Originally Posted by Gary Gibson
Reply With QuoteThanks Kaisheem,
Back in New York, whenever I would tell anyone that I was moving to Baltimore for my dream job in publishing, the response was almost always "Haven't you seen 'The Wire'?!" Thing is I haven't had a TV for several years now. Good thing, too; I mightn't have taken the job if I'd seen the show!
B-more does have its charms and I actually rather like my neighborhood and the fact that I can continue to live my car-free lifestyle. I also understand that any big city is going to have its bad parts...but Baltimore is one of those places that seem to be mostly bad parts. I grew up in a not-so-nice part of Brooklyn, not too far from some very bad parts of Brooklyn and have hung out in some dodgy parts of the Bronx and I thought I could handle anything Baltimore threw at me. I have been corrected and humbled. And like you said, I live in a fairly nice part of Baltimore; don't think I could handle anything worse. When I lived and hung out in Manhattan, I was usually the most dangerous-looking dude on the street and I am not very dangerous-looking. My last neighborhood in New York was Sunnyside, Queens, where I would walk to the gym at 3 in the morning and feel absolutely zero fear. That is NOT the case here in Charm City.
Anyway, I imagine that all the pounds I gain on my bench are coming right off my squat. I have a plan to continue to rehab my knee and break back into the squat, but it's taking immense self-control to stick to it. I figure on very light high-rep work for the three weeks I practice heavy benches. I figure if I can reacquaint the knee with the stress of squatting that way, it won't complain and refill when I start training in earnest. Of course, if that effusion comes back in force, I will be very upset. Here's hoping.
The good thing about being derailed from the Nationals this year is that I was forced to deal with this old injury thoroughly. I drained the hell out of that effusion and am slowly coaxing my knee back to something resembling full strength. My right leg has been lagging behind horribly in development as my squat has increased. I was developing an extreme imbalance, my squat was being held back and I was setting myself up for injury. I've now done a lot of (sometimes extreme) stuff to correct that and in the end I hope this means that I'll go further and without injury.
Last thing: My two greatest bits of improvement have come from high-volume, high-frequency bouts (Smolov variations) followed by resting, testing and then refinement with daily practice. This plan added nearly 100 lbs to my squat and now 25 lbs to my bench with more to come. Just had to give a nod of thanks to Pavel T for sending me down that path. The thing is to rotate focus on the lifts and to understand that really big gains come at the cost of having to take it easy on that lift for a few of months. You can't gain 100 lbs on your squat twice a year (or get results as good as you did when you were weaker; the improvement curve flattens out).
