Now heading in to the end of the third week of the challenge and feeling good. Again, hit another personal best this week, so progress has been phenomenal!
Thursday however I was in a world of trouble. For those that follow the social media feeds, you will know that Thursday I was in A LOT of pain. I can honestly say that on day 18, after having squatted 13 times so far, it was the first time I had felt sore…… EXTREMELY SORE! I struggled to move my legs out of bed and walking around the gym to begin with was a real issue.
So I stretched, rolled out and stretched some more, for just over an HOUR! One whole hour……. Of lifting nothing, not running, jumping, rowing or skipping….. nothing but one hour of solid recovery work. The fun had was almost too much to handle!
But boy was it worth it. I woke up Friday a little battered and bruised from the rumble roller, but a heck of a lot better than yesterday. So this meant I was ready to rock and roll with the second max session of the week.
This motivation was further heightened due to the fact that I received an Insta notification informing me that one of the team managed to knock a 10kg PB without a spotter at 7:30 this morning! Ridiculous performance!
So this gave me one hell of a boost leading in to today’s session as it made me think that if he’s hit it big, then I’ve definitely got to too! Especially seeing as he smashed his personal best even without a spotter.
So I finished the last session of the day with a client and started to focus on training. Incredibly pumped and focused, ready to throw around some weight.
I slurped down my BCAA and gunned down one extra strength serving of what I like to call ‘GO-GO JUICE’ (two tablespoons of coffee with a squeeze of honey). So at this point, as you can imagine, I am bouncing off the walls….. Then at the most opportune moment, a new member approaches me and asks to be shown around the gym and how to use the equipment…………WOW!…… TIMING! Now I am not one to say no, but it did cross my mind to run, and run real fast for a second.
This ended up taking 35 of my precious caffeine/rocket fuel induced minutes and as you can imagine the crash was insane! But I soldiered on, as taking another hit of go-go juice would probably be fatal. I mean this stuff would probably kill a rhino.
As you can see from the 180 that I posted last night, it looked a far stretch from what I need to be at if I’m hitting 200 in 12 days, but to be honest it felt pretty good considering I knew there was no spot present. It’s crazy how much difference someone you trust and rely on to spot you correctly can have psychologically on your lift. As soon as the guy who filmed the video of the first set was done, he came and spotted me for the second set at the same weight and it instantly felt ridiculously easy again!
Come this point, hitting two sets at a weight which was equal to my PB I was pretty gassed. But I just went with the ‘Give a Shit’ attitude and decided to shoot for 185. Now I know it wasn’t filmed so I can’t claim it, as there is no proof…. But again this didn’t feel too bad and I was actually left disappointed I hadn’t tried to close the gap on the 200 and gone for 190!
Back in for 75% tomorrow and I’m being joined by the lad who hit his PB by 10kg this morning so it should be a beast of a session!
Then back at it even harder next week to surge on towards that 200 mark!!!!
Much Love
Ben
What is your stretching routine for the squat challenge ?
It’s a relatively simple routine to execute that gets progressively longer as the weeks go on and you near the end of the programme. It’s structured so the stretches begin with the muscles nearing your ankle, then progress all the way up and past your hip ensuring that no muscle group is missed, otherwise getting out of bed the next day can be a real challenge.