knock knock
whoās there?
Monday, bitch, lets go.
My body is doing a great job of recovery from the soreness inflicted last week. I originally planned on doing a conditioning day Saturday but my first week of training hit me super hard, and I think I needed the recovery. I would like to give myself a gold star for fighting through a panic attack. Itās been almost four years since one. Itās terrible, your skin begins to crawl and you just want to climb out of it, you canāt breathe, canāt control your lungs, your head canāt calm you down, you shake and the last thing you want to do is keep on living because it all seems so hard. Like someone dropped you in a pit of despair and forgot to pull you out. Like everything is black and you canāt see even the next 5 minutes in front of you. Life never came with a user manual. You gotta keep on keeping on. You always got this. You can always carry on. You can always carry on. I never claimed to be perfect and I think more people suffer with things than they would like to admit. But we all keep moving forward. Because you can ALWAYS find a way to keep moving forward. Perhaps maybe the people who struggle are stronger because, they know how to get through it all.
My system felt pretty shot after that and took the weekend to recuperate and Iām glad I did. Today starts training with a new partner. Iām using this week to asses where he is and then weāll go from there based on his goals. Heās not āout of shapeā in the usual sense but he does have some lofty goals which I will keep under wraps for the sake of privacy until he is ready to share and things more concrete. I did a little research on the requirements he will need for his goal, and what Iāve deduced is that he needs a good strength to weight ratio. He needs to reach a much better cardio endurance level than the average person, strong shoulders, back and overall fitness level. Itās going to be hard. But completely possible through correct tactics, strategy and SMART hard work. I do believe strength training 4 days a week and conditioning training every single day will get him there. But for now weāll see where he is on the fitness scale. Iāll be taking him through my daily training this week and get feedback from him.
I mentioned last week that it was very difficult having my HEAVY days back to back so Iāll be splitting them up this week. Iām starting with a heavy lower body day today and then an upper endurance day tomorrrow, then heavy upper body, then lower endurance - unless he objects and wants to start with a different one. Today will be exceedingly heavy for me considering all the rest i got over the weekend. Iām still hammering down form and technique, and will definitely be focusing on that if Iām taking someone through it with me.
Iām starting him out with a mile run to warm up. Then we move onto my warmup mobility work. A couple warm up sets of deadlifts, just to get it going. Then we move onto working sets. I start out with deadlifts because they are usually the most taxing compound movement. Then squats. Now, squatting and deadlifting is best done with a flat shoe that doesnāt provide bounce like a running shoe and provides good solid connection to the floor. So a change of shoes may be needed. I know, high maintenance but what are you gonna do. Iāve found I like to switch to chucks, and recently tried squatting barefoot in socks which I like. Donāt judge. Im going to be taking him through proper form and technique (leg placement, hand placement, high bar vs low bar, cues like 1. bend the bar = keeping kinetic energy from the lats to the glutes to support the bar almost like youāre doing a lat pull down, retracted scapula 2. Belly breath and draw ribs down. Inflate/ increase intrabdonminal pressure, activate and push outwards through obliques, queuing deep spinal stabilization 3. Spread the floor - solid footing 4. Sit back - break at the knees and hips simultaneously. Now, his goals may not be the same as mine, but I need to at least see if he has the basic compound lifts down. He could probably cut out a lot of the āfluffā I do, and not do as many assessory movements as me. Mentally, he seems ready to really test what heās made of. He seems so focused and heās ready to sprint out of the gate. Iām excited to see where heās really at and move from there. We can start the squats with some drills to make sure he has technique down.
We will be ending the session with stretches.
Deadlifting cues:
Mid foot under barbell
Hold arms overhead, draw shoulder blades back, activate lats and back.
Pull arms down and shoulder width grip the bar
Bend knees
Chest up, brace core, straight back, hips not too far down or up
Stand
Squat cues:
Draw ribs down
Inflate obliques
Bend the bar
Twist feet into floor/spread the floor
Sit back
The rest of the workout looks like:
Stiff deadās or RDLās
Hip thrust
Hamstring curl
Leg press
Good mornings
Back extensions
Hanging leg raises


















