Progress & Fustrations

It's the final week of the Winter Games this week. Thursday will be my last weight lifting session until I come back from Europe at the beginning of October. I will still be doing some body-weight exercises at home (don't want to lose my #wintersoldierarms) and I'll work out when I'm overseas (yes, I really will!) but it's suddenly hit me how much I'm going to miss the structured weight program at EP.

Tonight was Monday, which means it was my last leg day for this program. My goals for leg day at the beginning of the program were as follows:

Squat 80kgs for a One Rep Max.
Squat 60kgs for a working set of four.

Did I achieve this?

The short answer is no. 

I didn't get above 50kgs this program, and while that may seem like a disappointment on the surface, the fact that I was squatting at all is actually a huge achievement. Second week into the Winter Games I sustained a head and neck injury while pole dancing which took several weeks to completely heal and meant that squats had to be put on the back burner for several weeks. 

Injuries happen, and if I'd pushed on through without consideration for my injury then it would have come back to bite me big time! I'm not terribly proud of the weights I squatted this program, but I am proud that I stepped back and gave my body the time it needed to recover, even if that meant sacrificing one of my goals.

Words of wisdom from a friend on Instagram.

Achievement is often trumpeted as a big thing, but tonight made me realise that it's often subtle. Muscle gain, getting stronger, losing fat and feeling fitter are all wonderful things, but it's not always tangible. Being able to continue barbell squats after a neck injury is an achievement, but you can't measure it in any quantifiable way: it just is. A team mate of mine tonight tried three times to lift a personal best deadlift of 180kgs and, even though he couldn't get it all the way up, he managed to get the bar off the ground. He didn't make the lift, but that he was willing to keep trying even after failure is a massive achievement in itself. 

The moral of the story: maybe what you said you wanted in the beginning wasn't what you got in the end. Maybe something happened, maybe your goals changed, maybe you just didn't quite get there, but the real measure of success is this: are you further ahead than you were when you started?

​If the answer is yes, then you made it.

​- Jewels