Workouts 2

Taking a short break from all the heavy stuff I wanted to talk a bit about a recent work out breakthrough I had. I have talked at length about the “wall” I run into when I am working out, and how it can derail almost every effort to improve myself. I have been able to break through several of these barriers, and with a bit of determination I will continue to do this. However, while working out a few days ago I stumbled on a very interesting problem I have with working out, particularly as it relates to strength training.

Let me give you a little background of what I’ve been doing to give this discovery a little context. For nearly 3 months I have been doing the strength training portions of p90x in conjunction with my bike riding and running. I do a workout every other day. For those of you who have ever put yourself through one of these workouts you know how terribly painful they can be. The first time I tried to do the program I got so exhausted, I was worthless after about a week. When I decided to bring strength training back into my workout plan I figured p90x was the way to do it. No need for big weights, no need to buy a bunch of equipment. So I started, I kept logs of every workout, every rep, and weight, and I made just to eek out one more rep than the previous weeks workout whenever it was time to repeat one. I did this for two months, it was ridiculously hard. I got stronger, I got better, and I was able to increase the amount of reps I could do on a given workout substantially. I was even able to pull off some unassisted pull ups and chin ups after about a month in a half. So why now, in the 3rd month, are my reps way down?

When I started the 3rd cycle I realized something that I had really known I was doing, but chose not to acknowledge the first few months. I was not doing the work outs correctly. I’ll give you a few examples. When I was doing push ups I would do them fast and shallow. I wouldn’t go down quite far enough, or keep my back quite straight enough, making them just a bit easier than they should be. If I was doing curls I would let my arm swing back a bit so when I curled I would have a little momentum to help me out. If I was doing chin ups I might let myself all the way down so my feet could help me spring up. There is a phrase that people throw around at AA meetings “Fake it till you make it,” looking back I think that’s exactly what I was doing.

I hate doing p90x, it is not fun, it hurts, and it leaves me exhausted. However, I made myself do it every single day for the last 60 days regardless of how I felt about it. I didn’t always put in the maximum effort, and I may have been cutting corners on individual work outs, but I finished all 24 every time. I think what happened a week ago was the slow transition from the fake it to the make it stage. While I was doing the “chest and back” work out I was doing the push ups and thought to myself “you’re really not pushing yourself on this, if you’re going to do this you might as well work as hard as you can right now and make the time spent worth it.” It occurred to me that if I didn’t push myself to my limit on every individual exercise I was wasting all those hours I was putting into the workout. The result was nearly halving my total rep numbers. I may have been able to post big numbers when I was doing the workouts wrong, but when I did them right, I couldn’t do as many, so the time commitment didn’t change, but I could feel the change the next day. My chest and back burned like it was the first time I did the workout.

This mentality has infected the rest of my workouts. I have cut back on the weight in my bicep workouts in order to do every workout without flailing. It may not be best for my ego in the short term, but I think it will pay off down the road. I am doing half the crunches I used to as well, but I am making sure I can feel every single one. It makes the work outs much harder, but now that has gone from being negative in my mind, to not exactly positive, but definitely heading that direction.