Progress: Comfort Inn is Down the Road

I've made some progress, and having done that I can say that it's nice to have made progress.  Making progress, however, is hard.

There is that point in the ever lengthening set of burpees when the body can do a burpee, but the mind balks.  Lately I've wondered if that happens because the mind is aware that if 28 burpees are done in one minute, twenty-four seconds, then 29 burpees must be done the following day.

I'm not sure.  I've become very attuned to how my mind tries to stop me during a 2,000 meter row, and in truth the reason I prefer 500 meters is that I have been very successful at shutting my brain off for 90 seconds or less.  But with burpees I haven't figured it out yet.  It sure seems to me like I'm not thinking about much of anything, but I suspect foreknowledge of the relentless linear progression is the culprit.




I really wasn't sure how to begin lifting after my surgery, but I decided to try a very basic linear progression.  Supposedly I'm too advanced to get much if anything from a basic progression, but I liked the idea of starting way too light and working up 5 pounds on the squat and deadlift every session, and two and half pounds on the bench and the press. Foremost I thought a linear progression would allow me to work up without pulling any titanium anchors out, but I also wondered if after a month lay off preceded by weeks of sporadic and relatively light lifting before the surgery I could perhaps squeeze some progress from a basic lifting template.

I'm not giving any numbers here.  Those who know what I used to lift would be unimpressed, and those who don't know what I used to lift would be impressed.  Both of those miss the point: I have taken my best guess at what I should be doing, and I'm working it like a maniac.  I will say that over eight weeks my work sets of five in the squat have increased 75 pounds.  Exactly how that translates to a 1rm will be seen August 25th when I lift again.

Yes, I remember I wasn't going to lift until November, but I didn't plan on feeling so fantastic.

Of course feeling fantastic enough to make progress on a linear progression feels pretty terrible.  It's painful to climb stairs again. for example.  And yet the progression is relentless.  On Friday morning I was demonstrating the step-up, and I was having trouble executing with a pvc simulated barbell.  All the same I knew that in a few hours I'd be back in gym squatting a weight I would have opened with not so long ago for a solid set of ten.

I made it because to me it feels better to have made progress than it hurts to make progress.

And if my mind can fuck with me, I can fuck back.  I've convinced myself that surgery itself had nothing to do with my swollen, purple groin.  No, that must have happened because the surgeon left a liter of testosterone in my scrotum by mistake.

Insane yes, but I never question working placebos.