A Series of Hilarious and Epic Fails!

A few weeks ago, I said that I was going to start doing the Westside Method, along with running, so I could do both powerlifting and running at the same time.

The first workout had me doing box squats. After doing a few warmup sets, I set the bar at 225 pounds.

I had never squatted 225 pounds, but I was confident that I could do it, because:

A) I was only lifting one rep.

B) I'm starting out on a box, so it's only a half rep, anyway.

So, I put the bar on my back and sat down on the box. I positioned my feet.

"Okay. Ready to lift on 1...2...3."

As I moved up, my legs screamed out, "NOPE!", and I fell forward.

Fortunately, I had the sense to get down on my knees and push the weight off of my shoulders while I slid from under the bar. The bar landed with a loud clanging sound on the floor.

I looked up to see if anyone saw me. Fortunately, the only other person in the gym was a woman on a stairclimber on the other side of the gym. She didn't see shit.

Then, I looked to make sure the gym didn't have any security cameras pointed at me. Nope. Looks like I'm not going to be a viral video.

Thank God.

I looked at the bar lying on the ground, and I kicked myself for having this be THE ONE DAY that I forgot to set up the safety bars on the cage.

I did two things that day that I always tell others to avoid doing. I let my ego write a check my ass (and legs) couldn't cash, and I forgot to be safe. Thankfully, I didn't have much injury to little more than my ego.

As far as running and powerlifting go, using the Westside Method was a failure. The second leg workout just put too much stress on my legs, and I felt like Jell-O for the next couple of days.

With that workout being scrapped, I tried to split my lifting, so I'd only do squats and deadlifts one day a week, while I worked on my upper body four days out of the week. I would run three days a week.

That failed too, because everything I was doing was indirectly working my abdominal muscles, and I ended up with the same muscle strain that nearly took me out while I was training for my half marathon.

I might just have to accept that I'm getting older. When I was 21, I could have done all this stuff on three hours of sleep. Now, I have to keep a strict diet just to be able to have the energy to work out and recover.

So as of now, I'm not running. Tomorrow I will get back on the Stronglifts 5x5 routine. My new plan is to do that until I reach my lifting goals. After that, I'll start running again while keeping a very basic bodybuilding routine so I can keep my strength.

When you've had a series of epic fails on your fitness journey, it's important to remember that failure is all part of the process. I'm sure even The Rock has had bad days in the gym. I'm still in great shape, and I'll get to where I want to be eventually if I work at it.