Just nine days out from the New York City Marathon! And, I’ll admit, now that ‘the hay is in the barn’ and most of the work is done, I’m finally starting to feel just a little bit of genuine excitement.

I’ve said before that training is generally my favorite part of any given day, because I usually find it validating and motivating just by its own nature. I’ve been CrossFitting for over six years now, and I work on things like muscle-ups and snatches and toes-to-bar simply because I want to be better at them. One of the best (and worst) things about this sport is that there’s a huge variety of skills to master and none of them have true endpoints. (In other words, “It never gets easy; you just get better.”) The way you remain ‘in love’ with CrossFit over the long haul is by learning to quietly recognize your own tiny victories, the kinds of things that nobody else would even notice (two more steps on that handstand walk, five more pounds on that split jerk, one extra unbroken rep of toes-to-bar) -- acknowledging a moment of satisfaction about whatever it is -- and then immediately looking ahead to the next milestone.

By contrast, for the past 3-4 months, my training has been ENTIRELY structured around a single fixed endpoint. Based on how many weeks remained until The Big Day, training volume has risen, weights have fallen, session duration has lengthened, variety in movements has dwindled. There have been very few of those small personal victories; yet I have definitely dealt with major challenges on every level -- physical injuries, emotional frustrations, nutritional conundrums -- to a degree that I seldom experience in the course of my regular training. It has been, without question, the toughest cycle I’ve ever done. And although I’ve learned a tremendous amount via the process, I’m also a 34-year-old woman with more than enough ‘chores’ in my life already -- so the transformation of training into yet another joyless task has been deeply felt and tough to reconcile. It’s been hard to muster enthusiasm for the ‘endpoint’ -- even an event as exciting as this one! -- when it has taken so much mental and emotional energy just to continue to put one foot in front of the other (both literally and figuratively).

However, hindsight being what it is, I’m relieved to realize that I can look back now and acknowledge a fair number of valuable milestones:

 -- Most obviously: I got faster. Like, a LOT faster. My last few long runs have been programmed in 2-3-minute intervals, for which paces in the 7:00s are pretty normal for me now. I definitely won’t run the actual marathon at that pace, but knowing I can consistently hit that level of intensity bodes well. (At one point, I unwittingly came within 2.5 minutes of breaking my half marathon race PR... during a casual interval training session!)

 -- I’ve gotten a lot better at the ‘boring’ bodyweight movements -- the low-skill stuff that CrossFit HQ tosses in there for the sole purpose of jacking up your heart rate and fatiguing you a little. Specifically, I’ve always dreaded burpees (in reference to when we first started working together, my coach once rolled her eyes and said, “Your burpees were NOT my favorite thing about you!”)... but somewhere along the way, they stopped sucking quite so much -- probably because, along with increasing my aerobic capacity, I’ve mostly internalized how to pace myself for a given work requirement. (There was one memorable 45-minute metcon that contained two sets of 50 burpees, and my times for the two sets were within 1 second of each other!) I’ve also improved a lot at wallballs -- they’ll never be my favorite thing, but they also just aren’t nearly as fatiguing as they used to be, even when she programs the 10’ target or the 20# ball. Same thing with the Airdyne, a.k.a. the devil’s bike. I still don’t love it, but I do feel like I ‘understand’ it now... and there’s that whole thing about ‘the devil you know’ being marginally less awful than the one you don’t. :)

 -- Nutritionally and bodyweight-wise, I did exactly what I wanted to do: MAINTAINED. This is actually a pretty huge victory. I started this training cycle in July, averaging about 140-141# (and 17% body fat, per DEXA scan). I had a brief period of unintentional weight LOSS in the beginning, before I figured out just how much I needed to be eating (spoiler: it was a LOT), and now, 14 weeks later, am sitting around 141-142#. This makes me really happy, because in my particular scenario, a 1-2# gain is vastly preferable to a 1-2# loss. It means I likely did NOT lose muscle mass -- which is no easy feat during an intense endurance cycle! -- and another hugely positive consequence is that I also did not lose my period. This was really important to me, since two of my previous marathon training cycles (2013 and 2014) resulted in stress fractures. I’m thrilled (and relieved) that I was able to figure out what I needed to do in order to get my hormonal biochemistry to hang in there this time, because if history is any indication, my body otherwise might well have not made it through the training intact! Rest assured that it wasn’t always easy -- as my overall volume increased and I approached a state of true ‘overtraining’, I started to experience some unpleasant appetite suppression (a first for me), yet those were often precisely the days when (mathematically) I genuinely NEEDED to eat 3500 calories (!) in order to stay at homeostasis. I truly feel like sorting out the nutrition may have been one of the biggest victories of this entire process.

 -- Related: I also became significantly more flexible and forgiving with regard to my mentality around food, which is something that was long overdue. Renaissance Periodization has worked so well for me that I’ve had a hard time allowing myself to loosen the reins very much, even now that I’m on maintenance and living in a healthy, functional, normal-sized body that I’m happy with. However, something I finally internalized during this cycle is that our metabolism is flexible, adaptable, forgiving, and anything but linear. It’s smart to learn the underlying science and to practice habits that support those tenets -- and we obviously can’t go off the rails every day -- but (on maintenance, anyway) counting every meal’s macros down to the exact gram probably isn’t necessary, either.

 -- Also slightly related: for the first time ever in my life, I found myself truly comfortable running outdoors in just a sports bra. Like, for most of August and September, I legitimately PREFERRED that over wearing a shirt. Who even am I?!?

 -- While I can’t go quite so far as to claim that I ‘didn’t lose strength’, (1) the loss has actually been pretty minimal, (2) I know it’s a temporary state and is probably related more to a recent lack of exposure to heavy strength movements than to any major changes in my underlying physiology, and (3) the silver lining is that all the light repetitive technique work has actually still netted me a couple of recent PRs on my weaker lifts (hello, split jerk!). That was a nice surprise and has me feeling hopeful for even more progress once strength can finally be a focus again.

