"The tension is here..."

[Day 26]

"The tension is here between who you are and who you could be."

Google that if you don't know where it comes from, but I figure a lot of you will know what song that's from. Shuffle gifted me with this on the walk to school this morning. It was a nice morning pump up song. Thank you shuffle. (:

Today's Workout: Gym sesh! Upper body stuff.
Summary:

• Flat bench: WU 12 @ 45#, 3 x 10 @ 75#, 15 @ 55 (bonus round! lol)
• The bonus round burned my shoulders sooooooo hard
• Pulldowns: 4 x 12 alternating wide/narrow @ 6 plates (need to go up in this next time...)
• Shoulder press: 3 drop sets with 25#/15#, rep counts of 8-8, 8-8, 5-8/5/2 (going for 15 lol)
• Effort on the last round of this wasn't where I wanted to be...Gotta stay in it more.
• Single arm DB row: 3 x 12 @ 40# 
• Opted for DBs instead of BB today because my back's not feeling super hot today.
• Wasn't getting full range of motion on a few reps on the left side, just something to think about more.
• Incline bench: 3 x 12 @ 55#
• Half of me wants to be like, this is literally no weight I don't know why this has been giving me so much trouble, but it had. I think this is the first time I've hit all 3 sets this year.
• Cable pulldowns: 3 x 15 @ 5 plates (up the weight next week)
• Superset: 3 x
• Bicep curls: 12 @ 15#/side
• Skull crushers: 12 @ 10#/side
• What is accessory/isolation work. Minimal rest between sets. Weight needs to be going up next time (lol if that ever happens again).
• Superset: 3 x 
• 12 lateral raises @ 10#/side
• 12 front raises w/ 25# plate

Hit Rate: 26/27 (96.2%)

I woke up with like a negative amount of motivation this morning, but I did get myself to the gym and do some number of the things, so I'll take it. Need to go heavier in a lot of things, need to not just quit on the terrible volume sets, pretty typical day outside of that. 

Body updates: My knee hurt when I woke up this morning so I axed the rowing I had planned for after the lift, hoping that just babying it today will help it feel better so I can try and run on it tomorrow. It's sort of discouraging that that's going on though. This is my problem with high effort trainer rides: Sometimes your form falls apart and it definitely shows in your body the next day (my knee, my back). My wrists were giving me the business yesterday and in the past week in general. They've just felt real loose and achy, so I was worried about how the lifting would treat them, but for the most part they felt fine during the workout and have continued to feel fine as the day goes on, so hopefully that's not an issue. If the joint issue thing continues to be a problem in the next few weeks I might seriously consider finding a joint supplement somewhere. I have terrible joints. They need all the help they can get.

That's all for today! Test run in the morning tomorrow (top out at 20 minutes easy on the treadmill) and a trainer ride in the PM on the books for tomorrow. Have a lovely Tuesday!

Much love,

Jess

Mixing it up with friends! (And the weekly recap!)

[Day 23]

I didn't go swimming in the morning. I woke up around 5 am and realized I didn't get nearly enough work done yesterday to be able to spend my extra time in the pool, so I used the time to get some work done instead (and was actually fairly productive, so it was time well spent). Just stuck to the original plan of hitting the gym w/ Fay and doing a leg day. I tried things out her way today, which was a lot more volume than I'm used to (even though she typically goes even more volume heavy than this - I now totally understand why Henry gets disgruntled about volume when he's working out with me). I had a ton of fun though, even though that first giant set was killer tough. It was nice just to like go to the gym and mix it up and do something new for a change. Everyone can use a change of pace every once in a while. (Isolation work? What even is isolation work?) We also met a dude at the gym who talked to me about music briefly and let me put on a playlist based around the latest Bring Me The Horizon album off of some cool app he had on his phone and I got to rock out while working out which was pretty awesome. (Also meeting new people was pretty cool. All in all, was a pretty cool morning.)

Today's Workout: AM Gym Sesh w/ Fay! (Yay workout buddies!)
Summary:

• Giant set: 3 x 
• 15 back squats @ 75#
• 15/side split squats @ 30# (DB)
• 15/side reverse lunges @ 30# (DB)
• Leg extensions: 3 x 12/12 drop sets of 90/50#
• Seated hamstring curls: 3 x 15 @ 70#
• Leg press: 3 x 15 @ 130/150/150#
• Not super strict about rests/pauses/etc.

