Go With Your Gut

Hello to all my Blogger friends. Well, it's been a whirlwind since I got back from my meet last weekend, but, I have lots of news. It's always very wise to keep an open mind and be ready for constructive criticism and to follow the advice of your predecessors. However. Sometimes. You just know. And you have to go with it. After 6 months of following the Westside training method, after having much trouble in training and not seeing improvement in any numbers, after the April meet, we switched back to benching 2-3 times a week. Suddenly, I wasn't getting buried by 160 anymore. Now, don't get me wrong. Westside is an awesome training method. Most of the people I compete with in able-bodied meets are on the Westside template. However, none of them are in a wheelchair, unable to use any leg drive. Almost all of them use equipment, as well as some other various differences in our training preferences. Brian describes it more as a neurological issue for me. When I do speed work, we use bands or chains and I get used to compensating for the extra imbalance that those items cause, but, when I go back to benching regular, it takes me a great deal of time to stop trying to compensate for that imbalance that is no longer there! So, even though it goes against every theory of speed making you stronger because of force, I bench slow and methodical. And often. So, we have stuck with simple. Waving my bench in and out 2 or 3 times a week, and mostly following the Reactive Training Systems program by Mike Tuchscherer. And I slowed down my lowering of the bar. Last week at my meet I went 3 for 3, hitting 180 as my last lift, which matched my PR. Then, in a rather unusual decision, Brian decided to 'ride out' my peak that I was on, instead of letting it drop by having me take the week after a meet off and yesterday I hit 185 in the gym with Brian to set a new PR!!!!! I have no words to describe how thankful I am that Brian never gave up and had the perseverance to stick with me until we figured out what would be the right combination for me, no matter how frustrated either one of us got. I'm sure it'll change again. But, we have lots of experimentation under our belts now and I'm sure it won't take as long for us to find the right combo next time.