More on goals and progress.

This year got off to a flying start, moved to Basel, found a job and started working straight away. Of course now I have to plan when to move all my stuff, find my own place to live and all that sort of thing. Meanwhile I have been training hard and eating well. Sleep on the other hand has been hard to come by.

I have started working in a bar, this means when I work on the weekend I finish work between 5 and 6am, during the week I finish around 1am. I am rarely in bed before 2am and generally sleep till near midday. For reasons of circumstance I have been partying far too hard for the past three months so two weeks ago I decided to try and mitigate the physical damage of my lifestyle by not drinking. I went for one week sans alcohol and felt a lot better, got in the gym made some progress. Then the winter carnival hit us last week, meaning that my gym has been closed until today. So as I couldn't train anyway I decided to party on. After a few days of this I went on a detox day to the spa, I forgot how great that is. I plan on incorporating it into my recovery by going every other week if I can. Sauna, hot tubs, cold pools, salt water pools and relaxing. Rest is good.

So on that note a word on rest. I recently read an article by Dan John, who is a great fount of experience in such things training related. This article gave me a lot of insight into and oft overlooked factor in training, rest. What is the ideal rest period after such and such sets, how long to rest between training sessions and what should you do when resting? The first one really depends on what you are doing, I rest one to three mins between full lifts, depending on how close to my max they are, I rest 3 to 5 mins between sets of squats, I will rest about 10 mins after the last set of deadlifts before I attempt to do anything else other than lie on the floor.

The second depends on how advanced in training you are, a novice will need about a day, intermediate 3-7 days, advanced perhaps a month. How much can you handle? I am a novice lifter, if I eat right and sleep enough I can increase the weight I use every session, usually by 2.5kg or 5kg in the case of deadlifts. In some months or maybe longer I will have to cycle my training more so that I make smaller gains over a longer period of time...or take steroids. Joking aside, this is how I look at it, try and put more weight on the bar every time I step in the gym. Easy. No. It's hard work, both the lifting and the eating in preparation for it. I want as much linear gain as possible, but we all know that life gets in the way sometimes. That is also ok.

Now the third question, what to do when resting? Fucking obvious really. Rest. That is it, don't go and play a friendly game of rugby and tweak your back (actual occurrence), don't run 10k for a laugh. Now bear in mind I am not advocating that no other physical activities should take place outside of training, ever. But if you, like me, are at a stage when you are trying to gain weight and get as strong as possible, of what benefit can lots of metcon, LSD or horsing around going to be? Sure in a few months or a year, that can actually be of benefit to my strength training and overall health, but now, I need to lift, eat and sleep. That will induce the most overall gains in both weight on the bar and weight on my bones.

Now on another rest note, time off. I have just been forced to take a week off. What happened, well bear in mind I haven't yet been in the gym, I have lost a little weight. Yes it is harder to stuff your face all day when you aren't actually training. I will have to work up to my previous work sets over the next week or two. But then, I will be back on track. I will do the same as I have been doing successfully, adjust volume day to day, week to week, depending on my recovery. I will gain weight and lift more. I liked this week off, I went out, didn't care if had to train then next day. I am looking forward to getting back in the gym. I was feeling a little burned out. Is this because I am quite obsessive and tend toward under recovery...yes. Basically I will burn it at both ends till I am fucked, then take it easier, I find it difficult to do most things in moderation, I'm either full throttle or barely moving. That is me though and you may be different.

On my friend Chae's suggestion I have started a log, it is posted here on the PMenu forums. Which are a great resource for most things training related. It could offer good motivation and when I get round to it I will make some videos to post up for some critique. I have backdated it to around December and will keep it up to date. I like logs, I used to log all my food on fitday. I mainly did this when going strict paleo to make sure I ate enough and kept it clean, or when bulking up previously to track how much I ate (clue: not near enough). I won't bother with that right now as it seems a waste of time. But when the time comes and I need to cut that excess fat off for the a competition of for the chicks, then I will track it again.

New Year...

My first post on this blog and first of the year.

In a retrospective look on 2009, I have recovered from two badly herniated lumbar discs and a twisted sacrum. This is an injury from 2008 when I last went snowboarding, took a bad fall and was laid out for a week. Two weeks later thought it would be a good idea to do some heavy deadlifts, it was not. Anyway through a very good chiropractor I made a speedy recovery and by July started training hard again. Gained 10kg in bodyweight and made leaps and bounds in Olympic lifting technique and strength.

Lots of other things have happened, college finished, jobs came and went, love was lost, friends were made. Mistakes were made and situations taken advantage of. Far too many things to really give a full picture but needless to say I learnt a lot and am hopefully better off for it all. I usually land on my feet but have been walking over very rough ground since moving here.

So I begin this new year afresh. I am moving from Edinburgh which has been my home for the past 18 months, back to Basel, Switzerland. Yes the land of chocolate, cheese and banks. It is very nice there, not really much in the way of weightlifting but I will get by with whatever I can find. There is the uni gym, a bodybuilding gym that has an Eleiko set and a Crossfit gym. If it comes down to it I will just get some money together and buy myself a decent set and set up in my flat or something.

I am not making new years resolutions, rather goals. Goals that are actually achievable. I don't expect compete at a British national level, though it could be possible by the end of the year if I make exceptionally good progress and total over 240kg before October. I do, however, expect to make consistent progress and based on the progress I have made in the past six months I am going to set goals that I think I can reasonably achieve.

My goals are, listed to the right for the more astute, but will be put here anyway:

- Compete in a competition in the 85kg weight class, snatching over 80kg, C&J something over 100kg

- Once that is done. Make a 70s Big inspired effort to move up a weight class. At my height, just under 6 foot, I could easily do with more weight and that would aid in getting stronger and why would I be weightlifting if I didn't want to be stronger.

- From there snatch over 100kg and C&J over 130kg

- As a side note I would obviously have to increase all other lifts considerably to get to that level of strength. Though I have not figured out by exactly how much yet. A possibly future post may hypothesise this.

Those are my training related goals. My personal goals go something along the lines of, make tons of money in Basel, train hard, play lots, get back into actually doing some music and theatre, socialise, engage in anything that will bring any self-improvement and happiness and generally make my life better, happier, more productive...etc...

I wish everyone the best and I hope that this year is a vast improvement on the last one!