Where am I?!

The man right 'chere. I finished DJ's 40 Day quite some time ago. Guess what? I hit my deadlift goal of 405lbs. Matter of fact, I pulled it and backed it up with 3 subsequent (but separate) pulls. I have video, but am posting this from a place where I can't access youtube. Will post later. After that I decided to "de-load" doing bodyweight exercises and light conditioning. My body just flat out hurt. Last week I decided to see where I was at strength wise with the deadlift, and I was still able to 405lbs. Although, I must admit it was an UGLY pull. I really felt it the next day too.

During my hiatus from iron I had a few changes in my life. For one, I left the hoity toity ritzy spa gym and moved over to a "real" gym down the street. It's not in my office building, but it isn't far. It also has most all of the equipment I need, and yet is maddeningly lacking in other areas. Oh well, it's cheaper. I haven't been in a normal gym in so long I forgot about all the bros doing sweet isolation movements right in the mirror. My favorite so far was some guy doing BB curls on the deadlift platform with 10lb plastic training plates on each end. Oh boy. If I can actually be consistent with this thing I'll have some good stories to tell.

The second change was something I've wanted to do for years now: I took up MMA. It's more geared towards self defense than it is competition,  and I don't train out of an Affliction/Tapout gear riddled gym. The place I train out of actually is a large warehouse where several other disciplines are taught: Silat, Kali (and all variations), Schola Saint George, some crazy knife fighting (the name of the art escapes me), and kickboxing. I'm the only one in my class so I get 100% of my trainer's attention. Right now I've been going twice a week for the last 4 weeks, and once my body is better adapted then I'll start going 3 times a week.

So, since I'm training like a fighter I must adjust my strength training accordingly. I'm going to again take DJ's simplistic, yet repetitive approach to resistance training. I will have to cut that down to 3 days in order to avoid overtraining as I get my ass kicked on MMA days. I must say, I've never been better conditioned in my entire life. My bodyfat percentage has dropped as has a bit of weight, but if my strength training session yesterday told me anything it's that I haven't lost much, if any strength. I was able to rep 315lbs + 75lbs of chains for 2 x 5. I obviously did not experience the full weight of the chains as there were still links on the ground at the top of the pull. Do I even need to explain that to you all? No? Good.

I also now train a group of guys each weekend for GPP. Well, not "for". We just train GPP. A couple of the guys were very much green when it came to training, and after we got the push/pull fundamentals out of the way we were able to dive head first into GPP. They have a long way to go, but have made significant progress. I think this is what I enjoy doing most each week. If I didn't suck so hard at this blogging thing I'd take video and pictures. I'll post the workouts to the blog in case any of you want to try it on your own. Don't hold your breath, but do. Starting...now.