Wednesday, February 1, 2012

The Overhaul: Part 1

I've been sick. It all started New Year's Eve. Strep throat put me down for about five good days.  I got to feeling better and got a couple of training sessions in and then it hit again, this time worse than the first.  So the next thing you know, a couple of weeks later, I'm running a fever of 102 and throwing up brunswick stew and sweet tea into my favorite porcelain throne. It was after I washed my face and looked in the mirror and discovered that I had burst the capillaries around my eyes that I realized, it's time to go away for a little while.  It's time to give up the notion of training for anything, it's time to sleep, take my (American) antibiotics, and get completely better and then start all over.

So I finish my last tablet of my 10 day course tonight. And tomorrow I'll step into my little training facility for the first time in 4 weeks. I plan on doing a light full body circuit - squats, presses, pulldowns, and some dumbell work.  A little light training to get the body moving again, and give me a hint of soreness, but nothing I can't easily recover from.

I was reading (again) Dan John's Never Let Go just last night.  In one Chapter he poses the simple but probing question: "Do Your Behaviors match your goals?". Why no, no, Dan, they don't.  In fact, the more I got to thinking about it I don't even know what my goals are.  And the more I thought about what my goals are, the more I realized that I don't have any goals. I've been going to the gym and going through the motions with no real rhyme or reason to my training other than to hit some good numbers that day...  If I felt like it...  If I didn't feel like it, I didn't, and that was for some reason OK.

So, I've spent a lot of time thinking about training, goals, behaviors, being healthy again, not throwing up and trying to put it all together into something that looks like a fit, capable, Husband, Father, and Strongman. (In that order...)  And maybe it was the brunswick stew spraying through my nose, or the busted capillaries in my face, or the shivering from the days of fever, that really led to all my self examination, but I truly believe it was all necessary that I arrive at the inevitable conclusion that A) I have no goals and B) Even if I did have a goal, the only goal my behavior truly reflects is that I'm trying to be the french fry eating champion of the Universe.

And there you have it, an honest assessment of where I'm at.

I'm getting a plan together, should take about a week or so to implement.  Until then, this is the goal - light total body barbell training sessions to get back in the swing of things.

 More as things develop, The Overhaul: Part 2 will cover a bit more details and less vomit stories.


2 comments:

Ben Steele said...

Sounds awesome Boman. I've got some fresh strength goals in mind myself. Btw, I'm going crazy waiting to find out who your #1 favorite strongman is.

Anonymous said...

Awesome blog; came across it at work the other day - looking forward to future posts.