Week 3 reflection

Week 3 was by far my best week as both an athlete training at Compete, and as a worker. I feel as if I got into more of a groove and became adjusted to the schedule, and really learned how to make the best of the experience. From a training perspective. I feel like I did a much better job focusing on the small details. For example, it is easy to get greedy with weights on a Friday uppers day, but if there is a 2 or 3 second negative, adding weight often means cheating the negatives, even if it is for a second. However, these exercises are all about range of motion, so I found myself dropping 5-10 pounds in a few exercises in order to make sure I was doing so. Additionally, I feel like my diet became a lot stricter and I began to figure out my plan more. One meal I sometimes struggle with is my before bed snack because no one wants to cook up 6 oz of beef when they are about to go to bed, or make a kale salad. However, I decided to plan ahead. In the beginning of the week, I bought a bunch of grass fed meatballs from a nearby market, which lasted me the week. It was much easier planning ahead and having the food already made the struggling to cook up food each night. Meal planning is definitely something I'm looking to improve in the future.

From a working perspective, I feel like I was really able to contribute to the gym and help everyone out, and this week consisted of multiple tasks. I was firing on all cylinders. One day Joe was extremely busy with training stuff, so I helped with some administrative stuff. I called Verizon, waited on the line and talked to the woman until he finished training his group. Some days he would be busy with administrative stuff, and I would jump in on training people. Wednesday was a great example of this because there were multiple people in the gym who needed a trainer for band work, and I jumped right in and helped. Also, when I saw something that needed to be done, I didn't ask, I just did it. One of the times I did this was when there were pebbles from the turf all over the main lobby floor and I knew it would look better if it were cleaned. I realized at times there was a little bit of standing around, so I needed to find my own ways to help out because I knew Joe was busy with other stuff. The third week was a great way to wrap up this unbelievable experience, and I would like to thank the entire Compete staff for making it possible (@Joe @Dean @Mike @Marty).

5/20/16

Friday was an awesome finish to a really fun three weeks. My workout was tough, consisting yet again of all eccentric upper body exercises and a quick circuit for conditioning. After this lift, I was done with phase 2 of my Spring workouts (I started on 2 because I was 3 weeks behind everyone), and was onto phase 3, which consisted of higher weight and lower reps. For work, I helped clean out an apartment building next to the gym that may be used for offices in the near future. I had to vacuum, carefully take out the tape that was on the walls for whatever reason, and tidy it up. It was definitely a bit messy, but I could see it be turned around into something nice with a little more work.

5/19/16

The Thursday lift was a tough lower body lift, which consisted of sled sprints, side planks, reverse lunges, and lots of speed and mobility work. For conditioning, we had to row 2,000 meters on the rowing machine which was pretty tiring. I feel like I improved at rowing because instead of trying to go a million miles per hour, I focused more on my range of motion, which made it easier and made me row faster. Joe had ordered a new squat rack, barbell and plates earlier in the week which showed up yesterday. I had to unbox all of the new equipment, neatly stack them and order them, and then help put them together. Assembling the new equipment is a lot of work, but it is pretty cool seeing the new stuff in the gym and it will make the workouts go by quicker because there will be less waiting around for one of the squat racks to open up in the summer when it tends to be more crowded

5/18/16

Wednesday was my off day from lifting. It is right in the middle of my 4 workouts during the week, and time for my muscles to repair after a tough first two days was certainly needed. That being said, yesterday was all work. The cable and internet had not been working for 2 weeks and the Verizon guy did not show up despite saying he was going to show up, yet Joe was still being billed for cable and internet. He made the decision to cut his ties with Verizon, which led me to my first task of the day: Calling on his behalf to cancel his plan with Verizon. Perfect intern task. I called the woman, explained to her the situation, mentioning that he had been billed for weeks without having service and the Verizon guy never showed up to fix it, and that it was time to terminate the plan. However, the woman on the line seemed a bit argumentative, despite all I wanted to do was end the plan. This conversation was not going over smoothly for whatever reason. Then Joe took the phone. The conversation was going the exact same way. He then said to her, "Look, I know you get hundreds of these calls every day and I do not been to be rude, but I am just a bit frustrated and want to cancel my plan." From that point on, the conversation could not have gone over any smoother. People skills 101. He saw this situation from her perspective, gave here a feeling of appreciation, and bingo, she finally worked with him.

From there, I helped out with the middle school group. There were kids in this group who weighed 70 pounds, and some that weighed 160 pounds, so it was important to watch over how much weight they were doing in the circuits to make sure each kid was not doing too much or too little. Many of these kids were new to working out, and rightfully so, and it was important to make sure they were doing the correct exercises and maintaining proper form. After, some high school athletes came in to make up workouts they missed from earlier in the week. A lot of the activation was double band resistance work (shuffles, crossovers, bounding, backpedaling, etc.), so I jumped into the bands and helped resist a few of the athletes that needed a partner. Also, there was a hockey specific workout which was slide board strides with resistance, and I helped give some resistance to a few of the athletes in this exercise, too. Here is a picture of the exercise with me resisting.