 -- Another major learning opportunity: I have now experienced what true ‘overtraining’ feels like. Meaning -- I spent about 12 days earlier this month (following four peak-volume workouts in a row) where my BODY was okay, not in pain or even sore -- but I was ‘systemically’ not okay. My appetite was weirdly suppressed, I was exhausted yet couldn’t sleep, felt constantly on the edge of tears or anger, resting heart rate was elevated, had a near-panic attack underneath a (super light) barbell, struggled not to cry when trying to push through high-intensity work, was logging Garmin ‘daily strain’ scores that were double my baseline (even on rest days), etc etc etc. This was all extraordinarily unpleasant, as you might imagine. HOWEVER, (1) I’m glad to know what it feels like so that I can recognize it for the future, and (2) reaching that point was also useful (and even validating) in another sense -- because even though my actual running mileage (on this decidedly-non-traditional training plan) didn’t ever really get super high, overall volume and intensity DID reach a significant peak, and those are more difficult to quantify. Seeing the effort reflected in my physiological responses is what helped us to recognize (correctly) that a three-week taper was going to be more appropriate for me than just two. (And although I’ve obviously still got a week to go, I can already ‘feel’, physiologically, that this decision and timing have been PERFECT.)

 -- And although this isn’t generally something I’d claim as a ‘victory’ -- because, well, grownups are expected to stick to their commitments; it’s not really negotiable -- I do think I get to be at least a little bit proud of the fact that I kept showing up even when things really, really, really sucked. Not once, not one single time in 15 weeks, did I miss a day, skip any pieces of a workout, or half-ass what I was told to do. When push came to shove and I genuinely hated what I was doing, I did it anyway. #adulting

And -- because no training plan ever goes perfectly -- here are a few milestones I DIDN’T meet:

 -- I never ran longer than 14 miles. This was partly because of losing a couple of weeks due to injury (see below), and partly due to the heavily-CrossFit-based training plan. Even so, I actually don’t have doubts about my ability to make it through the race -- I’ve done this before and my own personal bar is set pretty darn low; I don’t feel the need to log a 20-miler to ‘prove to myself’ that I can go the distance next Sunday -- but, yeah, in a perfect world, it would’ve been nice to get to 16-18.

 -- Although nothing truly ‘serious’ happened, I didn’t make it through this cycle without injury. Around the halfway point, I developed an overuse-type problem in my left foot and had to take a couple of weeks entirely off from running, and then I rolled my right ankle HARD just this past Sunday (entirely my own damn fault for running in the dark... but I had to get the miles in before work!). However, the silver lining is that both these things made me incredibly, overwhelmingly, pathetically grateful for the awesome team that I have around me in terms of coaching/PT/bodywork. Even though I’ve been pretty vocal about how much I’ve disliked this training phase, I have also NEVER felt so well-supported as an athlete as I do right now, and that is such a tremendous gift.

 -- Despite ample free meal opportunities, I somehow never made it to Monuts or Gonza or Cowfish! I can conveniently blame this on my weekend work schedule (and that finger-pointing is not without validity -- I currently work 4 out of every 6 weekends)... but this still represents a major and unacceptable failure on my part. :)

 -- And... I did not, ultimately, learn to love running. :) Yes, you can laugh -- but honestly, I was an endurance athlete (swimming, running, and triathlons) for a solid decade prior to CrossFit, and so, like I said before, I tried to keep an open mind to the idea that I might actually end up enjoying this process. It could have been fun to do something a little different for a while. ...Turns out it wasn’t. :) However, barring any kind of catastrophe over the next nine days, one thing I CAN say is that I’m definitely on track to have my best marathon ever -- ‘fastest’, sure, but what I really mean is, a race where my overall performance (consistent pace, minimal discomfort, easy recovery) may finally reflect my capabilities. And THAT means I’ll (theoretically!) finally be able to close this chapter. It hasn’t been enough just to ‘complete’ a marathon (or five); I wanted to run WELL. I wanted a race of which I could genuinely feel proud; a race where I could walk (or hobble!) away at the end knowing that I truly did my best, that I ‘met the challenge’ well. And I think -- knock on wood -- that, nine days from now, I might finally actually do that.

The thing nobody tells you is that the true ‘marathon’ is run long before you ever toe the starting line of those long-awaited 26.2 miles. By this point, I’ve learned so much that I honestly feel as though there’s nothing left to prove! I’m still excited for race day -- to be a part of such a special collective experience, to see all five boroughs of New York in a single afternoon, to satisfy my curiosity as far as what I’ll be able to do athletically, to run alongside 50,000 others who have all gone through their own variants of this same process over these past few months. But whatever happens next Sunday, I’ve still definitely never (EVER) been headed to the starting line this healthy, this fit, this prepared, this light, this calm, this cognizant, this capable -- and that alone means that I ALREADY have to acknowledge the inherent value of this very very very hard thing I just did.

