My review is this: It's awesome. It's just fucking awesome.
When I started the program, my five rep max on my squats was 205 pounds. It's now 230 pounds. My one rep max on the bench press was 205 pounds. I can now do at least four reps at that weight. My calculated 1 rep max on the deadlift is now 320 pounds, and I did four reps at 290 pounds today.
I'll be doing another review of the program in six weeks to see if I hit another plateau. The program is meant to prevent plateaus, but we'll see.
If you're beginning in weight training, I still recommend either the Stronglifts 5x5 method or the Starting Strength 3x5 method. Once you reach the limits of what those programs can provide for you, go on the Candito program. My previous plateaus are busted. In the case of my squats, what was once my limit on my weight is my warm-up weight now.
Today, I had to reluctantly drag my ass to the gym. I woke up tired, and stayed that way through most of the day. I knew I wasn't going to skip the gym because my workout was simple - one set of deadlifts - but I really wasn't in the mood.
When I got to the gym, I did my warmup sets, and nervously racked the barbell for my final set. I had never deadlifted 290 pounds before, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to do it. Still, I put myself into position, grabbed the barbell with an iron-tight grip, and lifted.
First rep up. "Well, that was easy enough."
Second rep up. My grip strength was barely enough to hold the barbell, but I completed it.
Third rep up. At this point, the lifting part itself is easy, but my grip was so loose that I was barely holding the barbell by the tips of my fingers.
Fourth rep up. Holy shit, I fucking did it.
After dropping the barbell, I had finished the week performing a new personal record on all of my major lifts. I went into the gym tired and reluctant, but after finishing that set, I was full of energy and had a shit-eating grin on my face.
I don't show strong emotion often. In public, I'm fairly stoic, holding a poker face and not letting too much of my thoughts show. But at that moment I had a smile a mile wide and I had to remind myself not to completely lose my shit and run around wild cheering in the gym. If I had no ability for self-restraint, I would have started doing a victory lap around the gym, my arms flailing in the air, screaming, "WHOOOOOOOOO! FUCK YEAH! I FUCKING DID IT!", ending my victory lap at my barbell and doing shadow boxing in my moment of celebration, while every person in the gym looked at me like I had lost my goddamn mind.
I talked about this a while back in my post called, "The Best Part About Exercise", but I'll repeat it now. I love fitness because it's the great equalizer. I don't believe in the positive thinking garbage about money or your economic situation. There's very, very few people that are living in poverty or struggling because they aren't working hard enough. If anything, most of us are working harder and working longer hours than generations before us. I'll even go so far as to say it's insulting to claim such things, as I have to beg my bosses for overtime just so I'll have enough money to pay my bills. I earned a college degree and an EMT license under the GI Bill and I'm still looking for a job where I can work an average 40 hour work week and not have to worry about getting my bills paid on time. The idea that you can change your economic situation through sheer force of will is a lie. If that could happen, I would have done it by now.
But in the gym, I am in control of my destiny. I have the ability to achieve greatness. I can choose to be the best person I can be. Fitness is the one thing that I can choose for myself without a greedy boss, a corrupt bank, or what is the myth of the "free market" holding me back. I may be broke, I may be struggling, but in the gym, I am a fucking god, standing by lesser beings that have just begun their path to fitness (and many that will quit within a few months), and greater gods that have spent their lives lifting more than I can; those greater gods, that I watch lift and know with confidence that one day, I will be stronger than them because I choose to drive on and not quit, but still look at with admiration. It's the time that I can live the lyrics from Spose (a singer which you may have noticed by now, I take a lot of inspiration from) and say confidently:
But I was supposed to curl up, I was supposed to back down
I was supposed to fade, evaporate into the background
I was supposed to never be nothing but made it to something
I knew I could do it, I will make it through it
I'll prove it, I was just another human who was supposed to be...
Nobody
That truly is the greatest thing about fitness. Control over our own bodies is the only real freedom that we have. It's with that, that the gym gives me real freedom.
Enjoy the song:
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