Deloads are important. Duh.

I've been waking up for the past 3-4 days feeling completely exhausted, even though I've been sleeping 8 or more hours each night and I don't feel like I'm restless or not sleeping well. On Thursday I had to cut my workout short because I literally ran out of steam, on my third set of tricep pull-downs I got 6 out of a planned 12 reps and then my arms just . . . stopped working.

I woke up yesterday feeling legit sick so decided to cancel my weekend plans (which was a serious bummer, because they involved a lake + a boat + some absurdly amazing people) and really try to take it easy to get myself in decent shape to start work next week. This morning I didn't feel sick, but still totally exhausted, so I gave myself some time to wake up before heading to the gym (perhaps you are thinking if I were feeling so tired and ill I should have taken the day off, but I have learned from experience that skipping workouts makes me so anxious that unless I literally can't get out of bed I am better off just going to the gym to get done whatever I can.)

I made it through my warm-up and 7 sets of deadlifts working up to 231#x6, with all reps feeling clean and efficient. This is close to a rep PR as back in May I pulled 236#x5, but I am certain that today was with better form. I'm happy that I appear to have maintained/increased my strength on my conventional deadlift by pulling sumo all summer - kudos to my coach for helping me do that.

After finishing my deadlifts I had planned to do Anderson front squats again, but after the first set I knew I was done. I had NO desire to keep going and my body just ached. So, in what I hope was a smart move I packed up my stuff and came home. I am trying to get better about listening to what my body needs, and I think today it needs rest.

One reason I am fairly sure that rest is in order is that it was enroute to the gym that I remembered that this week should have been a deload week, but I changed it to a x5 week instead, with a x1 week planned for next week and then a deload the following week, essentially meaning that instead of the usual 3 weeks on/1 week off, I was asking my body to do 5 weeks on/1 week off. Not a terrible idea, except for the fact that I have tried this before and . . . it pretty much always ends up like this - with me over-tired and not able to get through all my planned work. Yeah, lesson learned yet again, I suppose. Maybe this time I will remember it?? The reason for the change-up was to better time my next deload week so it happens right before my October comp, but I will need to re-work my calendar and plans because I clearly need to deload now, not a week from now.