Stretching Time

With a meet in two days, and having spent three days in the car, today and tomorrow will be relaxed stretching days.  My body feels pretty good and my weight is already dropping back down to striking distance of where it needs to be for Saturday.  HATE business meals but you can't get anything done in people's offices with all of their distractions.

After this meet I have three weeks at home with no travel so I plan to start my new training; which looks a lot like the old training with some additions.  I'll add a set of lifts on Sunday and I will add some exercises on Monday/Friday.  Vaulting will continue starting at four steps to revisit the things I have been improving on. I'll only progress as my body allows; so no forcing myself to bigger poles.

This has been my plan anyway but today I saw visual confirmation that this is the right approach.  A few years ago I saw this bald, 50ishg Middle Eastern looking fellow in the gym who was clearly out of shape.  From time to time I would be passing him and I noticed that he seemed very calm and methodical about his approach.  His weights were low but his technique was very good and he seemed very comfortable with what he was doing.  The first thing I thought was that this guy knows his stuff and he will eventually get where he is trying to go. 

I saw him get a spot for his first time at 135 on bench.  About a year ago I saw him in the post office and we talked briefly about what I am doing swinging upside down on bars with ankle weights, etc.  Everyone always wants to know about that.  Very nice guy who was now starting to look fit.  Today he asked me for a spot on his last of three sets of 10 at 225.  DANG!!  It happened.  Dude stuck with it and here's the results.  Slow progressions with low weights resulted in huge lifts for a guy over 50.

What does this have to do with my plan?  First, I think the same way he does.  But the difference is that I am applying it to a pole.  The late great orthopedist, Glenn Almquist, used to tell me that moving through poles is no different than raising the weights you are lifting.  If you jump on the small ones long enough you will become too strong for them and need the next one.  So I decided that this year I would start at the bottom and take the next two years getting through all of my poles.  The objective is for them to become too small from higher level training and better technique.  The side note is that if you are training really hard you never feel good enough to try bigger poles and therefore reduce the chance of injury.  With my approach, when I get to a bigger pole I would have gotten the most out of the technique mastery of the one before.  SO, if at some point over the next two years I can jump on my regular meet poles in practice, while maintaining a heavy training load, then I will be ready for huge jumps on much bigger poles when I return to the balance of training needed to feel good on jump days.  That's the theory of course.  And today I saw evidence that it works from my friend benching 225 for 30 total reps.

Have a great day and thank you for being here!!  Bubba