Ending on a high

Now that I have a “proper job” I don’t get that much of an opportunity to post during the week. So I might dump “ideas gathered during the week” each weekend. Hopefully quality won’t suffer. Also, I should add that all opinions here are my own and don’t reflect that of any organisation(s) I’m associated with. 

My lifting had suffered massively during the lockdown. In the first week of March, just before the lockdown had hit, I had managed all-time personal bests in front squat, back squat and bench press. And then the gym shut for six months.

Both physical and mental health suffered. Physical because I wasn’t lifting, and so wasn’t burning as much calories as I used to, and so I lost muscle, and put on fat, and triglycerides and other things.

Mental because I wasn’t lifting, so I wasn’t sure any more what or how much I could eat. I would be anxious about every little thing I ate, or didn’t eat (after considering eating). All the mental models I had built up over time of what is good or bad for me went for a toss, meaning I had to make decisions on the fly. And that wasn’t easy at all.

So when the gym reopened in the middle of August, I was among the first to get back. Yes, the risk of catching the disease of 2020 was there, but that got counterbalanced by the prospect of vastly improved physical and mental health.

I restarted slowly, at about half the weights I had left off at in March. I had expected it to take a year to reach my previous highs. The guy who runs the gym thought it will take a couple of months. He had the better prediction – in the beginning of November I managed to deadlift twice my body weight (I had done that once before, in September 2019, but for post-lockdown, this was a massive high).

And then things went for a toss. Maybe I started going to the gym too often. Maybe I started sleeping too little. Maybe the diet I went on (after the elevated levels of triglycerides in my blood got confirmed due to a blood test) ended up reducing my strength.

The following week, I attempted 5 kg above twice my body weight. Failure. A week later (I do “normal deadlifts” once a week, and “sumo deadlifts” once a week), I tried 2X my body weight again. Failure again. And yet again. And three continuous weeks of failure was a bit too much to take. And it didn’t help that in my usual program, the deadlift is the last exercise before I wind up. Irrespective of how much I had lifted before, ending the workout with a failure wasn’t a great thing to do.

A T-shirt I bought recently

And so this week, I decided to reverse course. I still continued with the deadlift as my last lift of the day, but gave myself enough time for it (by changing my workout schedule) that there was time to “end on a high”.

So on Tuesday, I tried 2X my body weight once again. Failure. However, my schedule meant that I had time left over. I removed 5 kg, and tried again. Failure again. I wasn’t going to be done. I took off another 10kg and attempted again, and managed to complete 3 reps. I was done for the day.

It happened once again with the sumo deadlift yesterday, and with the overhead press three days back – giving myself more time meant that I had the time to scale back upon the end of my unsuccessful lift, and finish the day on a high, even if it is a lower high than what I wanted to end on before I started my workout.

Oh, and I should mention that in the last week, I’ve managed to hit all time personal bests (including pre-lockdown) in front squat, sumo deadlift and bench press. I think the “ending on a high” philosophy, combined with giving myself more time, have something to do with it.

PS: Ending on a failure, apart from ruining the rest of that day, also makes you more apprehensive the next time you want to lift, and might lead you to lift less than your potential next time.

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