It is nice to think that you will only move forward in life. That on any given day you are in the best physical and financial shape and the most prepared that you have every been. Things just don't quite work that way. This is hard for people to admit. Particularly when we talk about the sort of type A aggressive guys that tend to gravitate to the military and preparedness this isn't a trait we are good at.
Recently I have had to do this. The strength training program I am using (5/3/1) uses a slow planned progression. Every cycle you lift a little bit more. Pretty much every other credible program out there uses something similar. I have an excell spreadsheet that calculates all the percentages and weights.
The thing is that I haven't gotten stronger in the last 2 months, in fact I have gotten weaker. I left Afghanistan, spent a week and a half or so in transit and then got back to Germany. I took leave which included some traveling. I have had a bunch of off time and several weeks where I was just really unfocused. Not a huge deal, there was more important stuff going on than the gym. As a result I have probably had a strength lost of 6-8%. That means I can't do the reps at a given weight I should be able to by my current spreadsheet. The solution is to decrease the maxes I am using to calculate the lifts for the workouts. I took 10% off of all my lifts and will go back to the gym next week using the adjusted weights.
Also not too far back I came to the realization that some of our preparedness systems were in a serious state of disorder. In some ways we were quite prepared but there were some significant holes. We started plugging the gaps and stuff is getting back towards where it should be.
This sort of thing could happen to your fitness level if you get sick or injured. Or you might just slack off and gain a few pounds.Your finances could take a hit due to the bad economy, a job loss or some other unfortunate circumstances.
The thing I have realized is that it in cases like these where life happens or systems deteriorate due to innattention it isn't so much that you are taking a step back as that you are accepting the step backwards which already happened. I could work closer to failure and use bad form to get the prescribed reps but why. Actual progress decreases, injury rates go up, generally bad things happen from that plan. Instead of ignoring issues in our preparedness I am addressing them. The same thing with preps or money or whatever.
Other times you may plan to take a step back for whatever reason. Maybe you are going to make a long distance move so you consume, sell or give away a bunch of stored food and supplies. You might decide to take a job you will enjoy more that makes less money so you adjust your lifestyle accordingly. Maybe you decide to pursue some sort of fitness goal. Fitness, more than just about anything else has a real push/ pull between different areas. If you gain a bunch of strength and muscle you will lose endurance. If you decide to start doing a lot of long distance running, biking or whatever you will almost surely see some loses in strength and muscle mass. This isn't a bad thing, it is just how our bodies work.
My point is that you need to be honest with yourself, your situation and abilities. Sometimes this means you need to admit that things aren't were they used to be and adjust your plans accordingly. It doesn't matter where you were a month or a year or 10 years ago. It matters where you are today and where you are going to be in a month or a year or 10 years. Take the lessons from your failures and use them to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
Recently I have had to do this. The strength training program I am using (5/3/1) uses a slow planned progression. Every cycle you lift a little bit more. Pretty much every other credible program out there uses something similar. I have an excell spreadsheet that calculates all the percentages and weights.
The thing is that I haven't gotten stronger in the last 2 months, in fact I have gotten weaker. I left Afghanistan, spent a week and a half or so in transit and then got back to Germany. I took leave which included some traveling. I have had a bunch of off time and several weeks where I was just really unfocused. Not a huge deal, there was more important stuff going on than the gym. As a result I have probably had a strength lost of 6-8%. That means I can't do the reps at a given weight I should be able to by my current spreadsheet. The solution is to decrease the maxes I am using to calculate the lifts for the workouts. I took 10% off of all my lifts and will go back to the gym next week using the adjusted weights.
Also not too far back I came to the realization that some of our preparedness systems were in a serious state of disorder. In some ways we were quite prepared but there were some significant holes. We started plugging the gaps and stuff is getting back towards where it should be.
This sort of thing could happen to your fitness level if you get sick or injured. Or you might just slack off and gain a few pounds.Your finances could take a hit due to the bad economy, a job loss or some other unfortunate circumstances.
The thing I have realized is that it in cases like these where life happens or systems deteriorate due to innattention it isn't so much that you are taking a step back as that you are accepting the step backwards which already happened. I could work closer to failure and use bad form to get the prescribed reps but why. Actual progress decreases, injury rates go up, generally bad things happen from that plan. Instead of ignoring issues in our preparedness I am addressing them. The same thing with preps or money or whatever.
Other times you may plan to take a step back for whatever reason. Maybe you are going to make a long distance move so you consume, sell or give away a bunch of stored food and supplies. You might decide to take a job you will enjoy more that makes less money so you adjust your lifestyle accordingly. Maybe you decide to pursue some sort of fitness goal. Fitness, more than just about anything else has a real push/ pull between different areas. If you gain a bunch of strength and muscle you will lose endurance. If you decide to start doing a lot of long distance running, biking or whatever you will almost surely see some loses in strength and muscle mass. This isn't a bad thing, it is just how our bodies work.
My point is that you need to be honest with yourself, your situation and abilities. Sometimes this means you need to admit that things aren't were they used to be and adjust your plans accordingly. It doesn't matter where you were a month or a year or 10 years ago. It matters where you are today and where you are going to be in a month or a year or 10 years. Take the lessons from your failures and use them to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
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2 comments:
I took a break from CrossFit for a while and when I got back my numbers SUCKED. There was a very quantifiable degradation in performance.
The solution, as I see it, is to either strive for overkill so that when you do slack off the degradation will drop you to a level that is still acceptable...or...change the workout format to something that is so conducive to your life/time that there is virtually no reason you can't do it when youre supposed to.
Zero, I agree. Interestingly the older I get the worse I do coming back from breaks. At 20 taking a couple months off was a non issue. At 24 it took a couple weeks to get back. Now it is at least a month and I am not 30 yet. I suspect that will continue to get worse as I get older.
I think the solution might be both of the things you mentioned. When you have the time then go into overkill crushing the gym, do lots of body weight stuff and running 4-5 times a week. When you don't have the time then shift into maintenance mode. For maintenance mode you would need to do just enough of the big lifts, any real core exercises for you and running to maintain. A maintenance workout might be 2-3 sets of pullups, deadlifting and then a run. A lot less time and fewer workouts a week.
Personally I have gotten to the point where I am really time/ workload conscious. Unless there is a compelling reason to do something I don't do it. I do the stuff I do hard and it is enough, sometimes less is more anyway. I lift 2-3 times a week (4ish exercises and 1-2 bodyweight movements). Run about 3 times a week and do some pushups/ core maybe twice a week. Aside from an hour of PT in the morning I spend 2-3 hours a week on exercise. Though I am starting to do longer runs so that will change a bit. If I didn't do PT in the morning anyway I would probably do 3 sessions of about an hour and a quarter a week (or broken up more to a half hour here and 45 min there depending).
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