Week 2 Reflection

My second week was yet again filled with plenty of awesome learning experiences. From an athletic perspective, I really felt much more adjusted to the workouts than I had been the week before. The first week was a bit of a feeling out process and getting used to all of Joe's exercises again. That being said, I had to spend a lot of time emphasizing my form and asking questions. That made the lifts take a little bit longer. Once I had my form down and knew what all the new exercises were,  I was able to go up in weight and cruise through the workouts. From a nutritional standpoint, I feel like I did better, but not my best. I was certainly eating better because I was at home and had my car available to go to the grocery store, but I definitely feel like I could have done better. For example, I would not go to bed until 12 some nights and not wake up until 11, which means that there was a span of 11 hours where I did not eat. I need to start going to bed earlier so I can get up earlier. Also, My meal schedule (posted in a previous blog) states that I need an early morning big breakfast, a snack in between (sandwich with chobani and granola) and then a relatively big lunch. However, if I slept late and ate breakfast at 1130am, I could not possibly stomach all of that food. Therefore, I would end up having a big breakfast, skip my snack completely, and then have a small lunch because I was still full from breakfast. Last spring, I put on 13 pounds of muscle when training with Joe, and I credit a lot of it to my nutrition routine. The key word is ROUTINE. I would be up early for school, know exactly what class to have my 10 am snack in, have a Sunday routine of making food for lunch for the week (usually chicken, brown rice, and broccoli), know to have my after school snack on the way to the gym, Stop at the same place for my post workout meal, eat again when my mom made dinner, and then have my other snack before bed. This is only my second week home, so I still need to figure out a routine and stick with it.

From a working perspective, I really feel as if I did a lot to help out around the gym. I think my best contribution was the day the other intern, Mike, and I painted the foundation. I drive in every single day and see it, and I know it is going to be there for a while and I certainly think it looks a lot better than before it was painted, but that could be a bit bias. Also, I realized how many small errands are needed when operating a gym, way more than I imagined. I feel like every day there was a Staples or Home Depot run needed, and most of the time they were needed for small and unnoticed, yet important things, like the nutrition packet for athletes or screws to build the shelves people can put their things on when working out. I could not speak more highly of Joe, Dean, Mike, Marty, and all of the other trainers for how much time and effort they invest in their athletes. I realize this especially when I am helping out and observing the gym, not working out and only focused on my lift. They constantly push their athletes to reach their highest potential, and are always there to answer questions and help people when needed. It is easy to see each person simply as one client out of hundreds, but they really do make an effort to build a relationship with each and every person in the gym. Being able to grow a relationship with a client in order to get the best out of them was certainly the biggest skill I learned in week 2.

5/17/16

The Tuesday lift is usually the tougher of the two upper body lifts, and by the end of this one I felt like my arms were going to fall off. After doing some medicine ball explosiveness and core work, we  started the lift. My first bracket was dumb bell press with a 2-1-2 negative (2 seconds down, 1 second pause at the bottom, 1 second on the way up), 4 sets of 8 reps, along with 4x8 dumb bell bent over row. After that, we had pull ups with a 2-1-2 negative (by far the hardest exercise) 3x10, along with bosu feet elevated pushups with a weight vest 3x10 with a 3-1-2 negative. The last bracket consisted of kettle bell towel curls (you loop a hand towel through a kettle bell and curl it) for 10 reps, along with dumb bell skull crushers and trx face pulls. By this point I was pretty tired. However, we still needed to do the circuit. The circuit consisted of 4 sets of the following exercises: Sledgehammering a tire x10, Ab wheel x10 and rowing machine x300 meters. This wasn't necessarily the toughest circuit, but after that workout, it was pretty tough to do. For work, I had a lot of small tasks, which also consisted of some cleaning. I cleaned all the rowing machines, bikes, sleds, swiss balls, and put everything in the right place. After, I helped out the next group which was a lot of setting things up and making sure all the equipment was in place for them. Enjoy this picture of my buddy Murph mixing in some KB towel curls in preparation for beach season/next lacrosse season.

5/16/15

Yesterday was by far the toughest workout this spring. It was the same leg workout as every Monday, but it was weak three and the amount of sets I needed to do increased and I had a hockey tournament that weekend, so my legs were already pretty dead. After some stretches for activation, we went on the turf and had medicine balls with us and we did broad jumps and lateral hip tosses to work on explosiveness. Additionally,  we had one exercise in there where you needed to throw the ball up as high as possible, and then sprint 25 yards. I had speed squats, dead lifts, pistol squats and some other mobility work in the lift. For conditioning, we had sled sprints, which was four 50 yard sprints with a sled with 4 plates on it. I was already exhausted before the conditioning, and once I finished, I was ready to call it a day.

After my workout and before I started working, I had a conversation with Joe about a few aspects of my overall development. First, I realized that I was not getting enough meals in me each day because I was sleeping until 10:30 every morning. However, since I was going to bed at 12 each night, he told me to go to bed at 10:30 and wake up at 8, which will allow me to have breakfast, 1 snack and lunch before my workout, opposed to a late breakfast and a small lunch. Also, Joe is an avid reader on personal and athletic development, and he has given me book recommendations to help me grow as a person and athlete since my junior year of high school. He suggested that the next book I read is Winning Every Day by Lou Holtz, which is about the daily sacrifices needed to achieve short and long term goals. Definitely gonna shoot that an order on Amazon today.