Athlean-X AX-1: Day 1 & 2
Blogging my experience with the training plan!
Hello guys, this one’s gonna be more informal than the rest of my pieces. I thought I’d blog about my experience with the program as I go through the 90 days.
Hopefully it will be for 90 days, because there’s a test at the end of every month. Only upon clearing that is it recommended to move forward with the rest of the plan.
I’m not sure how this writing project of mine will go, nor the training itself, but I’m looking forward to it! I think it will be an interesting experience in doing something consistently for a pretty long time. I’m sure things will evolve over time. I’m feeling hopeful.
So. I first want to quickly talk about my previous experiences following this program (because I’ve attempted this before), and then about my first two days:
About my previous attempts
I’ve started the program a couple times before. Both the times I failed to pass the Athlean 400 challenge which comes at the end of the 1st month. I’ll talk more about the challenge in a later post (it’s a crazy-hard sounding one).
More than that though, both times I just was not having a great experience at the gym. I was struggling in my life, and that showed in my workouts — extreme fear of judgment, imbalanced movements, lack of proper sleep & nutrition and more. In short, I was at least a bit of a nervous wreck XD. I’m able to laugh it off now, but I assure you it was a very tough phase in my life.
As a result, I came out of every session feeling that it could’ve gone way better, feeling crappy, and ready to blame it all on my partner. The last part is something I’m especially not proud of. But I know now where it was coming from. I forgive myself. (btw I’m listening to Bad Liar by Imagine Dragons as I write this paragraph, it’s kind of setting the tone XD)
Day 1 & 2 NOW
I almost bailed on the first day. I was not feeling very good just before it was time for me to leave for the gym. So how did I end up going?
I think it’s because I had healed enough and learnt enough mindfulness — noticing thoughts and feelings that were coming to me — that I was able to see past the panic, to tell myself that this wasn’t that bad, and that the experience could still be good.
As it turned out, it was the best I had had so far with this training.
But I really want to stress on the point that I could not do this before. I just was not able to handle the stress. It took me some time and effort to get to this place.
Don’t get me wrong, it was the best workout I had following this plan, but it was not the best workout I had ever had. I’m hoping that will happen sometime in this attempt :D
It was still kinda rough, but overall it was good.
Day 2 was a very lucky day for me — I was able to find an agility ladder in a nearby gym that also had enough space for me to use it.
I said nearby gym. That might’ve confused you, let me explain — I bought a Cult.fit 1 year plan (or cult pass as it’s called) a while ago. And I think it was a great buy. This means that I have access to not just one gym, but any gym that’s under Cult.fit.
It also means, and this one’s crucial for me, that I don’t have to worry about where to workout whenever I go to Hyderabad.
It was a short and intense session. That’s the goal of Athlean-X in general.
This session too did not end with a great feeling, but I’m glad I did it. I think things will look up as I get more free psychologically at the gym.
Aand that’s it. I hope to write about every day.
Thanks for reading :)
