National meet report

I feel the need, yet again, to apologize to all my blog followers for my lack of blog updates. Honestly, between Facebook and emails and everything else, I kinda forget about blogging. It's hard to keep up with everything! Well, I went to my National meet last week. I was happy with what it felt like, but, not necessarily so pleased with the number results. I got good lifts of 161 & 174. I missed my lift of 183. The 174 went up better than it has in a couple of months, so, I was extremely pleased with that. 183 felt real light on the way down and all I knew was that when I went to press, once it got off my chest, my elbow either came back or down & I lost the lift. When I sat up, I felt my ribs out of place and they didn't feel like that before the meet, so, I'm thinkin' that was part of it. That's the first time that's happened during/in between lifts. We're workin' on some ways to fix it. Right now we're trying kinesiotape. I'm pretty excited about the new addition to our National Team. The chiropractor that was assigned to our team in Guadalajara and that accompanied my teammates to London was officially added to our coaching staff at the beginning of this year. So, he adjusted me & taped me up after the meet & took pictures of the tape for Brian to duplicate back here at home. Once I got the videos up of the meet, Brian noticed that on the way down on my last lift my elbow went out of groove. It was so slight that I didn't even feel it or know it until I watched the video with him. But, it's right there in the video. So, apparently I didn't get it back into the correct placement to be able to make a good press, either. Lots of things to work on. Continually learning. Brian has completely rearranged my training program for this cycle. We're doing more lats than we were and we're kind of making bench a secondary exercise right now. I'm still doing a lot but it's more the oxidative bench, so, it's not heavy right now. He also had my widen my grip out. It has taken a good chunk out of my stroke so that will help. He also anticipates that it'll help me tuck my lats better, and help teach me how to use them more instead of my shoulders. So, I'm anxious to see how it all works out. He also got a new toy that we started playing with today. It's called an EMS machine. Electro-muscular-stimulator (or something really close to that). He can hook me up to it on off-days and it'll contract my muscles and give them a workout, but, it'll bypass the central nervous system so I won't be worn out from it. There are a lot of programs on it, even one for recovery after a really hard workout day. We're hoping to start seeing some results from that in a few weeks or so. There's always progress! I wish I'd remember to update you more often on all of it! But, things are good. :-) I know I have mentioned it a time or two before, but, I'm so blessed and so lucky to have found Brian to train me. I couldn't ask to be taken care of any better. I know I'm right where I need to be to become the strongest that I am able and to achieve my dreams.