Shannon’s BodyBlog

No.  I’m not talking about something like a Tossed Salad or a Dirty Sanchez.

I’ve been thinking about how plateaus (whether it’s losing fat, or lifting weights) are like coming up to a rusty screw that you want to loosen up and remove in order to replace it with a new one.

You keep at it and it doesn’t budge.  You want to try all different ways to remove it, so you start with lubing it up to make it easier to remove and get the WD-40, but it still doesn’t budge.  You start getting frustrated and pissed and  it makes you want to take a hack saw to it and just destroy the f*cker.  OR, you just want to give up on it and say "SCREW YOU, SCREW."

But if you just keep at it, it will loosen up eventually and you’ll be able to remove it.  It takes patience and persistance, but it will pay off in the end.

I’ve gotten through a few plateaus that were frustrating the hell out of me and I had gotten to a point where I thought maybe I’m at my limit and can’t do any better.

Now, because of how my workouts are planned by Janthony, I have it in my head that the minimum number of reps I do is 6.  If I can get a weight for 6 reps, then I try for a higher weight, no matter what the exercise is.

So for the DB curls, I had "graduated" to 20 lbs after trying for it since I started training under Janthony.  Next, I wanted to graduate to 25 lbs, but for the longest time, I couldn’t get past 2 or 3 reps.  So I didn’t feel I was successful at "graduating" yet.  But, I eventually made it to 6 reps with them and now I’m eyeing the 30 lb DB the next time I have arm day.

For the incline bench press, I had gotten to 30 lb DB’s and was happy about that.  So next it was time for me to move on to 35 lbs and I got to 6 reps.  BUT, when I tried for 40 lbs, I couldn’t get them up all the way no matter how I struggled.

In my head I was thinking, "Doesn’t anybody see me struggling with this and want to help?"  But I knew the guys were in their own little zones, or they just didn’t care to help, which is fine.  I decided that the only way I’d do something is if I did it alone.  So I stuck with the 35 lb DB’s for a while without wanting to try the 40 lbs.

Recently, I decided to try them again and wasn’t about to let those measly little 40 lb DB’s get the best of me.  I had to think of them as measly to get past my psychological block that I had about them.

I attempted to lift the weight, arching my back, grunting a little bit, hoping no one was watching while I struggled to get those suckers up in the air, LOL.  Guess what!  I was able to raise them up and continue to get to 6 reps.  I’ll stick with that weight for a while to get strong enough to graduate to the next weight level.

Next were my friggin hamstrings.  The standing leg curls were a BEYOTCH to do.  I felt like I was da bomb for curling 25 lbs, but knew that that was piddly.  But I thought I was destined to have weak hammies, so I stayed at 25 lbs for a while hoping that if I just stuck with working them even at 25 lbs, that maybe they’d get strong enough to get past that weight.

One day, a couple of weeks ago, I was feeling real fine and jacked up the weight to 35 lbs.  Guess what!  I cranked out a bunch of reps and felt like I graduated from Harvard University.  I was really happy about that to say the least.  I felt like I conquered my stubborn hammies!

There are a couple of women on this site that help me rise to the occasion because they help me see what is possible to do above and beyond what I thought I was capable of.

Amysuds is one of those women.  She keeps a journal in the forums that I check on often.  I once read that she did 200 lbs on her hacksquat.

Now, hacksquats and I have a love/hate relationship.  They are the only exercise that makes my ass sore, so I know that I’m getting them really good when I workout.  But damn are they difficult to do.

I started out with doing them on the machine with no weight whatsoever back in December when I started up with Janthony.  And I had a little battle going on in my head with them and refused to let them defeat me.

Over the months, I’ve been adding on weight, and at about the time I was busting through the plateaus I mentioned, I was able to add above and beyond weights I never thought I could do.

As of yesterday, I was able to crank out 6 reps of 180 lbs.  So 200 lbs is on it’s way to make my ass FINE, LOL.

CWPullups is another woman I’ve been  checking in on often.  She is attempting to break the world record for the most amount of pullups.  Go check her out and read about her accomplishments.

It took her 2 years to train to get to where she’s at now.  She really turned my perspective around when it comes to the amount of time and dedication it takes to have success.

So when I see people say "I’ve been working hard all week and I only lost 1/2 a pound", I have to laugh to myself and say, "That is only a micro-second in the world of fitness."

Plus, CWPullups makes me want to train to do the amount of pullups she’s done.  Maybe that will be a goal I have to work on over the summer with my handy dandy Iron Gym.  At least get to a point above and beyond the amount of pullups I’ve done in the past…or beat out my time from the last time I did them.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 7:22 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.