Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Days 40 - 46: Making Something Out Of Nothing

July 26, 2011

14 days - Blue Band Officer Week
21 days - Blue Band Marching Auditions/Band Camp Begins
39 days - Penn State vs. Indiana State
46 days - Penn State vs. Alabama
53 days - Penn State vs. Temple

If I said that this past week was good, I'd be lying.  Prior to starting this blog, I used to have a personal blog years ago that I would use as a means of motivating myself.  If I talked through things, put things into perspective, and created a plan for achieving where I wanted to go in life, I would hit "post" and feel like superman, until the next day when I needed to boost myself back up again.  Fortunately I have grown up since then and I can tackle problems without creating a schematic for solving them, and I don't plan on using this blog in that manner.  Needless to say, this past week has been tough, and at an unwanted time.  My preparation for the season is still on-schedule thankfully, it's just going to be a tougher road than I anticipated.  I've hit a pretty big wall physically.  My workouts haven't been great, I've been sleeping every spare moment I get, and I've felt pretty "frail" lately, which made me think that I might just be experiencing fatigue from overworking myself, so I took two extra days of rest in the past week where I would have had workouts instead.  It didn't help much, which then points towards the amount of caffeine I take in every day.  So I've been cutting back there, and getting energy from complex carbs, b-vitamins, and drinking a ton of water.  It helped somewhat. But, without going into detail, my right shoulder is almost certainly separated and I'll be having it looked at in November without a doubt, which means no more lifting for awhile.  Plus at the advice of a medical professional that I saw earlier today, I need to abandon all workout supplements indefinitely. [Start fitness-based rant, skip ahead to the next red text if you want] I've used pre-workout formulas (N.O. Explode, Jack3d, Gamma Labs, Cellucor C4, MusclePharm Assault, NaNo Vapor, etc.) steadily for about 28 months now, granted that all of that is mostly amino acids, caffeine (in the case of Jack3d - 1, 3-dimethylamylamine), creatine, vitamins, and plant-based derivatives, I have to cut back and see what effect it has on me.  I decided that I'm going to go on the "Master Cleanse" diet for the next two weeks until I leave for State College to get a full detox and see how my body feels from there, then ease into some of the supplements again.  It means kicking meat, dairy, and all "non-living" foods out of my diet, so I'll be putting down pretty much entirely fruits and vegetables for 10 days starting tomorrow... which should be pretty interesting.  I'm also going to start getting off of the elliptical and start doing more running for my cardio workouts in order to get myself ready to perform at a high level on the field.  Flexibility is also going to be key, so I'll be substituting my lifting with stretching in order to rest my shoulder but still improve in some way physically. [End fitness-based rant]

Here's a look into what I have to get accomplished in the next two to four weeks.   I have gotten pretty comfortable with the marching fundamentals again, so my confidence in that respect has gone up considerably.  I still spend a little time every day looking things over and remembering small details.  I've been working on mace spinning every day, and I'll be adding a blindfold soon in order to help myself build more self-awareness and confidence with it.  I'll be doing flips on grass twice per week from now until the start of the football season. I also have about 12-15 more songs to learn for the cover band I'm joining in a few weeks, and my first practice with the guys is going to be around the 14th or so.  I've gotten most of my packing and shopping for State College finished, minus clothing, but that's a small victory.  I finished teaching private music lessons for the summer, as well as the show I have been writing for my high school alma mater's marching band.  It's crazy to think in two weeks I'll be on my way to State College to start officer week... there's so much left to do before then.

This is a relatively short post, just because I feel the urgency to get something else done with my day.  I'll post in a few days.

That's all for now.
Thanks for reading.

No comments:

Post a Comment