My BodyBlog

Sometimes life just throws some things at you that force you to change your plans.  You have to accept less than what you were hoping for, and make the best of what you have.  That is what is now happening to me with my training plans.  My desire was to follow a 5×5 training program from October to December, but today I’ve decided to suspend that because it just wasn’t working for me right now, in spite of my best efforts.

Doing 5×5 using compound exercises for every workout was pushing my body in a way that I’ve never experienced before…and I loved it!  The effort I was giving made me feel great, and I know I was gaining strength and growing….the down side was that I needed extra recovery time, which I was expecting.  Lifting such heavy weight each workout was taking a greater toll on my body that any way I’d ever lifted before.  In October I made the mistake of doing too many other exercises after I’d finished my compound work…this was making my recovery time longer, so I planned to reduce the length of each workout in November….what I didn’t plan for however was that my rest days wouldn’t be rest days anymore….

We are having an addition put on our house.  We have a contractor, however to save money my wife and I have been doing as much of the site prep and clean-up work as possible.  The work is now in full swing and since the start of November I have spent many many hours outside doing a variety of things.  I’ve been bending, lifting, carrying, dragging, shovelling, pushing and pulling for hours on end!  I work behind a desk, so apart from walking and yard work, most of my days away from the gym are days when I can rest my muscles.  But now, doing all this extra physical work on top of my workouts is taking a heavy toll on my body.  When I go to the gym I feel like I don’t have the same energy or strength that I’m used to.  I’ve been hoping to do 5×5 deadlifts all week, but my hamstrings and lower back have been working all week and I’m already sore.

Bodybuilding for almost 5 years has taught me to listen to my body, and at this point my body is telling me that I can’t do the 5×5 training and the physical work at the same time.  After what I’ve been through this week, doing anything with the lower body at the gym is out for several more days.  I have a lot more clean-up work to do next week too.  So although I hate to give up something once I’ve started, I know the sensible thing for me to do is to put aside the 5×5 training until I can get back to a more normal routine.  I’ll use my gym time to work whatever muscle group I feel is up to it, and I’ll do lots of abs and cardio.  Here’s where my 5×5 training is stopping:

Overhead Barbell Press - Did 120 lbs and feel like I can do more.

Squats -  Did 260 lbs with excellent form and feel like I can do a lot more.

Deadlifts - Did 290 and feel like I can do more.

Bench Press - Failed by only one rep at 205 and know I can improve if I keep working at it.

Looking at the big picture, I’m steadily getting leaner, and my strength and mass are increasing.  I’m very happy with where I’m going, and I’ll try 5×5 training of some sort again sometime down the road!

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 8th, 2008 at 8:04 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.