Midweek Exhaustion

Wow, was today's workout ever hard. Fortunately Will was with me for the first of the four exercises and gave me more stuff to work on. But is my body ever tired from yesterday's workout. (Will said I should have done more than the 30-lb bar for the rebound lunges, because I wasn't supposed to have been able to do all 100 without stopping. He told me I might have to stop and that was OK, and because of that I was determined to complete them all in one session; I think if he'd given me twice as much weight I still would have done it all.)

5 on, 5 off thru 45, then back down from 45 thru 5 (after a short rest)

• Lunge: all on right leg, rest, then all on left leg. He said that when I get tired, my front foot starts moving slightly. That's bad, so I have to work hard on turning my muscles on harder to keep that from happening. My hip flexors were tight from yesterday, and my hamstrings were sore. I didn't notice it so much on my right (first) leg, but I sure did on my left (second) leg. My first step down hurt initially, but then I realized that it was just soreness and not pain. I was going to battle through the discomfort, so we started over. It took at least one more restart because it got into my head that maybe it would hurt. Once I stopped focusing on that, and once my legs started loosening, I did better. Will said he could tell that I was definitely lagging during the first few but then that I improved as we continued.
• That was all we had time for together. But Will's encouragement (?) today was that, when people ask why they're doing ISOs again and can they move on to something else, he tells them that it take 40 perfect sessions where everything is perfect. That means muscles, focus, hands, face, eyes, everything. He says I'm about 90% there but need to work on what happens when I get tired. We'd talked about this yesterday, where when you get tired you have to turn your muscles on that much more, work that much harder, to make the last 15 look the same as the first 85 or the last 15 seconds look the same as the middle 45 seconds. It's so that you put out the same amount of effort at the beginning as you do at the end and you look the same at the finish technique-wise (albeit a little more sweaty and tired) as you looked at the start. Oh, how I wish he were closer, but God has definitely opened a door for him elsewhere now, and I want God's will more than I want my own; His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.
• Glute ham: Not that this was easy (it was anything but!), but evidently it is even more difficult on an actual glute ham stand (where you're still parallel but you must keep your upper body parallel because you're not on the ground)
• Push up on knees: I had to take 10 seconds between the last 2 because I couldn't push myself up at all. I was really, really focused on driving my chest up and could definitely tell a difference when I did—my lats were (correctly) working much harder than my shoulders.
• Preacher curl (light bar): Again, here I was focused on driving my chest up and using my lats more than my arms. It helped that I was in front of a mirror and could tell whether my shoulders were up (bad). Now if only I can translate all that to swimming.
  

As tired as my muscles are, Will is only home for another couple days and I think it will be another 4–6 months before I'm able to work out with him again, so I think we'll get together again tomorrow or hopefully Friday and do day 3.

He has given me so many good things to work on, though, in terms of technique and new exercises. Today was something else new (or rather, refreshing, since I'm sure we've worked on this before): Breathing correctly (i.e. through my nose and into my diaphragm as opposed to my chest).

No swim today since I went to CSY instead of BFY. Tomorrow at BFY or MFY if I have time, or I'll wait until Saturday when I'll be required to swim again.