December 13, 2012
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Still here…. still grinding
I’m still progressing on my program. Just completed training day 9 yesterday of Mass Made Simple.
I’ve been looking online for logs and I notice that quite a few people start on it but then you don’t hear from them again… or make tweaks to it and then it becomes some other program.
The program is simple. Just follow it. It’s only six weeks. I was doing this program just before Thanksgiving and it will run thru Christmas and I will complete it just before the New Years. I am not athletic or genetically gifted. In fact, I’m sort of lazy. Part of me thinks that a bunch of people on my dragon boat team did the marathon after I finished it because if someone like me can finish a marathon, hey… so can they.
Here’s something to consider… you’re doing a massive amount of full body work throughout each workout. The bench press is a full body exercise if you’re doing it correctly. You need to keep your whole body tight as you bench. The one arm press is a full body exercise. Your whole body needs to lock down tight in order to press. The complexes hit the whole body. Nuff said. The squat are a full body exercise. Yea, maybe your ears aren’t getting pumped but that’s up for discussion after you do a set of 50. If you are doing all of these exercises then there’s no need to tweak. And if you’re going to tweak it… do it after you do the program as written. Then tweak all you want.
However, what I think you may find is that it is so challenging near the end of the program that all you should think about it completing it as written instead of wasting any time on thinking of ways to make it better. For example I felt pretty messed up after training day 4 when I had to do 3 sets of 115 for 30 reps each. That would seem like a day off to me now. I would LOVE to do that workout now. Which is another thing to think about… Coach Dan John designed it in such a way that it is tough but doable from workout to workout. Training day 8 called for as many sets as it took to get to 50 reps but max out on each set. I.e. don’t do 10 sets of 5. The first set I did 17 @ 205# then a set of 15, 13 and 5 to get to a total of 50. My legs were not happy campers. Training day 9 called for as many reps on the last set up to 20. I really wanted to do 20 and I felt like I could because I did 17 on Monday. An extra 3 reps… do-able. Much of this is a mental grind but it’s also mentally enabling. I’ve done it before and I can do just a little more. That’s a pretty valuable lesson you can take and apply it to anything!
Just 6 more training days and 2.5 weeks to go.