For just a four-week (and relatively gentle) cut, this most recent adventure was definitely more of a roller coaster than anticipated! It started and ended on relatively high notes, but with a great big dip in the middle. This was my third time through the Renaissance Periodization gauntlet, and the logistics feel pretty familiar by now, yet I still somehow manage to come away from each of these with progressively deeper insight into my own physiology. I feel like one of the official RP hashtags should be #alwayslearning! I've definitely posted a lot more in the Facebook groups than anywhere else lately, so this post is going to be long, even by my standards — apologies in advance! :) Quick background recap. I finished my second cut in late January 2018 with an all-time low scale weight of 133.7# — and also with a lot of metabolic and hormonal issues. I couldn't sleep, was freezing all the time, had a nagging back injury, my hair was falling out, I had through-the-roof anxiety, and I lost my period for nearly four months straight. The goals had been to (1) get my first ring muscle-up, and (2) get below 20% body fat (read: lean enough to eventually do a massing cycle), and while I did meet both those goals, it was clear to me in hindsight that I should have stopped that cut about 3-4 weeks sooner than I did. It was also clear that I subsequently needed a LONG maintenance period, both to let my body heal and to regain some of the barbell strength I'd lost over the previous year (while focusing on gymnastics and fat loss). The immediate post-cut period was a mixed bag. Physically, I certainly started feeling better in every respect. My back pain completely disappeared within a week, and I also ultimately got my muscle-up about two weeks AFTER the cut was over (a testament to the magic of a smaller body that is ALSO properly fueled!). Furthermore, I finally listened to my coach and began rating my workouts appropriately (generally 'Moderate', not 'Light') in terms of my carbohydrate consumption, which helped performance and recovery tremendously. However, despite a fairly slow and careful reverse-diet progression, the scale definitely climbed higher than I'd hoped — my Cut Week 12 average had been 135.8#, and I finally plateaued at 140-141#. Objectively, I'm 5'5" with an athletic build (and literally haven't been in the 130s since puberty), so this wasn't unreasonable on the part of my biology by any means, but after 12 weeks of such close analysis of scale data, it took a while for my brain to settle down about it. However, in mid-April, performance finally started to hit its stride — I was still feeling pretty light and efficient on gymnastics, and when we tested a few barbell maxes, I shocked myself by easily recapturing almost all of my old numbers (most of which had been attained more than a year earlier, when I was 30-35# heavier) and even exceeding a couple (crushed my overhead squat PR by 15 lb!). After that, I finally accepted that the 140-142# range seemed to be a good all-around functional spot for me. And then I went to Cuba, on the same wonderful health professionals' trip that I took last year. Leaving aside the mojitos, beaches, and classic cars, one unfortunate wrinkle to this year's trip is that almost every single one of us developed some degree of GI issues. Apart from being rather irked that my famously iron gut had let me down, what this meant in a practical sense was that I could barely eat for almost a week (while still doing a ton of standing, walking, and other low-level activity). I had rolled my eyes at myself while obsessively packing a cache of nonperishable RP-friendly snacks, but I was ultimately grateful that I had done so, because I knew I needed to at least force myself to gag down a casein shake every night no matter how nauseated I was! I came home having dropped back to 138-139# territory — and, in hindsight, I think this served as a 'mini-cut' in the true sense of the word, in that it predisposed me to gain weight. I wasn't fully recovered from the metabolic aftereffects of my previous cut (had literally just gotten my period back for the first time while we were in Cuba... because of course that would happen), and so that week of unintentional severe restriction, combined with (undoubtedly) a major shift in gut flora, PLUS my coach putting me on a strength cycle... well, it was the perfect storm to lead to a bit of a rebound weight gain. I had stopped checking the scale daily or even weekly at this point, but throughout late May and early June, most of the numbers I saw on my spot checks were in the 143-146 range. Beyond just the scale, my clothes were also starting to fit differently (my hard-won 34C bras were getting a bit tight), gymnastics were feeling tougher than they had in months, and I was suddenly feeling self-conscious in my gym clothes. Something had to be done — but with the aftereffects of January still fresh in my mind, and with heavy barbells now the focus of my training, I had more than a little PTSD about the idea of embarking on yet another cut. The quirk of fate that provided my 'accidental' acceptance to the 2018 New York City Marathon (which is a whole other story) is what ultimately nudged me into pulling the trigger. I’ve run marathons before, but not since starting 1:1 CrossFit programming or since following RP. Knowing that a shift in my training would be coming soon, I posted a question in the RP Endurance group about my situation. I had the vague idea of combining a cut with the early or middle phase of the marathon training plan, when a calorie deficit would be easier to hit. One of the endurance coaches promptly replied — with exactly the opposite of what I'd expected to hear. "Cut now. Start today. Finish as far out from the marathon as possible." I blinked for a second, and then it clicked. For some reason, it took someone ELSE saying it to trigger the light bulb. Of course. For goals like mine — maintenance of strength and muscle mass — heavy barbells are actually the perfect time to cut. Marathon training, by comparison, would be the WORST time for someone like me to cut, because although the scale would certainly drop, I'd also be a lot more likely to lose precious muscle along with fat. I started back on strict Base the very next day. If nothing else, this made me very aware of all the tiny luxuries I'd managed to work in — no more extra glasses of milk, sneaky spoonfuls of PBfit, or "tastes" of Reddi Whip squirted directly into the mouth! :) However, because I was still fearful of pushing the limits too far and knew that I objectively didn't have very much weight to lose, I also set myself some parameters. My three 'hard stops' were that I wasn't going to go below 138#, wasn't going to extend the cut beyond 8 weeks, and wasn't going to utilize the third/harshest phase of the cutting plan (since slashing carbohydrates would be counterintuitive to my performance goals). Week 1 Starting weight: 147.2 lb Week 1 Average: 144.2 lb The first thing I noticed was that my mental state calmed down tremendously. I hadn't fully acknowledged how much this situation had been worrying me, and I had also forgotten how lovely the 'control' of a cut can feel. From day one, I was no longer afraid of the number on the scale, because now — rather than being passive (and therefore frightening) information — it was a tool that I could use to make changes. Further, I knew I got to look forward to watching it go DOWN! :)

I also knew I had a peak week programmed in (what would have been) Week 5 of this cut, so every time the scale showed a number that was higher than I'd hoped, I felt an odd mix of disappointment AND reassurance that "at least that's more mass with which to move the barbell!" Oddly, I think the fact that I had a rationale for not entirely WANTING to see a massive scale plunge helped me to approach this whole thing with a bit of a healthier mental state. The second thing I realized during this first week is that I had drifted further from my templates than I'd thought. In many instances, I was habitually shorting my fats and (not always consciously) exceeding my prescribed carbs. I made sure to write this down, so I could correct it when I started to work my way back up towards Base; however, I also didn't re-add all the fats I had dropped, because that seemed like a silly thing to do in the first stage of a *cut*. As such, my first week of this adventure was spent on an imaginary 'gray zone' tab that I named 'Cut 0.5'. :) This first week was, honestly, pretty smooth sailing. My parents had been in town for a visit, and we'd eaten at a couple of restaurants, so my starting weight of 147.2# was a bit artificially inflated; however, this meant that I had a very gratifying water weight drop across the first week (five pounds!). This made my clothes start to fit better AND my gymnastics feel instantaneously better, both of which were big morale boosts. I started to wonder if maybe, just maybe, I might be able to knock this out in six weeks instead of eight. Week 2 Average: 143.8 lb This was where the plateau started to hit; that lovely five-pound drop was (naturally) followed by a RISE of 4# across 4 days. This was partly being driven by hormones (PMS week), but in a shorter cut like this, you don't wait around if you don't have to. Midweek, I could tell that my average was going to stagnate, so I went ahead and moved onto the first fat loss tab. This impacted my sleep almost immediately (hello darkness my old friend...), and also led to that annoying, familiar feeling of weakness and shakiness on non-training days when carbs were low. However, in general, I continued to feel pretty good — handstand push-ups in particular were suddenly feeling awesome, and although barbells FELT noticeably heavier, my hard numbers hadn't actually backslid. I had two notable non-scale victories in week two. First, I had two unavoidable restaurant meals in the span of 4 days (a dinner and a post-workout breakfast), wherein I managed to (1) stay compliant and (2) calmly enjoy myself and my company in the process, feeling neither deprived NOR the usual overwhelming creeping dread about the unpredictability of the food in front of me (green salad with grilled shrimp/veggies for the dinner, an egg white omelet with salsa, veggies, and toast for the breakfast). It sounds so simple, but I just never learned how to do that very well on my first couple of cuts — how to simultaneously make good nutrition choices in a social setting AND truly FEEL okay mentally about those choices, rather than anxious or apologetic or defensive or self-conscious. This set of coping skills would have been a worthy takeaway no matter where the scale ended up. Second, this week made me recognize and appreciate the value of cycle tracking. Losing my period for so long after my last cut was admittedly nice on one level, but was also incredibly annoying, because I had no hormonal context in which to confidently interpret my day-to-day physical and mental fluctuations. That experience prompted me to start paying MUCH closer attention to such things during maintenance, and now that I have a couple months' worth of notes, I absolutely see a very strong correlation between where I am in the month and how I feel (both gym-wise and mood-wise). It's pretty neat to write a description that says (for example) that I woke up roasting hot overnight, or the scale went up, or my mood was calmer than I expected, or my skin started breaking out — and then flip back to the previous month and realize I'd written the exact same thing on the exact same cycle day then, too. In addition to being just plain cool information (female bodies are weird and frustrating and also kind of incredible!), this is also extremely comforting, because it reminds me that I often have additional reasons to feel 'off' that aren't necessarily directly correlated to cutting. 

