Recovery Days

It has been 6 weeks since I had surgery done on my broken ankle. It is not fully healed yet, but I can slowly start applying some weight on it. It will still be some time and lots of physio untill I fully recover. It sucks since it holds me back from doing things I love, but surprisinly enough, I do find it to be an interesting experience.

Before this incident happened, I never had a bone broken, sure I had lots of injuries with pulling my legements and all, but I never had to wear a cast or had surgery performed for having something broken. This incident taught me that even tho it sucks, it’s not as bad as I tough it would be. I tought that I would be bored out of my mind doing nothing, but I have found things to still keep myself busy with: I still go to gym as much as I can, training on holding my breath and started to learn photography. At the gym, I am still able to do lots of training that doesn’t involve my broken ankle.

What I have found really interesting about this experience, is that I’m much more motivated than I was before! I see this being as a challenge! And I put lots more effort into doing what I do (what I can do for now). I feel like I have to prove to myself (and to others), that a bad situation can be turned around into something positive! Altho I gotta say, I can’t wait to be healed and back to my adventure!

“Just Do It!” Mentality

Here’s what have been going thru my mind last night during training, felt like sharing it…

Few months ago, due to minor injuries and different interests, I felt that I haven’t been pushing myself hard enough in my training. Lately I have been trying to change that. The biggest challenge I found was to stick to the intensity of the workouts, I felt lazy at times and many times I gave into it and not finish up my training as I should of have: in my case, after my main training I would skip my freediving training at the pool. I gave myself excuses that I will catch up with it the next day, as a result I didn’t made any progress at all. One thing that I found is helping me overcome this is the mentality that I used to use way back in the days, I call it “Just do it” mentality. It is really simple, you set a certain schedule that you’d want to follow, and you simply do it. Don’t give yourself a choice. Because once you start debating whether you should do it or not, your mind will find many reasons why should skip it, or take an easy way out. Someone once told me about his experience in the army, even tho the training was rigorous, he still though it was easier, because there was no choice of not doing it. It had to be done! I found it to be the same experience for me when I was doing my training for the Army Reserves back in my young days. If you give yourself no choice, it will become easier, and this is what has been working for me lately. I used to go thru a mental battle every time after my weight training to continue my training freediving at the swimming pool. It was really hard to force myself to continue training when all I wanted to do was go home eat and sleep. But lately I give myself no more choice, and I feel that I save lots of mental energy for not thinking about it, but just doing it. And I’m starting to see results again!

Training Progression – July Goals Report and New Goals

A thought went thru my head this morning when I was doing my early morning run before work: “If I look back on my life 20 years from now, and if there isn’t anything worth seeing, then I’m wasting my time!”

The month of July is over. Here’s our report on the goals we have set a month ago:

– 315lbs bench press: we have done one rep each at 315lbs, altho it was super hard for us, I still feel that this one needs more improvement. But I do feel that we are getting stronger in this area.

– 315lbs squat: this goal wasn’t as hard to achieve as the bench press. So now the next goal for it would be 365lbs

For this month we will concentrate on these goals:

– Deadlift 405lbs

– muscle ups (with ease)

Ever since last month, we have redesigned our whole training schedule. What we have learned is that doing 3 to 4 hours of training a day isn’t beneficial, it’s overtraining our muscles and is counter-productive. Altho as fun as it was, we have to train smarter to get better results. So now we do our cardio in the morning a few times a week, and weight training in the evening. We have also a dedicated day for calistenic training, and one day of rest (my day of rest = doing less intensive activities lol).

We have started to train smarter and I find that we are making progress. By the way, I still dislike training in the morning, I find it to be the most challenging thing to wake up and get myself moving! But I try to do what needs to be done!

Living a life on the quest to self improvement could be very tireing sometimes. At times I have to motivate myself to keep the momentum going. I seriously don’t remember a day when I have done absolutely nothing. But as tiresome as it is, I love this lifestyle!

Goal Setting in our Training and a few Motivational Tips

The past couple of months, ever since I have started training with a partner that’s around my fitness level and as motivated as I am, the training has been very intensive. A few times a week we have been training 3 to 4 hours per session:
– starting out with a 10+ km run or do the grouse grind
– followed by intensive weight training
– finishing with either kickboxing or practicing handstands etc..
We have both noticed results, but after a while we started to notice that our motivation wasn’t as high as we initially had. So we have decided to add goals and deadlines to our training to add back that motivation we had. We have started with a draft list of goals that we could achieve within a few months, every month we will concentrate on 3 to 4 different goals. As soon as we achieve a goal, a new goal will be set. Here’s our list so far:
– 315lbs Bench Press (currently benching 275lbs with difficulty)
– 315lbs Squat (currently 285lbs)
– ≤35mins Grouse Grind
– ≤40mins 10km run
– one handed pull-up
– 15-15 (15 pull ups every minute, for 15 minutes) – (currently we’re doing 12-12 with difficulty)
– 10+ handstand push-up (without help or wall support)
– muscle up (with ease)
– human flag
– planche
– hanging plank
-405lbs deadlift (currently 325lbs)

For this month we will concentrate on the Bench Press, Squat, and running. It will be not easy, and I’m honestly not sure if it will be possible to achieve those 3 goals by the end of the month. But we will do our best to get as far in it as possible.

A few tips that helped me recently:
– Don’t give in to laziness: many times I felt very tired and sleepy, and sometimes sick before my workout, it is very easy to give yourself an excuse to take a rest day. Don’t give in to it! 2 to 3 rest days a week is more than enough. If you haven’t planned to take a rest day, don’t take it just because you don’t feel in the mood to workout. It is very important to stick to the training schedule, because once you give in to the laziness and excuses, it will be much easier to do it again. Keep up with the schedule!
– Give it 100% while training: many times either I or my partner felt not in the mood to train, or felt very tired or exhausted. It is understandable that you won’t have the best results that day, and the last place you’d wanna be that day is at the gym or wherever you’re training. But it is very important to finish your workout no matter what. Even tho your results aren’t the greatest that day, this is the time that you progress the most. Because you’re not only training your body, but you’re also training your mind to endure the hardship of training. The “lows” in training are just temporary, once the “high” comes you will feel much better that you have endured the lows and pushed your way through it!
– Don’t give up if you don’t see results, results are hard to achieve and only come with time and dedication. But they will come!