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Listen or Make It Worse

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Listen to your body. All of us have heard this before. Most of us have also ignored the wisdom of that phrase. I did recently and thankfully it didn't cost me a large amount of time off from training.

Lat Saturday I experienced some tendonitis while doing some very heavy squats. I powered through the workout, came home and iced the elbow. I continued lifting all week. At one point I had the pain even after taking 3 Advil. Like an idiot, I kept at it–until today.

As I hit the gym today,i wore an elbow brace and took some Advil. I was determined to complete my sets of squats at 340 lbs. After the first set I could feel that familiar feeling cropping up. I was determined to get through it. I managed to finish the squats, but was in such pain that I couldn't complete the rest of my workout. Now, as I sit here writing this article, I am heating my shoulder (which also began to hurt today). What will I do next?

I am taking at least one week off lifting effective immediately. I will get in a ton of extra cardio training during this break. I need to listen to this old body and not lift at all. I've gained a ton of strength since the start of the year. Taking time off won't hurt the process as much as getting a major injury. My body is obviously unhappy with my training right now.

What can you learn from this? Don't push through an injury. Be sure to recognize the difference between regular muscle pain and pain from an injury. Take regular time off, but listen to your body if it wants time off sooner than the scheduled time. These things will keep your training moving forward.

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The Beat Goes On

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I want to discuss my current progress with all of you and show you that if a guy like me can do these things, anyone can do these things. It is all about the mindset you bring to the problem. I personally believe in myself. How about you?

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Going to Failure

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This past weekend was my scheduled one max rep test workout. I generally look forward to this workout, but this time I approached it with great trepidation because I'd been sick for the previous week. The illness really had an affect on my lifts.

I stepped up to do my squats, racking my previous max plus an additional 40 lbs. I unracked the bar and took one step back. I dropped down and asIi came out of the bottom, realized that I'd never get back up, so I bailed out. This was the beginning of my problems for the day. I backed the weight down to my previous max plus 5 lbs. I completed that easily. I proceeded to add 5 lbs. and did another easy rep. This continued until I was within 5 lbs of my initial attempt. This process drained my already exhausted body.

I wound up having problems with both my bench press and my deadlift. I learned a very important lesson about max lifts: always go backwards from the failure weight to find the max. I also learned that trying a max workout is a bad idea after an illness.

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5-3-1 Insanity: Sick Feeling

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Today started out at 4 am with an Overhead Press workout and no assistance exercises. The idea is to blast the shoulders, but still give the body some extra recovery time. The prescription was 2 sets of 3 reps followed by 1 set of 1 rep at 90% of my 1 rep max. It was short, but intense.

I managed to easily complete 3 reps at 120 lbs. Honestly, it was too light. The next set was 3 reps at 140 lbs. This, too, was easy. To compensate I shortened the rest period (always working the experiment). On the final set I hit 155 lbs for 2 reps. The intensity was high. My workout partner completely failed on his attempt at 140 lbs for 1 rep, so we had him do 2 assisted reps with that weight.

I rested for 11 hours (actually, I worked that many hours) and then tackled the Insanity Pure Cardio and Cardio Abs workout. For some reason my heart rate was way too high during the workout. At times I hit 170 bpm! I completed the 55 minute session, but now I feel horrible. I have been shaking badly. I can tell I've taken a metabolic hit because I feel ill. I feel like I hit my upper limit on intensity. Now, the sick part of me is happy that I was able to be so intense, but the normal part of me wishes I could have gone easier. I definitely dug deep for this workout.

Please be sure to follow me as I complete this training mission. Follow me on Twitter and search #531insanity.

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The Approach is Big

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Today was the start of week 2 for my 5-3-1 Insanity program. Each week the approach to assistance exercises changes slightly. This week the wave is focused on getting big. This latest approach intrigued me on paper and even more so now that I've completed one workout.

Today's main exercise was the overhead press. The goal was 3 sets of 3 reps, with that final set taken to failure. After completing that, we were to take 50% of the max and do 5 more sets of overhead press for 10 reps. On paper, the weight seemed extremely low. In practice, it was quite easy to handle for the first 3 sets. On set 4, the difficulty began to increase at the 8th rep. My shoulders began to burn and the weight began to feel heavier. On the final set I could tell that I was working my shoulders very hard.

I can definitely see myself using this training approach a lot. I love the simplicity of it. I love how my shoulders feel 13 hours after the workout. It was a workout I will remember.

One thing I need to reexamine is the prescribed method for increasing the weight each week. I will do my research and speak about that in a later article.

Tonight will be a plyometric circuit Insanity style. I will keep my cardio separated by a minimum of 8 hours on those days that I am able. Please continue to follow my progress and watch my tweets on the subject using #531insanity. Follow me on Twitter @mikemahony

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