Week 3 Average: 142.1 lb This third week was where I really started hurting. Training started to feel like utter garbage — I could still hit my expected/prescribed numbers on MOST things, but it was taking significantly more physical and mental effort to do so, and every so often I'd run headlong into an unexpected wall. Despite ZMAs and melatonin and even the occasional Flexeril, I couldn't sleep through the night at all anymore. My right shoulder got 'tweaked' and refused to calm down (much the same as my low back had done, during my second cut). And non-training days felt absolutely horrible — I wasn't "hungry" per se, but I felt persistently weak, and would get lightheaded every time I stood up. I checked my BP at work on one such occasion, and it was way down at 86/63.

Part of me was sufficiently freaked out that I almost wanted to go ahead and call it right here — not because I was struggling with hunger or cravings, but because I was extremely leery of (potentially) losing muscle or impacting performance without (by this point) any particularly good reason for continuing to do so. However, I also knew that the wise RPer overshoots slightly, when feasible. I was also able to recognize the fact that, since I'd already made the mistake once of not stopping a cut when I should have, I was probably a bit hypersensitive to discomfort this time around, from the perspective of not wanting to make the same error twice. I decided I had at least one more week in me. And this third week wasn't all bad: I practically danced a jig when I started my period (on time!), because I knew it would be sending the scale on another nice downward trend. This was also the week when I started to feel really good about my physical appearance — which I guess shouldn't have surprised me, but did, probably just because my first two cuts had felt like such long slow slogs. But the very reason that this one was shorter was because I didn't NEED to lose very much — and it was definitely gratifying to feel this degree of satisfaction so early in the process, comparatively speaking. I also measured myself this week and compared the numbers to my old log, which made me realize that — though I was (fortunately!) not as tiny as I was at the very end of my second cut, I was generally matching up with where I'd been about three weeks from its end — at a point when I had weighed (wait for it) 138#, a.k.a. the weight I had picked as my 'hard stop'! Given this — essentially the same measurements as before, while also 4# heavier — I realized I'd probably increased my lean body mass significantly during maintenance (hooray!), and therefore should probably adjust my boundary lines accordingly.  After some thought, I decided the cutoffs should be: — an average of 140# (rather than 138#) — since, along with performance, my other highest priority was (and is) muscle preservation. If I was measuring the same at 142# as I had been at 138#, then willfully cutting all the way to 138# this time might have been flirting with the edge of diminishing returns. — a maximum of SIX weeks rather than eight — because, the shorter the cut, the less it would spill over into marathon training (which was *definitely* the setting where I'd be more likely to lose muscle). — a plateau on the FIRST cutting tab, or possibly a 'gray zone' of tab 1.5, rather than going fully onto the second tab... a decision that was also related to my impending marathon training. I have a prior history of metatarsal stress fractures as it is, and hence am highly motivated to NOT screw up my hormones again at the moment, which made me reconsider the wisdom of dropping my fats all the way down to 7g/day (as I'd have done on the second tab). All of the above is perfectly reasonable from every angle. However — although I didn't quite say so out loud — in my mind, by the end of this third week, I had already made the decision to call it at the end of week 4. That certainly wasn't how I'd initially planned for this adventure to go, but I was feeling rotten, I had a peak week coming up, and it was seeming pretty obvious that the cutting process was serving neither my body nor my priorities very well. Privately, as this week drew to an end, I was feeling like a bit of a failure, knowing that I was going to ‘quit’ sooner than I had planned. I'm accustomed to thinking of myself as 'strong' on all levels, more than capable of pushing through discomfort — and the cutting process is pretty familiar to me at this point, not particularly difficult or intimidating anymore — so I truly did not expect to be experiencing the physical effects quite so strongly at this stage of the game. Even though it wasn't a terribly logical thing to feel, I was definitely more than a little disappointed in my body for 'letting me down'.  However, this is one arena where my loquaciousness served me well; I started writing a blog post about the negative things I was feeling — and by the end of it, I had convinced myself that (1) it's also a victory to recognize the point of diminishing returns and know what the responsible decision is, and (2) the fact that I was 'feeling' the cut this strongly this time could, in fact, be viewed as a direct reflection of the tremendous progress I've made in my training over the past year, how very hard I'm working every day, and how well my current baseline nutrition habits are serving me. In other words, the major impact I feel when I mess with my homeostasis is itself a testament to the healthy habits I've developed in SUPPORT of that homeostasis. Looking at it that way made me feel better.

Week 4 Average: 140.2 lb Nadir: 138.3 lb ...So then, of course, things immediately improved. :) The gym started feeling closer to normal, AND the scale took a nosedive (both of which always happen in cycle week 2 — note to self: structure ALL future cuts this same way! :)). I also saw a new sports massage guru for my shoulder, who did some cupping (which I'd never had before — interesting experience) and was able to help the discomfort pretty significantly. It's not gone, but it's better, and I bet a few days of higher calories will be the tipping point. As per my mental wrestling match last week, I was always going to choose to stop today, regardless of the numbers. HOWEVER... my average for this week has ultimately ended up being 140.2#, with this morning's weight being the lowest I've seen so far, 138.3#. Meaning, based on my parameters above... it's officially time to stop ANYWAY! ...Which just makes me laugh and shake my head at the workings of the universe. :)

I’m into my third week on maintenance, and still hanging in there. I have my ups and downs, but overall, there is SO much good stuff to report.

