So it's always something...and I never stop learning from my mistakes. At about week 7 of this cycle, I began to have some real irritating physically limitating problems. The muscles in my arms(forearms/biceps) began 'binding up'(best way to describe) and I was having some real painful issues especially when trying to bench press in and around my forearms/elbow joint/brachioradialis, etc. Almost like my left arm wanted to give out on the eccentric(lowering) portion of the lift and drop the bar on my chest, the pain was so bad! See, the week before I was finally making some progress and was actually repping 275lbs. for about 5-6 reps, a new personal best for me as my chest has ALWAYS been a struggling point...and then the week later, POOF!!! it had all dissapeared like a fart in the wind and I couldn't really even rep 205lbs. 2-3 times without almost crying out!! That was the bigger eye-opening issue at hand, as there were also smaller ones to boot accompanying this ride, but this isn't the point here for this post in describing my pains.

So, I was disturbed enough about this to seek out some good, thorough, and what I will DEFINITELY call professional advice in PM's thru one of our best: Viking...hahaha, yeah!! thanx bud, appreciate it!! After shortly discussing my issue, he offered that I was most likely banging out heavy weights too much and to lighten it up a little and that he was guilty of doing the same at times too. In the short run, I didn't like the sound of it...ego or maybe not, I'm on cycle here and like most of us we wanna heave the heavy stuff day in and day out! The crazy thing about this...IS I know to do this with my training, and I was just ignoring the proper protocol to cycle my training from heavy to light to medium weights, and to also incorporate a slightly different rep scheme occasionally week to week, blah, blah, blah!!! I think we all should know this really. However, I was so caught up in the "I'm trying to make huge gains bitches!!" mentality, that I disregarded the fundamentals of training and the end results were showing...."Hey idiot!!! Your body is trying to tell you something!!"

So, I began to restructure things in my workouts and switch out some exercises for others, different weights-different weeks, differing rep schemes....yada,yada,yada...and after several weeks of doing these things you wouldn't have guessed it but low and behold, it's Week 12 (END CYCLE WEEK) and I was still making strength gains TODAY and hitting personal bests!!! I hammered out 6 reps of squats today at 385lbs...several weeks ago I was struggling at 350lbs for 6 reps, and I still could've got more today, I just pussed out because I didn't have a spot....BOOOO!!!, I know!
What I am getting at here, is that it never ceases to amaze me that when whatever it is that I/we do, in this case it happens to be banging the weights, BUT whatever it is...if I/we do it the RIGHT way and with time and patience it will always work out for the better and most likely with less pain!!!(read between the lines on that one, there might be a deeper meaning here). Anyway, lesson learned here and once again it was one I have learned before(just needed a refresher course...AND do I really have to learn old lessons AGAIN?!!?), and also I hope others can gain insight into how they do things, have done things, or what they can always do better!!! We can NEVER STOP improving!!!...a lil' pain doesn't hurt though