Back At It
After my first break in almost 4 months my shoulders really responded well to the 5 days off. So this AM I was back at it. As much as I hate to admit it, at this point my body just cannot handle the split cycle schedule I had of lifting on Mon, Tue, Thur & Fri (with Fri being a repeat of the Mon split) and doing core on Wed & Sat. I made good gains, but to be honest my quality of life started to suffer seriously with the shoulder issues. I’m not doing this to look good & be miserable. I want to enhance my abilities, not hinder them. So, with a lot of pride being swallowed I am going back to the classic Mon-Wed-Fri spilt, do core on Tue & Thur and take the weekend off completely.
Some other changes:
- Placing Back/Legs on Wed to allow the shoulders & elbows 3 & 2 day windows of rest between Chest/Tris & Shoulders/Bis
- Altering some of the exercises I do to be more "joint friendly", like replacing overhand grips with hammer grips for presses.
- Possibly eliminating some exercises in lei of more joint friendly ones.
I guess this is all part of the learning/maturation process. I made the classic "noob" mistake of doing too much too soon. I’m learning. I’m working less but harder, focusing harder on control & form as opposed to weight, etc.
Time will tell if I can develop/strengthen my tendons & ligaments to the point of returning to the 4 day/week cycle, but for now I’m just going to focus hard on doing as much as I can as hard as I can without causing more harm then good.
