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Beach Week

After taking last week off I have a lot of potential topics to update on, but I will try to stick to the main ones so that this does not go on too long.

Lifting Updates

As has been the theme in these posts so far I will start off by talking about my body. Before I left for Myrtle Beach, I decided to do a max test for bench and squat to get a baseline going into the summer. After battling injuries in both my chest and hip for several months I definitely went through ups and downs. I think that I will now get into a more formal routine and get into football-specific shape doing agility and fieldwork as well as continuing to train the major lifts. I also think that I will start taking creatine again as I will be training consistently and it helps me to retain additional water especially as I am pushing myself in the heat and moving a lot of weight.

My all-time max on bench was around 365, maybe a little higher, but I got hurt before I was able to test. At that time I was able to do 325/335 for sets of 3. This time maxing out I ended up at 335 which I was a bit disappointed with. I was sliding on my bench for a few weeks before this which was pretty frustrating. I am hoping that now that I am back and training consistently I will be able to get back to where I was late last year before my injury.

My all-time max on squat was around 465 to a box, and I have been trying to train without a box ever since I hurt my hip since I feel that may have contributed. This max test I failed at 455 but my last warmup was an easy 425. I think that if I went for 445 I could have probably gotten it up, but I will put my max at a conservative 435. I am less disappointed here because I have always struggled with my squat and am happy to be making progress through an injury.

After doing squat and bench, I still had some additional energy and so I decided to do a hang clean test. I had some elbow injuries in the past two years and really had not cleaned at all for nearly a full two years. About 2-3 weeks leading up to the test I started cleaning lightly again and pushed weight the week before getting up to a 285 clean when my lifetime PR was 305. This time I was feeling good and hit 295 comfortably. I was feeling bold so I also went for 315 which would have been a lifetime PR. I actually pulled it cleanly and got under it, but alas, was not able to front squat it back up. I think that if I were fresh I likely could have gotten it up.

All in all, I was pleased with the way the maxes went. Definitely fell short on bench, and failed my reach weight for squat, but the unexpected clean success left a good taste in my mouth and gave me hope for improvement elsewhere. I am excited to really get into a grinding mindset this summer and focus on getting right for the upcoming season. Unfortunately, I do not think that I will reach my initial goals of getting to a 500 lb squat and a 400 lb bench before the season starts in September, but I will leave them up on this site as a reminder of what I was striving for because it really was in reach at the start of December. 

Personal Updates

I think it would be nice now to do a separate section now about the trip to Myrtle because it was an eventful time, and also I have not done any additional reading in a while so that section would be boring. I was able to catch up on podcasts after getting about a week and a half behind so that is good news. I am also deciding to not get too hung up on reading daily news briefings because I feel like it can get overwhelming to constantly be wondering everything that is going on instead of taking it day by day and living in the moment. 

All in all as a summary for Myrtle I had a really great time and was able to meet a lot of new people that I either had never met before or only knew through loose ties. There are a few areas of my life that this has made me reflect on more deeply which I think I will talk about in more detail in the paragraphs below. I feel that this was a much-needed break from the monotony of living at home and working remotely and I feel somewhat revitalized and ready to attack the next 3 months and make the best of my time before I get back into school mode which I am very excited for.

First things first I want to talk about how great it was to meet all of these new people. Admittedly I was a bit nervous because going into the week I only had a handful of people that I knew very closely going out of the 250+ that were in attendance. It was definitely a bit intimidating on the surface because I generally like to stick with smaller groups and am usually not too good at meeting new people, but it worked out surprisingly well. It definitely made me excited for this next school year and makes me want to venture out more beyond my existing social circle. 

Secondarily I think this trip also made me think about what I want to do in life socially and how I want to choose who I spend time with. I think that generally, my philosophy towards friends is to be around people who I believe make me a better person, even though that may sound selfish at the surface. I am a firm believer that we are a reflection of the people with whom we spend the most time, and as such, I want to be careful with who I want to have rub off on me. I think there are certain aspects of social life that I enjoy very much and others that I do not think really benefit me. This trip really made me stop and reconsider what my ultimate goals are as far as approaching different social situations. 

Gratitude

As is becoming a theme, I think I will have a repeat for my gratitude post but in a different light. After the events that took place this past week, I think I am most grateful for the opportunity to have one more year left of school. It was great to meet all of these different people, but bittersweet as many of them I will only see sparingly, if at all, over the next few years. I am tremendously appreciative of the opportunity to basically have a reset of my life where I can think more deeply about the ways I have been choosing to spend my time. 

Next year it will be an especially easy opportunity to fall into old habits and stay with the people that I know most closely due to the large overlap with gap year students. I am far less familiar with the class below me which I am now a part of so I will have a lot of catching up to do as far as meeting and getting to know everyone. I am excited for the opportunity to be the President of a club where we will have two full new classes of students that I really do not know that well and I am in a position where it should be easy to get to know a lot of them.

I hope that next year when I am going through my own graduation and senior beach week sendoff that I am comfortable with a large portion of my classmates and can call a lot of them my close friends. I really want to avoid those interactions that I saw so many times over the past few weeks of people meeting each other for the very first time on the night of graduation or at beach week. I think that some of my new goals for next school year will definitely have to involve making new connections with people I don't know that well, and I am grateful for the opportunity and perspective to do so.
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