So my training since my last competition has been going pretty well. I competed near the start of April, and did not go in feeling particularly confident in my abilities - most specifically in my squat. It became pretty evident to me during my peaking weeks before the meet that things were not going to go like I had hoped - I failed at what I had been looking to take as a second attempt during my last heavy week of training, so that sucked. To make a long story short, I finished with 105/80/160 for a 345 total. This was good enough to qualify me for Regionals, but 20kg short of my national total. I knew going in I would need a near-perfect day to get it and I didn't. Not going to lie and say I wasn't disappointed, but dealing with disappointment is also part of the game. There's also quite a lot of 2016 left for me to nail down that total so hey, live to fight another day.
I took the week after my meet off as a deload. The week after that I was off on a semi-vacation and a set of work meetings, so it was also a pseudo deload. The only work I did in those two weeks was three squat sessions to kick off a three-week higher volume program. One day involved 3x10, one 5x5 and the other 8x3. I had run this back in November when I was finally getting back to squatting and saw a ton of improvement, which was the motivation in me wanting to run it again. I re-integrated the other two lifts in week three post-competition when I got back to Edmonton, starting on a four week block of the Stinn System. I modified the squats in the first two weeks of that block to allow me to finish out the volume cycle.
I came out of the volume feeling great; my first workout back into the Stinn cycle I easily hit a double at 97 and then proceeded to singles at 100, 103 and 107 (more than my meet), all beltless. Great start. A week after that, I went for a single at 110 belted (my failed third at the meet) and then a new PR of 112.5 and hit that too.
It's at this point I made a series of poor decisions.
Poor Decision The First - I went to football practice. This wasn't necessarily a super poor decision in and of itself. I wanted to see how my knee would react and this allowed me to do so. The poor decision was less doing football practice and more what came afterwards. The answer to how my knee would react was "by swelling, a lot". Two days later I sat on a bus for 11ish hours going to/from a football game to watch from the sidelines, which also didn't do much that was great in terms of getting swelling out of the joint.
Poor Decision The Second - As I was perusing videos I had previously uploaded to Facebook, I discovered one of me squatting 215 for 9 and the little hamster in my brain starts spinning on its wheel. This is now five days after I've gone to football practice and the swelling has not resolved itself. I squat 215 for 10. Beltless.
Poor Decision The Third - Thursdays are supposed to be my rest day, but I'm doing some baseline mobility and strength testing for a program that I want to run. It calls for a 10RM sumo deadlift. Thinking that I won't be able to do that much for a 10RM, I decide to go for it on my rest day. I undershoot my 10RM twice, meaning I do three sets of deadlifts (225, 255 and 270). I'm not going to lie - this actually felt really damn good. I was thinking "wow, when I re-test my 1RMs things are going to be sa-weet!"
Poor Decision The Fourth - Friday when I go in for my workout, things are starting to break down. My depth (which is normally never an issue for me) is creeping up for squats and my deadlifts feel heavy as fuck (go figure, considering how many loads I have blown this week). I figure I'll be "smart" and in addition to my Saturday rest day, I'll take one Sunday as well and that should fix everything.
Poor Decision the Fifth - So I've blown my load a few times over-exerting myself. I've also started integrating this imbalance/mobility work into my programming - because obviously by doing so that's going to fix my problems. At this point, I also start running a peak cycle because I want to re-test my numbers on my ACL surgery anniversary. To make a longs story short, this was a bad idea. I lasted a week.
Thankfully it doesn't seem like my back is too bad from all of this. I've progressed from unable to roll over in bed, put on socks, or get my shoes on, to being able to do all those things again. I tried some light squats tonight with no ill effects. Same goes for a light dead. I have learned enough from the above to not be like "woo, hop back on the peaking program and let's continue as planned". I've quickly realized that the strength imbalance/mobility stuff is taking way more out of me than I thought it would and that if I want to see some true improvement from it, I need to focus on long game, and drop the heavy weights for the short term. So I'm going to come up with something different but difficult and fulfilling to do on my surgery anniversary and give myself the opportunity to re-test later, when I'm more ready.
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