Athletics: I’ve been on one-to-one CrossFit programming for the past few months -- not because I have any particular competitive aspirations, but just because I have some individual goals I’m trying to reach (specifically: my first muscle-up!). I’m really, really enjoying the process -- primarily just on an intrinsic-motivation level, but I also have to admit that it has been absolutely invaluable to have so much individual attention and feedback during the relative physical chaos that I’ve been inflicting upon myself here recently. :) Performance-wise, it has definitely been a year of two steps forward, one step back, and six to the side -- and since performance was by far the primary driver behind my choice to do this second cut, right now it feels very rewarding to realize that the gym feels pretty damn awesome.

First, I’ve been shocked and thrilled at how fast my barbell strength has started to return over the past couple of weeks. Cumulatively speaking, I’ve spent almost the entire past YEAR in a caloric deficit (and am technically still in one right now -- more on that in a minute), and therefore truly can’t remember the last time I PRed anything with a barbell. Raw strength just hasn’t been the priority this year -- and I’m okay with that, because, objectively speaking, I was pretty deficient in gymnastics skills and needed to stock the toolbox with a wider range of abilities. But, with the recently increased fueling alone, I’m already a lot closer to a few of my old strength numbers than I’d expected to be (example: over the past two weeks, I’ve added FORTY pounds onto my tempo back squat sets without any change in the perceived level of effort). I’m definitely not yet as strong as I was a year ago (when I weighed 40 pounds more!) -- but I also didn’t realize how comparatively fragile and ‘brittle’ I had felt for the past couple of months. It’s like the old metaphor about putting the frog in the pot of water and slowly turning up the heat -- if you do it too fast, he’ll jump right out, but if you do it gradually, he’ll just sit there and allow himself to be cooked. Now, since coming off cut, heavy barbells suddenly feel like something I can successfully ‘fight for’ again, which is a relieving, exciting, and validating place to be.

And, secondly -- knock on wood -- none of my new gymnastics abilities seem to have taken much of a hit this time either. Last time I came off a cut, there were some performance changes -- handstand push-ups, which were a brand-new skill at the time, suddenly started feeling a lot harder (which, granted, may have been partially mental), and my overall pulling strength also took a sneaky decline (which took a while for us to ‘notice’ and address, because it just seemed like random bad days at first). This time, I’ve been proactive about keeping extra pulling work in the rotation, just in case -- but so far, none of the gymnastics feel any harder than they did three weeks ago, and a lot of stuff feels a bit easier -- my muscle-up pulls in particular have gotten a lot stronger. (Coach used to have a lot to say about those attempts -- “look for the ground,” “don’t pronate; keep neutral grip,” “don’t slack off with the pull” -- but a few days ago, the last time we worked on them, she just silently watched me swing -- then cocked her head to the side, paused, and said, “...You know, at some point you just have to decide you want it bad enough.”)

Sleep: My sleep is slowly recovering -- I’m tracking it with my FitBit, and I’m gaining a couple extra minutes every night. I was averaging about six (often severely interrupted) hours during the cut, but have now worked my way up to an average of seven uninterrupted hours, where (1) I barely wake up and (2) can successfully put myself back to sleep if I do wake up. And if I wake up starving overnight (which has happened a couple of times), I’ve learned that I overall respond better if I get up and have a bit of protein (as opposed to trying to tough it out without extra food, the way I did on cut). There have also been a handful of nights where I have slept ALL NIGHT LONG -- like, didn’t even wake up to pee -- which feels kind of miraculous.

Social: I’m still feeling a bit socially isolated -- turns out, when you continually make excuses to not hang out with your friends (in an attempt to avoid food-centric situations), they eventually stop asking. :) However, I know this is going to get better over the next few weeks -- first because I’ll take the initiative to make it so, and second, because with increased calories AND gradually-lengthening daylight hours, my mood is now dramatically better and I actually want to be social again. (Something I did not take into account is that, as a born-and-raised Floridian, I already suffer from significant seasonal affective disorder now that I live in NC, and cutting during the winter definitely made that ten times worse!)

Visually: for lack of a more ‘PC’ way to phrase this -- shit is POPPIN’. The newly increased carb stores inside my muscles means the definition is unreal. My upper back, shoulders, and arms in particular are making me super happy. I look so much fuller and healthier to myself than I did just a couple of weeks ago, and yet my clothes are still fitting the same way (really hoping I get to keep this awesome new smaller bra size over the long haul!).

Food/bodyweight: This is the arena where there have been a few bumps in the road.  On one hand, maintenance is (obviously) absolutely delightful. I can have a couple bites of chocolate after dinner, eat the samples in Costco, order a nonfat cappuccino at Starbucks instead of black coffee. When I’m working a 12-hour shift, I can toss a Quest bar in my bag for dinner rather than having to prep something that contains zero fat. I can sprinkle goat cheese on my egg whites, add whipped cream to my coffee, and just ‘eyeball’ the green beans and rice in my meal prep containers instead of weighing them down to the tenth of an ounce. And when I have a workout that feels ‘moderate’ by RP standards (like last Friday, when I had tempo back squats AND jerk clusters AND deadlifts), then I can eat as such -- an extra 60g carbs spread over the remainder of my day -- which opens up my food options considerably.

On the other hand, the scale has definitely taken more of a jump than I wanted it to -- and, unfortunately, right now I’m still in a transition phase where that number does carry objective significance.

Cut Week 11 average -- 137.2 Cut Week 12 average -- 135.8 (Final end-of-cut nadir weight: 133.7) Maintenance Week 1 average -- 135.6 Maintenance Week 2 average -- 137.7

For reference, while it’s normal to gain as much as 5# on maintenance, you definitely don’t want to jump anywhere near that high right out of the gate while still moving through the steps back up to base. I’m still on the tab they refer to as Maintenance 2, meaning I’m still one or two notches below the caloric intake that someone my size ‘should’ require in order to stay steady. However, I’m also not super starving (most of the time!) at this level of intake, which means (sadly) that my metabolism is still depressed from the months of cutting -- it’s not yet firing on all cylinders and ‘asking’ for more food. I have total faith that it’ll get there eventually, but the official opinion from the RP group is that I’m not ready yet based on the above numbers; I’m looking at at least another week on this tab, and probably more like two weeks. And while I’m eager to jump back up to what’s called New Base (where I get more fats with my meals -- a.k.a. back to whole eggs, avocado, and more cheese and peanut butter!), I do know the group is right and that I need to listen. Fortunately, the scale is starting to (appropriately) very slowly move down again (daily weights for the past few days have been between 136.2 and 137.3) -- so this week’s average will likely be lower.

