Now What?

[Glenn]

January 1st isn't just for resolutioners. For me it marks the end of a long hunting season and is the time I get back to focusing on strength and capacity.

Every year I hit the same cycle. I build strength and cardiovascular endurance with 4-5 days a week of work outs and cleaning up my diet from January until March. From mid March until May I get a little off track due to turkey season but still stay fairly tight nutrition wise and can usually work in 2-3 work outs a week in addition to all the walking hunting included. However during that 6-8 week period my strength cycles get put on hold for the most part. Come May I pick it all back up where I left off. I focus mainly on strength cycles and 5-15 minute metcons until August when I shift to a harder focus on lung capacity, endurance and improving my "GO" factor. I still lift during this time but it is lighter weight and higher rep scheme mixed in with lung crusher movements.

Come September I may get 1-3 small work outs in from then till Jan 1. My nutrition stays okay until Thanksgiving. From that point until the end of the year I completely go off the rails and destroy myself with food. By the time new years rolls around I've lost my endurance, I'm weak as hell from little to no lifting, I'm run down from lack of sleep and fluffy from all the sugar and carbs. And that is where I am now. This year especially has been rough due to the triplets and all they have entailed. So my "let's wreck this place" period started way before September this year. The wife and I both feel like crap and rightly so. We've used our situation not as a reason but as an excuse to eat like shit and "relax" when we should be working out. Today marks our start date to get back on track. It's always that day for me but my wife needs someone to "do things with her" whatever the hell that means. So today is her day as well.

We're tracking our food and Cayce spent last night preparing meals for the week, weighing all our stuff and getting everything portioned out. Tracking macros isn't something I want to do but at this point it is something I need to do to make sure I'm not way underfed. Packing in 3000 calories a day is work and most days I bet I don't hit 15-1800. We will log everything in to My Fitness Pal and use the Eat To Perform calculator to adjust our fats and carbs as needed. Protein will stay at 1'ish gram per pound of body weight. Our goal isn't "weight" related as body weight has zero to do with health and fitness. We're looking at strength, capacity/endurance, body fat and being able to and capable of hunting as hard as I need to when fall comes.

Also my 30th HS reunion is this coming June and my wife is bound and determined to be the walking definition of a trophy wife at that thing.

I know some/most of you are still duck hunting but from here, what is your plan? How do you prepare and for what are you preparing?