After a long break....OUCH!!!

Some may know this, but I spent this past summer working at an overnight camp. For me, that meant 9 weeks of camp of pretty much no actual exercise plus the 2 weeks after and the week prior. All in all, I took 3 months off of exercise either because of camp or basically just being lazy for those weeks surrounding. 

I do have some serious advice both personally and for anyone else…. DO NOT TAKE OFF 3 MONTHS FROM SQUATTING!!!!! DON’T EVER DO IT!!!!!

My plan for when I came back to school (for anyone who read about what my supposed plan was back last semester of doing 5-3-1 or Juggernaut, well it changed) was to daily squatting, Bulgarian style. I’d squat to a daily max and then do 2-3 triples at about 80-85% of the daily max. Also, I would be alternating back and front Monday-Saturday and then do overhead squats and light deadlifts (focusing on form, speed, and power, not weight) on Sundays.

Here comes the reasoning behind why you should never take off 3 months from squatting. I decided to do an easy squat workout last Tuesday before my CPR training session for work (o yea, I’m a personal trainer and work on the weight/fitness staff at the gym at school). I worked up to a relatively heavy set of 5 back squats. Unfortunately I had lost a LOT of strength in these 3 months. I was only able to get weights that I’d warm up with if I were doing a heavy day just 3 months ago. While losing that strength sucked, the main part is the fact that I couldn’t walk for another 4 or 5 days. I felt soreness I hadn’t felt in 7 years. It took until today, both for scheduling purposes as well as with my legs being sore, for me to squat again. After 5 hours, I’m feeling good, so hopefully I should be ok even though I did a tougher workout today.

Let’s just hope that I never decide to take a 3 month break and I will never feel this way again.

REMEMBER: DO NOT TAKE A 3 MONTH BREAK FROM SQUATTING!!! IT HURTS SOOOO BAD WHEN YOU ARE BACK AT IT!!!

Hopefully now though I’ll be able to get close to my daily squatting and get my numbers back to where they were pretty quickly.