After a long hiatus, I'm going to begin posting here again, yay! I'm going to start with some recycled posts and rants from our fitness facebook group:
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Stream of consciousness/self-centered rant
forthcoming:
I'm going through a weird phase where I'm trying
to decide between continuing with hardcore strength programming or
whether I should again phase into hardcore anaerobic circuit
conditioning. I remember I used to focus more on circuit
conditioning, etc in the summer, coinciding with certain jiu-jitsu
events and such.
bullets:
-Deadlifting 500# and
nailing a one-arm chin are fairly long term goals, like probably at
least a year of hard work out. I guess I need to figure out if I'm
going to remain focused and interested for that long without variety.
The alternative would be mixing it up for a ~6 month period or so,
maybe chase that sub 5 fran and tackle some other crossfit goals, get
my dunk on, etc.
-If I merely maintain everything else and
boost my pull motions that insanely, is that even good? I mean,
having a sub-300# bench and a 500# deadlift...seems disproportional
and potentially imbalanced to the point where it could cause
problems.
-I'm realizing how freaking scarily off my mental
image of physical self is. I'm not looking for validation here, I'm
pretty much just confessing that I have a really poor grasp on what I
look like. I alternate between viewing myself as a really skinny tall
guy (early high-school self) and then later that day I'll feel
bloated and muscle-bound. I know in my head that swinging between
those extremes is absurd, but it does happen to an extent. For
example, I feel like such a fat fucktard right now. I had a rare
non-primal weak: crushed pizza and a sandwich for 4 meals, had some
ice cream almost everyday (still working out and IF'ing for the most
part...most people would probably consider it a very stringent week
still). Suddenly in my mind I look like this:
http://i.qkme.me/3v13nb.jpg.
I ask my mirror reflection, "Do you even lift, bro?" I
seriously feel like my stomach has adopted a greasy 3-inch layer of
lard right under the skin. When I'm 16 hours into an intermittent
fast raising dumbells on lat raises, suddenly I feel like I'm the
biggest, retardedest guido shredded meathead ever (like, not in a
good way). It is pretty crazy how much swing there is in my body
image, and I'm guessing I'm not the only one.
-As a side
note, this is also vexing in terms of goal-setting. Do I want to get
stronger because I'm mad skinny and could add muscle? Or do I need to
lay off the fucking weights and just condition so I don't look like a
guido meathead who can't run down the bball court effectively? I
DON'T want to get to the point where I am more jacked than
athletic.
-Until I make a firm decision about what I want,
it's going to be hard for me to pour myself into my workouts like
I've done with these current goals. I'm realizing that having
specific goals is really freakin important as a prerequisite to high
workout intensity.
-I guess all this leads up to two
questions you can ask yourselves: "How much does a skewed body
image play into your goals?" and "How much intensity would
your workouts gain if you made your goals more specific, measurable,
and attainable?" Wow, I'm impressed that I tied this rant into
some potentially useful points.
-Final tangential note: don't
neglect recovery! This song's all about recovery (er...a different
kind of recovery): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmvWQ21thLo
