Training with the Brakes Off

After I got back from the Memphis trip that I talked about last time, a strange thing has happened to my approach to training. I go longer, harder, faster. If I dream something up, I try it. I train at odd hours, often outside, sometimes in the dark. I make sure that, at least once a workout, if not several times, I'm seriously gasping and wondering if I can go on.

Ah, the life of the fitness-obsessed.

Essentially, the brakes are off. What I found, or theorized, working with Frank Matrisciano, is that I'd allowed myself to get too comfortable in my training. It had become casual. I was fooling myself: sure, three sets of five with the same old weight will be fine for today. Let's not kill it. I was telling myself I was taking it easy because anything more would be courting disastrous injury, what with my history of tweaks and pulls and scrapes.

And if I'd continued to lift heavy weights, that would have probably been true. But in the last few weeks I've actually dropped most heavy lifting from my roster, and instead am working largely with body weight and a few odd dumbbells or kettlebells. The TRX gets thrown into the mix. The fat jump rope. Some monkey bars at a local park. And a little place I call the Hill Of Doom, an impossibly steep hill that breaks me in about 30 seconds. I do everything in circuits, with almost no rest.

And it's hard as hell. This is probably the toughest month of workouts I've ever done. And my body is changing dramatically, frantically trying to keep up with all the weirdness I'm throwing at it.

I love all the toys that gyms offer (well, most of them). But I think that sometimes all the gear, all that shiny chrome and TV screens, even the iron and steel, just lulls us into thinking we're working hard, when in fact, we could work much harder if we jettisoned all that stuff, went outside, and threw ourselves seriously at some old-school pain-in-the-ass moves that no one wants to do.

Running up a hill at full tilt will gas anyone. If it doesn't, run faster. 60 seconds of real pushups will do the same thing. Too easy? Elevate your feet, do them with good form and get back to me. Pullups, ditto.

I find--with myself and clients--that if the focus is on looking a certain way, I get lost: well, if I go too hard today I'll lose the muscle mass I built yesterday, and I want this bigger but that smaller and yadda yadda. If the primary focus is on crushing it, on working until I just can't go on, I find I feel better, perform better, and--yes, ironically, look better.

I'll come back to the gym and the weights after a bit, I'm sure. It's hard to really reach the gasping levels of exhaustion indoors that you can--quite easily--by going outside and getting after it. I suspect that once I get back to the gym it will be with a newfound appreciation of how far it's possible to push yourself, and how much is really possible to get done in an hour.