I don’t need (or even want) to stay at my end-of-cut weight. I really don’t even need to care about the number at all, as long as I can keep all my gymnastics abilities. And I was (surprisingly) one hundred percent okay with the first couple of pounds of regain. But I’ll admit, in spite of all the hard mental work regarding emotional detachment from the scale -- all those weeks of telling myself that I wasn’t going to be ‘married’ to a number and that anything ‘around’ 140# was okay -- that it was still very hard to watch the scale climb up and up and up every single day during that second week. And also that, for some ridiculous reason, I’m currently still finding myself inexplicably attached to the concept of 136# -- which somehow just ‘feels’ like a good number in my head, significantly better than 135 or 137 (yeah, I have a Thing against odd numbers). However, my gut is telling me that my final sweet spot is ultimately probably going to be more like 138# -- and so I need to internalize the fact that that is (1) completely okay, (2) completely arbitrary, and (3) -- in the grand scheme of life -- also completely unimportant. :)

I’m very eager to reach a point where I don’t have to focus on the numbers so much. Honestly, that’s mostly why I’m so eager to get ‘through’ this phase -- apart from wanting more food (LOL), I’m also just ready to be rid of some of the mental burden. However, realistically, I know that I have significantly depressed my metabolism over the past year, that I’m in a more extreme situation now than I was following my first cut, and that it’s therefore normal for it to take a while for things to ramp back up. Which also means that I have to continue to pay attention for a bit longer, because a lack of prudence during this crucial phase could easily mean loss of progress -- which is the last thing I want after so much diligent work.

So, the thing is: progress—even huge, major, life-altering progress—does not always look the way you think it will.

This isn’t quite the post I thought I’d be writing today. After all, I’m a planner—and a wordy one, at that. For months, I’ve been contemplating the perfect words to describe my muscle-up journey, the culmination of which would obviously dovetail nicely with the end of my cut.

But we work with reality. And reality is: as of today, I still don’t have the muscle-up.

But you know what? I’ve mastered all the individual components, and so have earned the right to fling myself up toward the rings and actively try to put the pieces together. Which is more than I could say twelve weeks ago.

It’s not quite the timeline I wanted—and I’ll undoubtedly be pretty salty if I don’t get it before the Open—but I also know it WILL happen, whether it takes another six days, six weeks, or six months. And although my progress, objectively, probably has MORE to do with my awesome coach and programming than it does with my numerical bodyweight—I do also wholeheartedly believe that RP is one of the factors that has helped me get so much closer. (And I do have a shit-ton of other non-scale victories, for sure!)

In anticipation of the other (in my mind) likely outcome of this cut, I’d also been searching for the words to justify my rationale for (probably) ending my cut early rather than moving to the third tab, for why 140 lb was (likely) going to be the range where progress stalled.

But, again, we work with reality. And reality is: when I stepped on the scale this morning, it read 133.7 lb.

To put that in perspective: I weighed 142 lb in tenth grade, 155 lb when I graduated high school, 165 lb as a college swimmer, 148 lb as a post-college marathon runner, and 156 lb during my first couple years of CrossFit. And when I started this most recent body composition adventure back in March 2017, it was at my highest-ever weight of 173 lb.

Now, almost eleven months later—across eight weeks of traditional calorie restriction followed by two RP cuts and one RP maintenance—it would seem that I can officially claim to have lost FORTY POUNDS in the past year (whaaaaaat?!?).

I’m turning 34 on Tuesday—and it’s amazing, humbling, and mind-boggling to realize that I’ll be significantly leaner and healthier at 34 than I was at 24, or even at 14. And although this cut was tougher than my first—because the leaner you are, the harder it is—in terms of the hard numbers, from peak to nadir, I actually lost more weight on this round than I did on my first (a full 15# this time).

Granted, for once in my life, all the potential factors coincided in a good way to send me out on the most successful note possible; today’s final weight of 133.7 is likely a bit artificially low, mostly due to the juxtaposition of several factors from yesterday:  —a non-training day (very few carbs / holding less water)  —getting dry-needled by the PT (for some reason this always seems to cause me to drop a pound or so)  —low-volume foods, because I spent most of yesterday on a road trip  —being on day 6 of my period (which I rarely even get at all while cutting, so this was a total surprise) and therefore taking perfect advantage of the hormonal water weight drop. …However, I actually feel okay about all of this. It was neat to see a number that low—but I’m pleased and proud to realize that I truly don’t feel anxious about ‘hanging on’ to that number. Barring catastrophic illness or some other such life event, today is probably the lightest I will ever be—and I am fully okay with that.

To be fair,  I do anticipate some intermittent future angst in that regard, which is one of the reasons I wrote a separate post of my non-scale victories across this cut as they related to my bodyweight at the time—my coach is continually talking me off the ledge in this regard, when I complain that I ‘feel heavy’ on a given day and that my bodyweight must be the reason that handstand push-ups feel so hard. :) But honestly, as long as I can stay somewhat close to 140—which, objectively, shouldn’t be an issue—then I don’t really need to care about the exact number on the scale. (Although, admittedly, I do really hope I get to keep the smaller bra size! :))

And here’s something else I wondered about, planned for, and worried over—which may, actually, be the biggest victory of all.

I worried that I wouldn’t know when to stop. After all, I live in America, surrounded by media messages of ‘thinness’ as the desirable body type. I was fortunate to grow up in a family where healthy eating was prioritized, and I’ve always been fit and active, but I’ve also never been ‘thin’. And because I’ve never experienced myself as a ‘small’ person, I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like psychologically. As a primary care provider, I’ve had some experience treating patients with eating disorders—and this second time around, starting from a much lighter size and not really ‘medically necessitating’ any further weight loss, the clinical part of my brain was mildly concerned that I, like so many other women, might lose perspective. This was one of the reasons I set my rule about not moving to Cut 3 under any circumstances—because I knew, objectively, that it wouldn’t make sense for my goals, and I halfway suspected that I might reach that point in the process and be tempted to do it anyway. Having never been truly ‘lean’ before, how would I know where the line was? How would I know when I was ‘done’?

