Treat Your Workouts Like a Competition

             

My Main Motivation- Treating My  Workout Like a Competition

            All my life I have been a highly competitive person. I wanted to win everything that I ever participated in, and I always wanted to be the best that I could be. As I grew up I made games out of everyday tasks and challenged myself to do it better or faster. I took pride in being part of a team because it gave me something to try to become the best at. I participated in four varsity sports in High School. All these sports were opportunities to widen my range of competition and it is in these sports that I created my foundation of my fitness. To be good at sports, you have to be in good shape. Throughout High School, getting in shape for a sport was what I used as my prime motivator to workout. After High School, I didn't have that same reason to workout and it killed my motivation.

                          

          I finally replaced that lost prime motivation when I started treating my workouts like a competition. I channeled my competitive personality into making a game out of working out, realizing that I didn't need to be competing against anybody to make use of my competitive nature. This game wasn't me comparing myself to anybody else. This game was trying to set my own high-scores. Think of it as single player mode on your favorite video game. Every time I am in a weight room, I am trying to make myself better so that I can lift more the next time I lift. I want to be better next week, than I am this week. I am never really satisfied with being static. The need to move forward is a constant, powerful, motivation in my life.

You never stay the same. You either get better or you get worse. –Jon Gruden

        What You Should Do-      

         The next time you are having troubles motivating yourself to workout, try treating it like a game. Try to be better than yourself. One thing I love to say is that everybody starts somewhere.

Things to Understand:

1.  It is okay if you can only lift the bar.
2.  It’s okay to be lifting next to someone who can lift more than you. 
3. There is no problem if you are on a treadmill next to someone in better shape than you. 
4. Nobody cares if you are in worse shape than them. 

I personally am motivated by seeing someone in terrible shape trying make themselves healthier. I'm not motivated by seeing ripped people in the gym. I know that it takes so much more effort to change than to keep doing what you already do.

In most board games, you each take turns to start. In fitness, people just start the game at different times.

If you can only lift the bar this week, maybe next week you can slap some 2.5lb weights on the ends of that bar and lift it. The key is to stay moving forward. 

Some days you realize it just isn't your day

Some days you realize that it just isn't your day. What matters is what you do to push through it. Some workouts will be, being blunt, terrible. What makes or breaks your workout is how you adapt. You should have an idea or a set plan of how you are going to spend the time during your workout. If you notice something about your plan isn't quite feeling right, change it on the fly.  Sometimes its just lowering your weight on a set and other times it is completely rearranging which lifts you will perform. People lift to make their body adapt. You can't let your mind be stagnant, adapt your thinking along the way.

Today I had a terrible workout today. I was groggy, tired, and not being at all productive beforehand and I tried to get that out of my head before I started. I just couldn't shake it. I couldn't do as many reps at weights that I've done many times. It just wasn't my day. I lowered my weights and kept going. I finished that and reassessed my whole workout plan. I changed it on the fly. I cut out four lifts and added in two others. I feel as though I maximized what I got out of my workout today for what my body was telling me I was able to put into it. Being "in tune" with what your body is telling you is one way to dramatically reduce injury and increase productivity.

Today's Workout-

Barbell Bench Press-
8x225
6x235
4x245<---failed.. blahh
6x225
4x225

Barbell Incline Press
2x4
2x6

Dumbbell Bench Press
3x6

Dips
15 Fast
3x10 Painfully slow

I leave you with a quote. Don't forget to follow me on twitter @fitness4life and please subscribe and comment.

We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.
-Author Unknown

Start of The School Year- Deadlifting is Great for the Whole Body

Start of the School Year-

It has been a hectic start to the current school year. Scrambling to get things done, (find a job, apply for my degree program, pay bills, get back into the swing of things school-wise). It has been a great first month of school and my activity level is through the roof even though I am entirely too busy for my liking. 

I have been thinking of where this blog can move forward from this point. I don't want to just write about things simply to write. I'm not trying to simply drive as much traffic in the hopes of raising my compensation. I am trying to create a lifelong path for myself as well as entertain my audience and reach the as many people to help as I can. This has brought me to a few ideas that I hope to start implementing as soon as I can. 

One of these changes I would like to make is recruiting people to write articles and share their own workouts. I feel as though only having my single perspective of fitness misses out on a wide variety of opinions and niches of the fitness world that is impossible for one person to cover. I feel as though having (a) partner(s) would help dramatically. If you have any ambition to either write an article or two, or write articles a few times a week, I plead that you contact me. 

Lately, I have turned to doing Deadlift and Back days twice a week. This has lead me to feel as though I have a bigger back as well as a stronger lower back and core. I was reading an article on bodybuilding.com that was talking about Deadlifting and how good it was for stimulating your whole body. In the middle of reading the article, I stopped and thought to myself, "Why have I not been deadlifting?" I couldn't give myself a logical reason. Sure, I thought about how I have a bad knee. That's just an excuse. It wasn't a reason I couldn't be doing one of the best lifts for my body. I finished the article, looked in the mirror and realized that my lower back was pitiful and needed to catch up to the rest of my back. The next day I did a workout similar to the one I did today. You can find this article here at http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/randy51.htm Just a nice article that is an easy to read personal informative narrative. 

If you want to get your whole body working and get that great feeling of just picking up heavy weights off the floor while getting an incredible workout. Try this.

My deadlift/ Back Workout looks like this-

50 Pull-ups any grip/ any form  for time 

3x4 Warm up Deadlifts

3x4 Work Load- Increasing 10kg each set

3x2 Work Load- Still Increasing 10kg each Set.

3x6 Pendlay Rows*

3x6 Single Arm Cable Rows

3x5 Lat Pull Down

3x6 T-Bar Row

*Pendlay Rows are like bent over barbell rows but In between each rep make sure you let the weight rest on the ground. Pull up the weight to your chest with an explosion. Remember to keep your back in an athletic position. 

Excellence- My thoughts

The word excellence by definition means the quality of being outstanding or extremely good. I think about how I can attribute to my excellence each and every day. If you are not working towards your own excellence, then you are working against it. There are only 24 hours in the day, and 8-10 of those hours are recommended to be spent sleeping. That gives you 16 to do with as you wish. 16 hours to either hurt your excellence or propel you towards your excellence. Don't waste your potential, we all have it, it just comes down to who wastes more of it. I was having a conversation with a close friend today and I was talking to him about how I could help myself achieve what I want by making a simple decision. It would only help a little and I wasn't sure if I should because of that. He told be, "at least it's better than doing nothing." Those words clicked. If you have a chance to do something to better your position, or propel yourself towards your excellence, take it. Whether it's a bottle rocket sized propulsion or smaller. It will still benefit you. I read an article today that talked about this quote, "The best time to plant an apple tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is today." You can't go back 20 years. Do what you should have years ago today because you don't want to have to regret not making a move later. Go make a move today to help you get to where you want to be tomorrow.

Today's Workout- Power Clean/ Curl Day

2x 15 Gorilla/ Hammer Curls

3x6 Bicep Pull Down

2x5 Power Clean

4x5 Straight bar curl

3x10 Box Jumps

3x8 Straight Leg Dead Lift

2x5 Hang Clean 

Abs- Plate Dips/ Plate Twists   2x20