I’ve been getting back to the gym after a long hiatus. The first two weeks are always a struggle, but I find that week 3 is really where it start to feel right. This may come as a surprise, but I favor weights when I go to the gym. A friend and I did a couple powerlifting meets back in college for fun, and we placed well, but nagging aches and imbalances have stopped me from returning to it full-force. We’re done with that, though! My drive has cannoned back into the gym, a round shot of pure determination and killer instinct!
Hold up, though. We can’t get too carried away. We’ve gotten ahead of ourselves before and ended up the worse for it, so it’s time to do some evaluation. Most importantly:
What do I hope to achieve?
This one is fairly easy, albeit broad. I want to improve both mobility and stability in common movements (barbell squat, in particular). I also want to add around 100 lbs to all my core lifts in the next six months without compromising form or using assistive equipment. Sounds reasonable, right?
With those points in mind, I’m putting extra emphasis on mobility/stability this time around; overall I’m trying to be more mindful of how I’m moving. I do a full regimen of dynamic stretches at the start of every weight-training session for the muscle groups trained that day. I do some light static stretching and stability drills between exercises that won’t impact the current workout (lower body stretching on upper body training days and vice versa).
For actual weight training sessions, I’ve adopted four-day split that looks like this:
Day 1: Quadricep-Dominant Leg Day
Day 2: Hamstring-Dominant Leg Day
Day 3: Rest or Light Conditioning
Day 4: Chest-Dominant Upper Body Day
Day 5: Back- Dominant Upper Body Day
Day 6: Rest or Light Conditioning
Day 7: Rest or Light Conditioning
I train legs on two separate days right now, mostly because my conditioning is poor and I might snap in half if I try to do anything else after squats. Conditioning is either flipping big ‘ol tires, pushing a weighted sled, or using the stair climber. The emphasis here is low-impact activity to avoid joint complications down the road. Day 6 might become another day of weights, but that has yet to be decided.
It’s also worth mentioning that I put a lot of emphasis on mindfulness during everyday movement to help with this too. Something as simple as walking up stairs can have an entirely different effect on your body depending on how you distribute your weight during the action. Try messing with the way you move and see how it treats you.
That’s about it! While the structure is fairly set in stone right now, I’ll always be tweaking as I go. Ignoring your body and mental state for too long can lead to some serious problems over time, so remember to take a step back when something doesn’t feel right and don’t hesitate to take it easy when you need to. So until next time, remember to train heavy and…believe in yourself. Yeah, that’s a good one.