As this cut progressed, it was both fascinating and unsettling to notice certain familiar ‘disease’ characteristics in myself—both physical (hair loss, dry skin, constantly feeling cold) and psychological (taking photos of my meals, menu planning, stockpiling tasty snacks in the pantry ‘for later’, unconsciously spending an excessive amount of time in the kitchen). However, it was ultimately empowering to realize that, all throughout, I still retained a certain degree of analytical distance that my former patients never could. This experience was, therefore, enlightening on two levels: experiencing some of the ‘disordered’ symptoms firsthand, while also sensing the position of the dividing line between an illness versus a short-term, controlled, goal-oriented plan. It reaffirmed my sense of my own psychological health, and (as a healthcare provider) deepened my understanding of anorexia as a true psychiatric disorder.

Because, long story short: I KNOW that I am done. I feel it clearly. And I am fascinated—and oddly proud—to realize that I objectively do not love everything about the way my body looks at this particular moment. I have loose, slack skin on my belly that I’ve never had before. None of my work pants fit. The lower halves of my quads are basically the same diameter as my knees—like a knobby-kneed preteen. With my hands on my hips, I feel bones. When the bathroom light hits me the right way, I can see every single one of my chest ribs. There’s a concave bony hollow at my xiphoid process that I’ve never seen before. My boobs are, for lack of a better word, deflated. My spandex workout shorts are legitimately baggy, and I’ve had to stop wearing the capris and tights entirely, because they’re falling off. With hollow holds at the gym, my posterior pelvic bones are meeting the floor. And I still (STILL) have barely any visible abs, no matter what tricks of lighting or flexing I employ. ;) Some of this is the ‘normal’ end-of-cut flatness (which will go away as carbohydrate/glycogen stores are replenished—in hindsight, the first time around, my post-cut maintenance photos definitely looked leaner, healthier, and more muscular than my end-of-cut ones). But the ability to look in the mirror, acknowledge that I have successfully wrought a major change in my physique, and then also genuinely feel that I have officially found the outer limit of ‘leanness’ in terms of the physical appearance that I desire for myself—well, that’s pretty damn empowering.

My official DEXA result this morning put me at 18.6% body fat—which comfortably beats my goal of sub-20% (and feels pretty incredible in light of my 34% BodPod result from this past May, which had me sobbing in my car from heartbroken frustration). However, on another level, given that my level of ‘health’ is firmly established (and was confirmed today, when the DEXA tech commented that my level of ‘visceral fat’ around the internal organs was one of the very lowest she’d ever seen), that number is also arbitrary. In a practical sense, it means nothing. It has zero bearing on how I feel inside this body or how I’m choosing to proceed from here. I still genuinely don’t want to be any leaner, for either performance or aesthetics. My body, mind, and metabolism have earned a long rest, and we’re going to be maintaining for a minimum of six months—after which I can reevaluate the idea of a muscle gain cycle, if I decide that makes sense for my athletic goals.

This also means that I’m not fearing maintenance this time around—not only because it’s familiar territory now, but because I would actually like to see myself fill out a little bit. The first time, I was so anxious about seeing the scale’s inevitable (appropriate) rise that I shoved it under the sink after my final weigh-in and didn’t look for six entire weeks. …At which point I was up by three damn pounds—precisely where I was supposed to be, without having used any numerical data to guide my behaviors. That was an eye-opening moment—to realize that my body had done exactly what it was supposed to do without any conscious help from me, and that I am not, in fact, exempt from the laws of science (because we all think we are, right?).

The ‘maintenance anxiety’ stemmed from the knowledge that I couldn’t ‘do anything about it’ if there were a major scale change or if I started to dislike the way my body looked. Cutting provides infinitely more control, not only because the rules are fixed, but because in that context, the scale is a tool; the fluctuations are telling you something, and you have the ability to use those numbers to make adjustments. Maintenance is much more passive—which is supposed to be relaxing, but, for many of us, the lack of control is anxiety-inducing.

Today, by contrast, when I got home after my DEXA, I made protein pancakes. And when there were a couple extra spoonfuls of leftover mix in the container—I just dumped them into the mixing bowl. Then I made a cup of coffee, and put a little spritz of whipped cream on top—just because I could. Because that’s the kind of thing you can do on maintenance.

I drank the coffee. I ate the pancakes. I smiled. And I moved on with my day.

Another of my biggest takeaways this time is how incredibly flexible our metabolisms are. There was a phrase in one of the RP blog posts at some point that I’m sure I’m going to misquote, but it was describing the goal of maintenance as ‘encouraging your body to accept the largest possible amount of food on a consistent basis’ without gaining weight. I really liked that wording, and the associated understanding of our bodies’ chemical processes as adaptable and intelligent. And during this cut, I felt the truth of that statement; after my quick Christmas trip home, once I got back on template / back into a hypocaloric state, I realized that my hunger levels had increased a lot—which is a sign of a healthy metabolism, ramping up in response to receiving more food. This is why most of us are able to maintain reasonably close to our end-of-cut weights—because adding 100-200 calories here or there is (fortunately!) not a mathematically linear process that results in pure weight gain. Granted, promptly being hungry again 15 minutes after finishing each template meal doesn’t make for a terribly pleasant day on cut—but I enjoyed the quiet insight as to what my body was up to, and I’m actually looking forward to feeling my appetite surge back over the coming days and weeks as I figure out what a sustainable maintenance is going to look like for me.

Mentally, I am feeling ‘ready’ without being ‘desperate’. These past 2-3 weeks have been more of a struggle in terms of feeling mentally ‘blah’ and just trying to put one foot in front of the other—but it has truly not been difficult to stay compliant. I have not craved off-template foods. I’ve felt more cold and cranky and weak than traditionally ‘hungry’.

But, physically, my body also ‘feels done’ cutting. I can understand why we are supposed to go to maintenance when we get injured. My back ‘tweak’ around the midpoint of this cut was (fortunately) not severe and doesn’t come into play with gymnastics movements (which have been my primary focus), so, with the help of a fantastic PT and some programming modifications from my CF coach, I’ve been able to keep progressing with a minimum of disruption to my routine. There has been tremendous improvement in the pain. However, it’s not entirely better, and the nagging discomfort—which moves around, bothering me in different places to different degrees on different days—is annoying, so I’m curious (and hopeful) as to the effect that proper fueling may have on recovery.

