A personal training & food journal. Read about our weight loss progress at Train With Ron in Chicago, our nutritional habits and the life changes we're making to get in shape and stay healthy!

Let’s rewind to last Thursday, shall we? I’ve written since then, I know, but I think it took me this long to truly recover (mentally that is) from last week’s Spirit Crusher. Back in January Dan and I went through it for the first time ever and in case you missed that … which I’m sure you didn’t because your top priority is to read every single word we write …. let me refresh your memory.  Hang on a sec, I have to warm up for a few minutes just to talk about it.  I don’t want to pull anything.

The Wall

Ok, let’s get started

First, there is ‘the wall’. You’ve heard us talk about it many many times. We run walls, lunge walls, pivot squat walls and all of that fun stuff. The picture to the right shows what we’re referring to when we talk about ‘the wall’. Just a refresher, it’s about 40 yards of turf smack down in the middle of the gym.

The Spirit Crusher breaks down like this. Grab a 25lbs plate and hold on to it, get to know it and make friends with it because for the next hour it’s going to be your BFF. You will be inseparable. Oh and grab a towel too. The task: 20 walls of pushing the plate on the ground with your hands, 20 walls of running with the plate and 10 walls of lunges with the plate. I know, you’re sweating already. Well so was I but as always I try and put myself in a good mental place so that I can perform well. So much of it is mental it’s crazy. What’s even scarier is that sometimes I feel like my mind is not even on my side. I have to make an effort and tell it to help me out instead of telling me to quit. But I digress.

Last Thursday it was Steve and myself getting ready to take the challenge of beating our times from January. Steve is pure motivation for me. He is at the gym at least 5 days a week and is just a machine! You can check out Steve’s before and after shots on the Train with Ron site just to get an idea of the incredible stuff you can achieve with these personal trainers when you set your mind and body to it. His picture is in the slideshow in the left sidebar. Additionally he and I both love the Navy Seal shows on the discovery channel so we don’t mind the mental and physical challenges along with a bit of verbal motivation and physical competition. When you’re pushing that plate down the middle by yourself and your legs are hurting and you feel like you can’t go on anymore it feels great to have Steve slide up next to you and tell you to push through it and race you the rest of the way. That’s the mental stuff right there. He did that a few times and it helped me so much! I love feeling like “I CAN do it”. It’s a great feeling. Which brings me to my bragging. Well, more like being proud of myself.

The Results

In January, when I first did the Spirit Crusher I was unable to finish the last 6 plate pushes and this time around I completed every single one. That alone made me feel great. Then on top of that I found out, after Ron playfully dragged out the time telling me, that I beat my time by about 16 minutes. That made me very happy! Especially since towards the end there I really was feeling that I may not make it and even if I do it won’t be that much better than last time. Come to find out, I crushed it. Also a small part of me was finally relieved that it’s over and that it’ll probably be a little while before I do it again.

A Quick Nutrition Update

This week I have completely flipped my fat% and protein %. The first week of tracking my food I was at 44% Fat, 17% Protein and 39% Carbs. Each week I gained and dropped a couple of % from each and this week it is at 20% Fat, 30% Protein and 51% Carbs. It’s helped a great deal in my energy level as well as my overall progress.

Now we’ll have a few days rest by the lake and then it’s back to work next week. My goal is in reach, I can see it and I’m going after it.