DoTheEvolution.Me

at some point I’ll write up a more extensive reflection of my last weeks of training, with an ‘after’ picture, and final stats.  But for now, Friday Sprints/Abs complete!  I’m taking the next week off training.  A few bullet points:

• I’ll forever have a strange, weird, and intimate connection with the gym at north boulder rec.  At 6am 2 days a week for the last 14 weeks it was a space I had all to my own.
• Part of me had secretly hoped my last training session would be off the hook and super amazing, etc, etc.  Turns out it was just as hard as usual, lungs hurt, felt tired, crossovers sucked for abs, etc, etc.  So goes training, and life.
• While there’s no doubt my training was *hard*, it in many ways wasn’t.  Setting up for success goes a long way.
• I ended up going the entire 16 weeks sober.
• Totally failed writing my screenplay, and my sitting practice dropped off as well.
• I’m really happy I started in late winter and was able to FINISH in early summer.  Feels good to be headed into this season healthy.
• Going to miss the lovely blonde that takes the step class on saturday mornings.  May go a few more saturdays just for you baby.
• I’ve now done two “12 week training programs” in the last 2 years.  One with a workout partner, one without.  Both have numerous benefits and strengths, as well as weaknesess.
• Big love to Rob McNamura, Shawn Phillips, and “Crazy” Casey Capshaw for their tips, support, and training philosophies.

I like living clean.  I like getting up early.  I like being strong, and  my training has in many ways just begun.

Ahh pull day, my tried and true nemesis.  We’ve never really gotten along or really ‘connected’ with each other, but we still hang once a week.  This morning was a good workout despite not getting enough sleep last night. (turns out eating after 9 keeps me up late!)

I felt weak as hell doing dips today, not sure why, but I think possibly because I engaged with some of the earlier exercises more fully than usual.
Well, 8 last sets of sprints and some ab work tomorrow, then I’m officially done.

Exciting.

First things first, good god was the sauna hot today, though it almost always is on LEG day.

Not sure what the hell happpened, but I wentt in, did my lunges/press/curls/sumosquats/calf raises, and suddenly at the end felt how absolutely wiped I was.  Breathing hard with a nicely elevated heart rate as I went into the sauna, which actually did feel hotter than usual.  That, plus the intensity of my workout, made it a LONG 15 minutes this morning.

Totally worth it though, because that 12 second rush of blood vessels contracted when I stepped out was simply fantastic.

Happy that I crushed my last day of legs.  Felt good, felt strong.  And I hit 171.8 on the scale this morning (though it fluctuates up to 2 pounds day to day depending on my hydration).  So that was exciting too.

This morning I seriously considered skipping.  My first thought was “I’m in my last week, I’ve done well, no one would ever know”.

Then I though “I’m in my last week, I’ve done welll.  Why stop now”?

And off I was to the North Boulder Rec for some sprints and abs.  My first 2 sets were fully badass, I was fast, powerful, and sleek.  Things slowed down a bit after that, but I came back strong for the last few.

Abs were also pretty solid, swiss ball crunches felt good today.  I’m building some actual muscle down there, not much, but I can say its coming slowly but surely.

16 weeks after startinng basecamp I’m not exactly huge or cut, but there is a good deal muscle mass.  And making this routine into a sustainable lifestyle will is going to continue changing  my body for sure.

WED/THURS/FRI left!

Final week.  At this point I’ll say that I’m DEFINITELY excited to take next week off, and the idea of sleeping in is quite lovely to me.  However, I have to admit to myself that I feel better when I’m training than when I’m not.  So while this may officially be the last week of the routine, I’m going to continue on pretty strongly after that.  Life is momentum for me, and the simple act of committing to get up each morning and move heavy weights around has created some in my life and i have no desire to waste all that energy.

Chest was pretty good this morning, dumbbell bench press was quite tough, I was reeeeaaally struggling by the final reps.  Fantastic.  Had a great couple of sets of bicep curls as well, it blows me away how much less weight i’m doing than I used to, but how much more intense they are with proper focus at the proper weight.  No cheating.

Never wrote this up saturday, but I did indeed workout.  I was pretty worn out from a long week and surprise bday party the night before.

Suckerrific.  This morning was aweful.    I was out of breathe and cramping up by sprint 5, felt very sluggish the whole time, and just felt tapped out.  Abs were no better, I felt just as weak and unpowerful.

So definitely one of those low days I’ve written about before.  Performance wise if you actually timed my sprint and witnessed by ab exercises my guess is they weren’t actually all that much more worse than some other days.  But they sure as hell felt like it!

7 days left!

Not too much to say about today that I haven’t already said about pull day before.  I considered it to be a 7/10 on my workout scale, not a bad day, but not exceptional.   The next few months are likely going to be very chaotic, so I’m enjoying these last days of uber stable training as much as a I can.

One week till the Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll Boulder Theater premiere and end of my 16 weeks of sobriety!  http://tinyurl.com/sgrr515

Don’t know if it was becauase I didn’t get to bed until 11 last night, or because I worked out harder than usual, but for whatever reason legs absolutely kicked my ass today.  That’s not to say I didn’t give them a run for their money, but at the end of today’s routine it took me a good 5 minutes to catch my breath and I absolutely fried in the sauna.  Lunges started off a bit rough, but by the end of the leg press it was fully on, and I pushed out quite a few more reps than I had the previous week.

There’s something dreadful and magical about having LEGS be on hump day of the work week.  Tomorrow I’ll be all excited in the morning because its just “pull thursday”, and then friday morning I’ll be cursing the fact that it’s friday and I’m up at 6am doing sprints.  It goes on and on and on and on!

While many things in my life may be either in, or headed towards, the shitter, I’ve at least got my training.  Part of me is really starting to love sprints.  There.  I said it.  Every moment of every sprint rep has been hard since I started, and 12 weeks later that’s still almost exactly the same case, except for 2 things: For one,  I’m running harder, faster, and more powerfully in each rep, and two, in-between reps I recover a LOT faster.  And in my mind, that’s how I want all growth in my life to be.  Enlightenment is an edge to be surfed, not a thing to be achieved. With practice it can be lived more fully, deeply, and powerfully in each moment, but its never suddenly going to be “easy”.  Like sets of sprinting, some moments will be great, others will feel like shit, but recovery from those moments gets quicker and easier…or something like that.

Abs were also pretty solid today, Swiss balls and reverse crunches were solid today, I was present, engaged, and pushed myself.  So much so I was actually a little worm out by the time I got to crossovers, but that’s ok.