Progress, if you know where to look.

I finished a training log book today. This only happens about once a year (and has only happened to me once before), so it's pretty exciting. I like flipping back through the books to remind myself of the different programs I've been on through the past year, as well as to check out my progress through the course of the book.

The book on the top is my first training log and the first page is my first ever training session with Chris on November 23, 2011 (yes, the day before Thanksgiving!) That first day I was doing pretty much every exercise with just the bar, and I distinctly remember the agony of holding a 20 second side-plank (with breaks.) I do think it's appropriate though that the first exercise Chris has me do was a deadlift. Feels very full-circle.

By the end of the first book (September 21, 2012) I was box-squatting 220#x1, deadlifting 230#x1 and benching 115#x1 on a modified Westside program. I was also about 2 and half months out from my first powerlifting competition in December 2012. Significant, undeniable progress had been made :)

Comparing the end of the first book/beginning of the second with the end of the second book is where the looking for progress part gets a bit tricky. As of today, my most recent in-gym max lifts are a 236#x1 deadlift, 115#x4,2 bench and a 197#x1 squat back on July 23rd, the last time I squatted heavy at all. In some ways, my deadlift and squat numbers are discouraging, in that I have not added significant weight to my lifts, but looking past the numbers, I know that my deadlift form is cleaner and better for my back, and that my 1 rep max will creep back up with time. I also know that that 220# box squat in September 2012 wasn't even close to breaking parallel for competition, so though I have been struggling to get myself squatting below parallel consistently, I am making progress and I know this number will come back up as well. Somewhere in the middle of the second book I have in-gym lifts of 265#x1,1 deadlift, a 235#x1 competition-depth squat and a 135#x1 bench press. These max numbers exist in me somewhere, I just need to get better at accessing the power and strength that allows me to achieve them on a regular basis.

Looking back is also a really good reminder that this is a long process. I am definitively coming to the end of the two-year period where strength gains come easy, and though I may have been frustrated with the slowness of my progress in the past, it is likely only going to get slower. Patience and persistence are key, and practicing those two attitudes is probably as important as continuing to dial in my form and technique.

Training today:
Warmup: kettlebells (with some pain-free squats with a 12kg bell!)
Deadlift: 9 sets working up to 231#x1, supersetted with core stability work
Accessory work: Smith machine split squats (also pain-free as long as I kept myself focused on activating my glutes and keeping my hips engaged.)
Finisher: 6 burpees --> 6 med ball slams, EMOMx5. (Uphill treadmill sprints will be making a reappearance as soon as I feel like my knee is totally clear and happy again.)

In the beginning . . .

. . . God created deadlifts. Seriously. If you made THE WHOLE WORLD, wouldn't you just have to try to see if you could pick it up (you know, get the whole world in your hands? . . . . no? just me?  . . . sorry.)

What I'm talking about here is the beginning of the Era of Fitness Insanity, as a friend of mine has dubbed it. To call it 'the beginning' is a little bit (or a lot bit) inaccurate as the Era of Fitness Insanity is only the second part of the story, the first part being how I ended up needing an Era of Fitness Insanity in the first place, but that story has about 15 parts of it's own, and most of them are predictable and depressing and looooooong. This part is long too (and predictable? hopefully not depressing), but less so. But I digress (there will be a lot of that, apologies in advance for all the times it happens. You can place bets on how many times I do, or keep count if you want. There will not be a prize.)

In the beginning . . .

. . . It was November 2011.

. . . I was 29 years old, and felt like I was running out of time. I wanted a big change before my 30th birthday but I didn't know how to get there (I had made a "30 by 30" goal for myself to lose 30# by my 30th birthday and I had made zero progress on it, losing and gaining the same 5# over and over for about 5 months.)

. . . I had completed Couch to 5k the previous summer and was proud of that, but had never run an actual 5k because I still didn't think I was "ready." (I think somewhere deep inside me I still feared that if I showed up to an actual 5k race wearing a racing bib and my workout gear that every single person in attendance would turn simultaneously, point and call me fat and make fun of me for thinking I could be "one of those people who runs 5ks." This entire fear is both wildly narcissistic - nobody cares that much about what I look like/run like/act like - and obviously impossible. Still, it kept me from running an actual 5k race until March 2012, more than 6 months after I ran my first 3+ mile run on my own.)

. . . I had a years-long exercise history composed primarily of hours on the elliptical and Stairmaster and occasional bouts of Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper DVDs (I still mean to go back and put myself through one of them just to see how it feels. Did I always feel like dying because I was so out of shape, or are they really just designed to make you feel like dying so you feel accomplished at the end? I'm pretty sure that Jillian's 30 Day Shred is the latter.)