I’m not going to faceplant into a box of donuts—but I am eager for the next phase. Eager to truly internalize my maintenance macros as my base (rather than the Cut 1 tab feeling like my instinctive ‘base’, which is how it’s been for the past year). Eager to see what the scale and the shape of my body and the fit of my clothes will naturally do now that I have the resources and the wherewithal to passively track those changes. And eager to ‘feel strong’ in the gym again—and see what this smaller body can do when it’s got a bit more fuel on board.

I will freely admit that I’m posting this ‘timeline’ mostly for my own benefit, so that I’ll have it to refer back to at a later date; it may not be of tremendous interest to anyone else. But as I type this, I have 24 hours to go until the ‘finish line’ of my second Renaissance Periodization cut. I’m once again feeling pretty satisfied, proud of the journey, and, in most ways, dramatically more prepared and mentally ‘settled’ about the endpoint than I was after my first cut. However, the one concept that continues to make me (irrationally) anxious is the prospect of slightly higher bodyweight potentially impacting my CrossFit movements—thus this post.

Objectively, I do recall from my last cut-to-maintenance transition that the concept of improved fueling / increased glycogen stores pretty effectively offsets any slight bodyweight bump. However, I’ve been CrossFitting for over five years and just gained the bulk of my gymnastics skills within these past six or seven months. In other words, I’m still so new to this ‘toolbox’ that any performance fluctuations (which I’ve long been accustomed to with a barbell) still feel irrationally frightening on this new playing field—like, but I could do FIVE strict pull-ups yesterday, and today FOUR feels hard; therefore THE WORLD IS ENDING! (…My coach is continually talking me off the ledge in this regard. :))

At any rate, this is one reason why I kept track of certain gym accomplishments (a.k.a. ‘non-scale victories’) as the cut progressed. I am definitely not someone who PRs barbell movements on a cut (quite the contrary; my strength has suffered significantly this year), but my gymnastics have improved literally beyond all recognition, of which I am very proud. As such, I wanted to keep track of my performance milestones at various bodyweights along the way, so that I’ll have this mental tool for the inevitable struggle bus days. When sets of handstand push-ups feel impossible, it might help to be able to look back at this post and say to myself, no, your bodyweight is NOT the issue, because you did this same thing in a metcon when you were TEN POUNDS heavier! It’s just time for a rest day, that’s all. :)

Without further ado, I give you RP Cut #2: the Non-Scale Victory Edition! :)

Week 1 average: 148.4 lb (although, admittedly, about a pound of this was Bagel Bloat from my massive cheat weekend in NYC just prior to starting the cut—I had been averaging 147.4 prior to the trip) Non-scale victory: recaptured a 193# back squat (which is only 7# off my all-time best despite weighing 20-25# less than I did at the time I achieved that PR).

Week 2 average: 146.4 lb Non-scale victory: 2 sets of 5 unbroken handstand push-ups (single abmat, no plates) in a metcon setting!

Week 3 average: 145.3 lb Non-scale victorIES: five unbroken strict pull-ups! three unbroken ring dips! 4 sets of 50 unbroken double-unders! ...It was a big week :-)

Week 4 average: 144.2 lb Non-scale victory: PRed Fran at 8:28. Definitely still on the slower side, but I was thrilled by consistently large-ish sets (thrusters as 14/7, 8/7, and 9 unbroken; pull-ups as sets of 3-5 the whole way!). Afterward, my coach made the point that I likely could have gone faster for competition purposes by doing smaller sets, but that this was the right approach/stimulus to use for training.

Week 5 average: 142.6 Non-scale victory: basically blitzing through a metcon that included both TTB and HSPU (two relatively new skills for me), and staying consistent with both. Did all the sets of 10 TTB as 6/4, and sets of 5 HSPU as unbroken 5s (albeit again to just one abmat, no plates).

Week 6 average: 141.2 lb Non-scale victory: weighted pull-ups with a 10# plate! Also, sets of 4 HSPU with 10# plates—something I had struggled with as recently as three weeks prior—felt EASY. (The high point of this week was the moment when my coach grinned at me after a particularly sharp set of those and said, “See, this is why, when you get salty about stuff, I say to you, ‘remember when you couldn’t do a handstand push-up negative?’” :-))

Week 7 average: 141.0 lb (but this was a bit artificially inflated because it was the week that I ‘should have gotten’ my period; in reality, this was also the week I broke the 140 barrier / saw a couple of weights in the 130s for the first time ever in my adult life!). Non-scale victory: not a big flashy accomplishment, but I was pretty pleased when I felt basically fine / barely sore at all after doing the equivalent of about 90 pull-ups in one training session.

Week 8 average: 140.9 lb (but again somewhat artificially inflated, this time by being home for the holidays) Non-scale victory: non-gym-related, but: going home for 2.5 days for Christmas and meeting both of my goals, which were (1) getting my protein in every day and (2) eating and enjoying normal food without ‘cracking out’. I was also proud that I could recognize the exact moment (on the morning of the third day) when I was starting to lose my restraint, and was able to use the clock as a tool to reel myself back in.

Week 9 average: 138.7 lb Non-scale victory: there were three this week: (1) got my first truly RXed handstand push-ups (abmat + 25-lb plates), on New Year’s Eve, (2) did 50 burpees in 2:58 (!), and (3) did a set of 10 easy unbroken toes-to-bar that felt as though I could’ve kept going!

Week 10 average: 138.1 lb Non-scale victory: ‘graduated’ to performing official muscle-up attempts! I have all the ‘pieces’—five strict pull-ups, three strict dips, sharp transitions on the low rings, strong hollow swings on the high rings—I just have to figure out the combination of mental cues that allows me to put it all together.

Week 11 average: 137.2 lb Non-scale victory: sets of two RXed HSPU in an EMOM setting—that actually felt dramatically easier than the singles I had done two weeks prior! Also, coach started programming my wallballs with the 20# ball—which I obviously despise, but also secretly love, because it feels like a vote of confidence. :)

Week 12 average: 135.4, with a nadir of 133.7 lb (!!!) Non-scale victory: sets of 3-4 unbroken false grip ring pull-ups (which feel weird and uncomfortable, but several of the boys in the gym spontaneously commented on how good they looked and how “you just add a little kip in there, and [you’ve got your muscle-up]!”, which felt really good to hear. :)

…I’ll soon link this post back to the fuller/longer one detailing more of the multidimensional ins and outs of this second cut, but thought that the above timeline deserved its own section (in the interest of partitioning the various aspects into manageable ‘chunks’, rather than writing my usual rambly novel :)).