Motivating weekend at performance camp.

Hey, did you miss me? How do you like the NEW ChicagoNow?

I’ve written a few draft posts that I never published in the past two weeks. They were about my recent lack of motivation to continue training.

It was a funk I couldn’t seem to shake. I felt like I was just doing the workouts just to get them done instead of doing them to perform better.

But after this weekend I feel like I was put back on track!

I kicked off Saturday with an easy 15 mile bike ride before I headed north to Algonquin for a morning of performance training at ProKine Performance Move like a Pro camp.

The camp is run by fitness pro’s Drew Whitehead and Kate Galliett. Kate is also Coach Jen’s performance coach. To be honest I was pretty unsure of what to expect.

The camp started out with everyone getting there picture taken to assess your body’s imbalances. The picture was taken while doing an overhead squat. My squat felt fine, so I assumed it looked fine to Kate & Drew.

After picture time we went through a series of stretches to help open up our hips, shoulders and other joints. Throughout each stress our coaches would talk us through proper form to get the most out of the exercise.

The stretches were followed by a series of lunges and body weight squats that Kate kept telling us would “wake up our glutes.”

From there we worked on some trigger point techniques. WOW those were painful! Using a lacrosse ball and golf ball I was able to pinpoint all the little knots in my feet calves and hips. We also worked on a variety of balance exercises using a BOSU ball, stability ball and TRX bands. I could use some serious balance work.

The final workout consisted of 2 circuits working your core. Kate had mentioned at the beginning of camp that “Core work” is mentioned a lot in gyms, but it’s often very effective.

The workouts we did at camp were KILLER! what seemed like very short stations the 1st time through seemed like an eternity on the second pass.

After the circuit we took another picture doing an overhead squat then Drew came around and went over the pictures with us individually. You can see there is a drastic difference between my two pictures. In the first set but body is pretty crooked, my arms aren’t straight and my shoulders are coming forward.

The second set of pictures shows my body in better alignment, my left arm still dips a bit, but my shoulders are back and knees aren’t coming out as much. It’s a pretty drastic improvement for just 4 hours of training!

Kate put together individual workouts for everyone based on the result of the pictures. By continuing to work on correcting all these litte imbalances I can get my body moving correctly and more efficiently which will help me perform better in races and training!

I left camp exhausted and full of new knowledge. Throughout the day I could feel a little soreness creeping in, but Sunday morning I got out of bed and almost yelled

Oh THATS what they meant about my glutes being sore! WOW! My ass hurt an still does!

But that didn’t stop me from meeting Dave from Pace of Chicago for a nice ride 40 mile ride. Dave took me along, Sheridan road, or as I like to call it the LX.TV Open House Chicago Tour. It was a great ride considering how sore I was from ProKine Camp… and that soreness was about to get worse.

Dave has told me about this moster hill a few times. He said he’s only ever see one guy complete the climb. So as we’re riding he asks “Do you want to see THE hill?”

Umm yeah!

As we’re approaching this hill all I could see was a ledge, not the path down it… Have you ever seen The Plunge at Noah’s Arc in Wisconsin Dells, it’s like that but concrete.

Coasting down it, you have to ride the brakes… but you’re still moving… I knew there was no way I was making it back up this thing. At the bottom Dave readies himself for the climb. He looks up the hill and says “I’ve been fighting you for 30 years.”

He takes off and fights up making it over half way. The whole time I’m thinking where a respectable place to start walking would be!

I mount the bike and….

THAT was exhausting!

After a breather we headed back, I struggled to keep up towards the end and eventually made it home completing a total for 40 miles. I was really a good ride and I was wiped, but it felt great. A jam packed weekend like this is really what I needed to help get me motivated an back on track to focus on the races ahead.

A big thanks to Kat ena Drew from ProKine Performance for kicking my ass Saturday morning. And as always thanks to Dave form Pace of Chicago for riding with me on Sunday!

Today is a (well deserved) rest day. I’m going to hit the hot tub and the foam roller. Tomorrow I’m back in the pool and strength training.