. . . I weighed around 225# and though proud that I was no longer monstrously fat, I still felt like the very first word I would have to use to describe my physical appearance would still be "fat."

. . . I was in outpatient physical therapy for a chronic, achingly painful shoulder that had been bothering me for years. Literally YEARS. I was 29 years old and my body was falling apart. And it took being in PT school to realize that oh yeah, duh, maybe a PT could help me. (I had seen a chiropractor for a while when I lived in DC, and that worked, but only while I kept seeing him.)

. . . the rehab was working. For the first time in years I could type and read and cook and do all sorts of terrible repetitive motions with my right arm and NOT have searing pain up and down my neck and back and shoulder.

. . . I had hope. I had the inkling of an idea that my physical therapist, Chris, also trained people, and told him of my plan to hire a trainer, asking him how I should go about finding a good one. He said I already had (in a much more humble and subtle way), which was exactly the answer I wanted.

[I would like to take a break here and thank the cosmos/God/planets aligning/karma for my blind, random physical therapy referral to Chris. It changed my life. Seriously. If he ever reads this he'll be all "shut up, Rachel, I did not change your life, YOU did." But between you and me? He changed my life.]

. . . I had so much DOMS during the first three weeks of training with Chris I could barely sit, stand, walk or even straighten my elbow without my muscles screaming at me. And. I. Loved. It. (My friends? Maybe not so much since pretty much all I said for three weeks was "ow" and my face was in a perma-wince.)

. . . I was pushed to my physical and mental limits. I had never been pushed to my physical limits before, and so I didn't even know what they were. I had very little concept of what it meant to just keep going in the face of fatigue and burning muscles. But Chris held my hand and no-nonsense'd me into doing whatever I was supposed to do that day. And provided me with the confidence to do it on my own the rest of the week. (I am almost jealous of myself then, because every new training day was SO EXCITING. Every day I learned what things I could do and what things were miles beyond my reach. (I say almost because I had to deadlift off plates because I couldn't deadlift 135#, so yeah, not jealous enough to want to go back there. I digress.)) <--- double end parens, woot!

. . . I made progress every single day.

. . . I had priorities. For the very first time in my life, they did not revolve around other people (getting them to like me, pleasing them, being surrounded by them so as to avoid myself, ok let's stop going down this road, it gets very dark there), food or getting drunk. My priority was getting to the gym and training. The clarity of purpose this provided me still brings me to tears.

. . . I actually, really, 100% quit smoking. I had been "mostly quit" for several years previous, but still smoked the "occasional" cigarette to the tune of 5-10 per month. Since starting training I have smoked 2. They were both gross and not worth it.

. . . I lost some of my social life. When I stopped wanting to go out and eat and drink and started wanting to get up early and train, I stopped seeing as many of my friends. Not because they didn't support me (they did) but more because our worlds just didn't meet up any more.

. . . I gained amazing new friends and deepened relationships with current ones, people with whom I can share this crazy Fitness Insanity and who don't blink twice at my turning down a drink or dessert or turning in at 10pm (or earlier . . . ) so I can get up early to train.

. . . I acquired a hilarious number of bruises from dropping weights on myself, bumping into things and from just generally flailing around like a crazy person. They showed up on my shins, arms, collarbones, shoulders and thighs, but the worst ones were always on my shins. I don't know why it took me so long to get deadlifting socks. I think because I felt like I didn't need/deserve them (as in, I wasn't hardcore enough.) So Chris gave them to me for my birthday.

. . . I lost the 30#. Not quite in time for my birthday, but close enough. In the 6 months between Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011, and my 30th birthday party on Saturday, April 28th, 2012, my body composition changed so dramatically that I was able to wear the kind of dress I had always wanted to, but ONLY if it looked good. And it did.

Also, let's be real, I'm wearing Spanx.

. . . I began to figure out who I was. Which as I understand it, is the point of your 20s now that we all get endless adolescences, so I guess I made it sort of just in time.

("We all" being privileged kids who get to go to college and pursue our dreams/fritter our time away/spend a decade "finding ourselves"/etc/etc.)
("Made it just in time" implies that I actually figured out who I was. It would be fairer to say I am still just beginning to figure it out. But I'm comfortable with that, because I'm 31, and in our 30s we're comfortable, or at least that is how it has been explained to me. Digression.)

(Final caveat: I hope this does not come across as too self-aggrandizing. It's my story told in bits and pieces. I love reading other people's stories and find them inspirational and fun, so I hope this is a little bit of that too.)