Hit Rate: 23/24 (95.8%)

I have no important notes or thoughts lol. I think I was having too much fun maybe. xD I just kept wanting to like jump up and grab pull up bars and just hang off of things and do handstands. It was silly. It wasn't like my legs weren't hurting or I wasn't actually working or whatever, I just had a lot of energy and was having a really good time. (Maybe it was because it was a 9 am workout so I got to eat breakfast a couple hours before and energy stores were looking good? Hmmmmm...I wonder. But also maybe because friends make everything happier? Hmmmmmmmm...more wondering.) Things feel good now, legs are a bit tired but definitely doing okay. Will try to maybe do some core work tonight and will definitely be stretching. 

The week in review!

• 1 run, 2 lifts, 2 dryland sessions (circuit + rowing, just rowing), 2 trainer rides, and 1 swim for a total of ~9:15 (8 sessions total)
• It's been a weird week. I guess that's what happens when you get injured. I sort of thought I would end up upping the swims and bikes more to compensate for running less but I guess I just went the "go to the gym more" route. Which is fun, and this wasn't yet a serious week, so I have no qualms about it being just fun.
• Next week gets more serious though, that's sort of what I consider my first week into a real block of training. The block will be focused on quality riding and swimming but the first week will really just be an ease into it kind of week. I'm going to take tomorrow (Sunday) off and the Saturday at the end of the week off to get back on my Saturdays off schedule, so it'll only be a five day training week (yaaaaas) but I'm still going to try and get 8 workouts in so we'll see how that goes. The breakdown as of right now is 3 swims (praying for not super freezing weather so I can bike out to practices), 2 trainer rides, 1 gym sesh, and hopefully 2 short runs to get back to running (first one on Wednesday, fingers crossed that the IT band holds out!). I think the overall breakdown of number of workouts will be comparable in the next few weeks as they had been in the past two weeks, I'll just shift my focus a little bit to cater more to the "important" days (and of course many of those workouts will be seeing increases in length...yay...).

In completely unrelated news, I bought myself two massive tubs of ice cream after the health screening today, so I should have enough ice cream to last me the remainder of my lifetime. Awwwwwww yeah.

More med school learnings time now!

Much love,

Jess

The rain can't stop us!

I woke up to a soft drizzle this morning. I didn't want to run the risk of getting caught in a bigger storm on my bike so I opted out of swim practice and decided to go to the gym instead. Since I woke up so ridiculously early, it meant I had loads of time this morning after I got home to Skype my family and eat breakfast and generally chill before the day really got started. The gym session was pretty chill. I wasn't very strong today, which was a bummer, but it was nice just to get in there and move some weight around. I also tried to focus on some of those pre-hab/re-hab things and did some stability work which was much needed and will hopefully be appreciated by my body. Here's the rundown!

Today's Workout: AM Gym, ~1 hr.
Summary:

• Flat bench: WU 12 @ 45 lbs, working 3 x 10/8/7 @ 75 lbs, burn out 12 @ 55 lbs 
• Pull downs: 4 x 12 alt. wide/narrow grip @ 6 plates 
• Squats: 4 x 20/12/20/12 alt. bodyweight w/ band and goblet @ 35 lbs
• Superset: 3 x
• DB row: 12/side @ 35 lbs
• Single arm standing shoulder press: 12/side @ 15 lbs (that core work though)
• Step ups: 3 x 12/side @ 15/10/10 lbs/side (dropped the weight down because of hip sway, still focusing on that glute engagement)
• Incline bench: 3 x 12/10/8 @ 55 lbs
• Superset: 3 x
• DB curl: 12/side @ 15 lbs
• DB skull crushers: 12 @ 10 lbs/side
• No rest: 3 x
• 20 bridge w/ leg extensions
• 20 bodyweight forward lunges

Hit Rate: 7/8 (87.5%)

I guess I'm gonna try and hit the pool on Thursday or Friday (probably Thursday, because Thursday night is the Pats game and I will probably want to watch that and sleep in on Friday). First up is tomorrow's treadmill workout though! That's all for today. (:

Much love,

Jess