The road to pittsburgh, cont'd;

Well here we are a little more than eight weeks out from the pittsburgh show and the workouts are going as well as anyone could have hoped! Our rest periods between sets are down to the bare minimum and the only rest we get is however long it takes for the other person to do his set! The intensity is high, to say the least and i am trying to fiqure out ways to make it even more so. It seems as though we are right on track and hopefully over the winter i was a good enough trainer to leave no stone unturned and ted will do well in pittsburgh.
It took a little time for our bodies to get conditioned for these hig rep, short rest period workouts, but we are getting better by the day and the intensity is where it should be. We are no longer intrested in the amount of weights we can lift, the only thing we are concerned with now is getting as much removed from between the skin and the muscle to reveal as much muscle and striations as humanly possible. We are doing anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour of cardio a day and our diets are completely clean. This is where everything will come together and ted will look unbelieveable for the show in july. Ted is almost ten pounds heavier than last year, i know that doesn't sound like much, but when you think of the time frame that we had to put ten pounds of solid muscle onto his frame, it is amazing!
One last quick topic to emphasize this entry is the fact that the role that the mind plays in our training at this point. At this level of training and competition. any edge could mean the differencre between winning and losing and i refuse to leave, as i said, any stone unturned. If we can walk away from the show in july knowing that we did everything we could to try and win, then i will be satisfied, regardless of the outcome.
Keepimg a positive mental approach to our training is crucial at this time and this applies to life as well. I always like to use , as an example, a boxing match. If a boxer goes into the ring before his fight thinking that he has no chance of winning his fight than he has already beaten himself mentally. In my opinion weightlifting is is fifty percent training, forty percent diet and ten percent psychological. Keep in mind that different times of year and different training goals require different types of a breakdown, but the bottom line is to never leave the psychological aspect out of the equation when it comes to training, regardless of what time of the year it is or what your training goals happen to be!