That Training Stagnation




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I often notice stagnation in my workouts, a sudden revelation of a gradual process. Training takes on the metallic taste of iron oxide, the useless feel of junkyard steel, the bland look of ordinary, a clanking sound of repetition and a moldy smell of time gone by.

Training stagnation is more than the cessation of musclebuilding action or progress; it’s a subtle festering accumulated over time that clings, corrupts and breeds toxins.

Once recognized, amendments must be certain and quick, yet not determined without serious consideration. Sit and think, pace and wonder. There’s always a solution. Lean back, tap your fingers and contemplate. Why the standstill? Why the stall? Knit the brow, squint the eyes and tightly squeeze your thoughts.

What’s missing, what’s wrong?

It never ceases to amaze me: thinking works! I believe I know the condition my condition is in. Realizing and acknowledging I have a problem drives the issue to the clear and well-lit foreground. No place to hid, its examination is swift, and outlines of a solution are soon exposed. Let me candidly assemble my thoughts and see what appears.

Throughout my training life, I held onto extra bodyweight -- five to ten pounds, sometimes more -- to serve me in the musclebuilding process. You know that. It’s part of my training credo. A well-planned heavy bodyweight provides more mass to blast, greater resistance to injury, fuller feeding to create and support an anabolic environment, the distinct psychological advantages of largeness, and the elimination of the preoccupation and stress of dieting, seeking cuts, veins and other elusive and maddening objects of perfection.

The latter can reduce a friendly and otherwise sensible human being to a blithering idiot.

Good credo. Beg, roll over, fetch. But along with the rational attachment to bulk comes the sneaky desire to be ever stronger. That’s one of the points, after all, to our commitment to lifting weights and eating well -- health and fitness, long life with quality, bigger muscles and ever stronger.

My problem comes -- might I say, our problem comes -- when reaching for strength becomes out of reach and counterproductive.

A typical progression: We seek a personal best in the bench press. Enthusiasm and inspiration flourish. Eventually, after applying and exhausting all training methodologies, we reach a limit. The performance is respectable, yet unacceptable. We press on to exceed our quivering ability, and our pressing goes down, along with our pump and mood. Stop there? No way! We ache, we swell, dread our workouts, endure disappointment, sabotage our intelligent musclebuilding workouts, enlist black magic, stupidly push beyond our capacity and tear the rotator cuff.

What the...? Humbly, we retreat and lick our wounds for a long, long time.

This revolting predicament occurs regularly throughout the training experience. By gosh, it sounds miserably, almost embarrassingly, like a plateau or sticking point. This has been known to swallow hefty bodybuilders whole, or frighten them from the face of the earth. Only the strong, persistent and wise survive.

There are often enough characteristics to distinguish the condition of my condition from a plateau to make it something else, what I am not exactly sure. Plateaus are enigmatic.
This here stagnation is personal, has a unique origin and a distinct end.

Let me remind you -- and me -- that I offer these obscure thoughts not out of egoism (Heaven forbid I have one of those yapping pets at my heel), but because I think they might evoke identification, tighten our bond and help you unravel some objectionable trend in your own workout scheme. Sharing, understanding and encouragement do more to keep us going strong than any instruction book, mechanical device or hot new ingredient. Prayer’s right in there.

My most recent workouts -- those of the past several years -- have endured a sort of sameness: No, not in form or exercise similarity, zeal or even achievement, but in goal immediacy -- to conquer, as in battle, each workout one at a time, the enemy being pain and its restrictions. To that end all other goals are lost: size, shape, strength, condition, training form and pace. I’m not moaning or complaining; I’m explaining.

Pain is a dirty rat, a rotten dog and a wretched swine. Sets and reps are not done for fun; a delicious pump and burn is not the object, and the fulfillment of perfect form no longer matters.

We insist on lifting as heavy a weight as we can within each exercise, which is absurd considering for starters some of us can lift no defendable weight at all.

The solution is easy, simple and plain. It is also objectionable. To lower the pain, lower the weight -- from nothing to nothing minus five. I imagine high school girls and thirteen-year-olds gathering in small groups and snickering.

Submit to the light weight we loathe, execute the sets to assure saturation, and move with a pace unimpeded by pain or the anticipation of pain.

The reps will be happier, freely flowing and higher in number, as we deliberately seek an inspiring pump and exhilarating burn apart from the once-familiar pain. The sets will accumulate like precious ore from a mine streaked with shimmering gold, not a hole deep in the bowels of the earth producing rock slides and toxic gases.

The pace will be regular, rhythmic and tuneful, like an orchestral march for brave warriors off to save a land from oppression.

I despised letting go of the bigness, but delight in the leanness and enhanced feeling of wellbeing. It’s that trade-off that makes us crazy: big, thick and strong for light, lean and fast, a rhino for a leopard.

A five-percent loss of bodyweight will provide a change in training direction without obstructing bodybuilding progress. On the contrary, it should support it, encourage it, further it.

At this point in time I’m subject to my workout program and style. With the cascade of alterations released by lowering the bodyweight and exercise weight, my training will be restored and renewed. And so it shall also be with you.

We expand and grow with new-found freedoms. That is, until circumstances -- knobby elbows, enraged insertions, sallow muscle bellies, gaunt facial features, danger crossing parking lots on windy days -- call for rethinking and recalling, refurbishing and retrofitting.

No wonder most people stay home and watch TV.

dd

*****

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