Do your damn numbers!

I'm not going to lie....I've been in a funk for a couple of days.  So much so that I watched 4 back to back episodes of "My Shopping Obsession" last night!  Usually I do not care to watch other people "struggle" with "compulsive" "issues", but for some reason I thought that maybe there was something I needed to see or hear, and I did......I did see and hear, but not as it relates to shopping (although I may be returning a couple of recent purchases, lol!)  More to come (maybe) but for now, do your damn numbers!

It's a curse and a blessing.  Training that is.  For me the curse may be having to get up super early and ready for a Thursday morning 5:30am workout knowing two other people will be depending on me can suck sometimes!  But no time to dwell on how bad it may suck, and that's the blessing!  BAM! 5:30am comes before I can even think about texting anybody to cancel!  (I never will of course, and I never have)  The other blessing is how I think about, and program, my workouts.  I start with an idea, a plan, and then build.  Some call it a "cycle", I simply look at my workouts as progressions.

I go into the gym and do a set.  I ask myself if that set was hard enough, and of course it wasn't because it was my first set!  I then ask myself how I can make it harder....but NOT the hardest! Nope, I'm saving that....  What's next "hard"?  And next?  And maybe one more "next"?  Repeat!  Sometimes repeat, repeat, repeat!  But I do keep a theme throughout a set period of time, on the same day of the week for a set number of weeks.  Nevermind.....

Three weeks ago I started a new 6 week swing power/strength cycle with my Thursday morning training partners using double 16kg's and a single 32kg.  I started a similar program a few months before my SFG and have since "cycled" through a few more programs after the success of the original. The bulk of the swings are concentrated around double 16 kg's and a single 32kg.  I can't list all of the details yet, but here are the results of the past 3 weeks: (these are all swings, by the way, done in a 30 minute workout)

week #1 480 swing reps, 13,920 kg's = 30,624 lbs moved
week #2, 540 swing reps, 15,400 kg's = 33,880 lbs moved
week #3 570 swing reps, 15,844 kg's = 34,856.8 lbs moved

As you may notice there was a bigger jump in reps/weight moved from week #1 to week #2.  That's because week #1 is what I consider an exploratory workout.  It's a workout I've never done before so I know it will be hard, no doubt, but it's not meant to even come close to week #5-6....oh, we'll get to that!

This is an amazing amount of work done by three little girls in an old rickety garage, with some crazy funky cast iron weights with handles, every Thursday morning before the crack of dawn!  That's what I love about this training!  It does not discriminate!  Ordinary people doing extraordinary things!  We moved over 17 tons of weight in 30 minutes!  The only thing I have to focus on is getting my ass out there an doing my damn numbers!

This morning I finished with some GS practice, starting with a 12 min 14kg "swing/snatch" set (one hand switch), and two sets of 14kg 50/50 single jerks. In and amongst 30-40 minutes of overhead skill practice/warm up and demonstrations.  5:30am-7:30am.  I love what I do!  Do you?

Picture above: Maribel Medina, and Brenda Tierney my Thursday morning victims!  Video is my second set of 50/50 14kg jerks. Still SO much improvement to be made, but so much improvement accomplished.  I look forward and dream about the day I will be good at this lift, in fact it may be my next workout!  I hope so!