excuses

So here’s the thing… I suck at blogging. I have a short attention span, and it seems to take a lot of time to fill this business out after every workout. So I took another month off. And luckily for me, there’s not much catching up on to do. I’ve been injured for most of the last month (that nagging back pain after workouts turned into “I hurt 24/7.” So I finally went and saw Dr. Nagel and started subbing every workout per his instructions. The two critical “don’ts” were impact and compression of the spine. Now nearly every move we do involved impact or compression… anything with a barbell or heavy dumbells was pretty much out. No running, jumping, or skipping (and you know how Brian loves to program skipping… but I digress). Nothing terribly dynamic, which took out more than a few kipping pull ups or push jerks. Oh, and squats were also verboten as my hips are messed up from the weird muscle spasms in my back. To cap it off, rowing seemed to be tweaking my back out as well. Now since I can’t actually rest, what have I been doing in the gym? Mostly rolling out. Seriously. Like for half an hour or so everytime I come in. In between stretches, I lacrosse ball the muscle groups on either side of my spine (which have contracted into knots in an attempt to support my spine during a few very dumb almost injuries during workouts – namely 95# power cleans on the chief and one very ugly should-have-failed front squat). Lacrosse ball on my hip flexors and that spot underneath the glutes that reeeeeally hurts when you roll it. After fully loosening everything up, here’s the list of things I’ve been mixing up in tabatas or intervals:

Sit ups
Ring rows (never done these before, am awesomely terrible at them but they’re a new favorite)
Ring dips / dips off a bench
Bench press for max 3/5RM
Light DB push press
Dan’s bike of death
L-Sits
Push ups
Dead hang pull ups
Lunges
Step ups (carefully, not coming down hard)
Plank holds
Side plank holds
One legged squats

And that’s really about it. And then I roll out again and leave very frustrated that I don’t feel like I’ve worked out. I’m back in Oklahoma this week though (school starts next week), and actually taking a rest for the first time since this all started. 5 days totally off. Except for the few ranch tasks I got handed… which I think don’t count. Right? So hopefully this will heal up soon and I can go back to getting my ass handed to me by workouts. Although I’ve been thinking in the realm of training weaknesses, I probably need to stop with the extra heavy strength training and focus the other direction. I’m plenty strong for my size, but I’m very very slow. So scaling down weight and focusing on speed and precision of form (to avoid another injury) is going to benefit me more as an athlete than merely trying to get significantly stronger. More runs, more endurance, more skill work days on lifts–making sure form on all of the is flawless and then finishing with a small metcon. Thoughts, complaints, or general life advice?

SLEEP: plenty.

ZONE: mostly.