"When you look in the mirror and see no change, and still keep faith, knowing that in time you will get there if you stay focused and on track, that's the different between those who succeed and those who fail."

Blogland, EVERYTHING HURTS.

It's been a busy couple of days and my body is definitely feeling each and every thing I've done! In some ways, it's kind of awesome to be stiff and sore, as you definitely know you did something.

Monday was personal training day with Robyn. Nothing like a tailored torture session to start your week! Apparently, with my recent struggles in The Open, my arms and upper body have hit Robyn's radar in a BIG way. Today was ALLLL about destroying my upper body.

After this weekend's leg-busting Open workout, I definitely needed some stretching/mobility (I was sooo stiff on Sunday that I even resorted to 30 min of easy yoga!). We did some usual stretching, and the moved to the Lacrosse Ball from Hell to get into my hamstrings and glutes. Although I totally get the benefits of lacrosse ball rolling/massaging, let me just say... OWWWW. Today, like 48 hours later, I feel like I have butt-bruises to prove I rolled my glutes - but no visible bruise to prove it! LOL

Then... we get to work. Bench Presses!
A traditional 5x5 at 113# - which is definitely a challenging weight for me to do that many sets of. However, I guess that is exactly why we're doing it! It still involves a barbell - even if I had to lift it with my arms! - so I was happy.

After that, onto the rough part - CARDIO ARMS. 10 min AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) of:
12 jumping pull ups
10 air squats
8 push ups (on a box)

So, that seems super simple, right? Yeah, so after challenging bench presses, it was a a difficult mental challenge, being a couple of things I realllly am not a fan of.
Jumping pull ups were not so bad, air squats were totally no problem (and actually helped stretch out my stiff back from the weekend!), but MAN those push ups.

Push ups super suck for me. SUPER SUCK. T-Rex hates push ups! Admittedly, I hate them because I struggle so hard with them, this workout was no exception. Robyn tells me I actually got through them on a shorter box than I'd usually use (so.. progress!). Nonetheless, with these things, it's like every.single.rep is a fight. Thankfully, I was only doing 8 at a time.
There were definitely moments where my arms just failed and no push up was happening. I went down but couldn't push back up. One time I was half up and they just quit and I fell forward on my knees.... It was a messy bunch. Certainly not the cleanest "down and up" push ups I envision in my head. BUT... got it done.

I know I got it done, because today, moving my arms in any way hurts. My "push" muscles - like the tops of your pecs and delts? - are totally upset with me right now. I'm employing the ibuprofen and a lot of water strategy and crossing my fingers that tomorrow is better, not worse!

On to today and it was time to buck up, stop procrastinating and start my next round of squatting. My powerlifting comp (!!!!) is in just a couple of weeks, so it's no time to slack off.
I put my new 1RM numbers into the Hatch Squat calculator.... then I die a little bit. The new numbers looked SO BIG.

The Day 1 opening was 187# for 10 reps. Good lord. While I know I can lift that, doing reps there - to START - is definitely a daunting task. However, this squat program didn't fail me before, so I put my #faithinHatch and got to work.

I will confess that the last few days I did Hatch squats of the last round, I was working, but not dying and sweating. I certainly can not say that this was the case today! The first 10 wasn't so bad... but then I had some descending sets in between, working up to a set of 4 at 247#. (It bears noting that last round's 1RM was 253#.. soo... ).
After those back squats, there was only one more thing to do - front squats! Equally as challenging, I had 4 sets of 5 to go at some pretty decent weights.
Sweat was dripping off and I definitely found that I needed to take some more time in between sets than I usually would.
I got it done, but WHEW. Apparently, these are the weights I *should* be doing, since I was working at a more challenging level.

Proof!!

THEN, just because I'm a glutton for punishment and need some more challenges, Robyn gave me the task of row intervals.
Row intervals after squats are.... interesting.
My task was pretty simple:
6 x 250m, with 1 minute rest in between.
I'm pretty proud of how I did on that - it looks like I actually improved over the intervals. Partially, that may have been because I knew I was getting "done" so I didn't need to save anything for the next interval, but also because I was recovering pretty decently in my minute in between. Nice! I can safely say that a year ago I couldn't have stacked these workouts, let alone just do either one of them.

After surviving that, I definitely had some jelly legs! I was not quick to switch my shoes and get in my car. LOL


With that, I have had the massive temptation to EAT ALL THE THINGS. Heavy lifting days sometimes do that to me, but I'm really trying to be good. I hit all my macros perfectly today, so I'm trying not to go nuts and rummage around my kitchen.
That particular challenge is harder than anything I've done in the gym. Argh.

SO. Instead of eating everything in my kitchen, I've decided to write to you, BlogLand! (One good choice at a time!)