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Ab Rehab- Hitting the Wall

April 27th I begin what I call Week 5 of my program. It has taken me 8 weeks to get this far. I am now performing 1000 contractions per day (10 sets of 100 5th-6th) and 2 sets of 10 headlifts 3x/day. I get through this week at about 75% of completion- not enough to warrant progression.

I take my dedicated rest day on May 5th and try to begin Week 5-2 (repeat 1) on May 6th. I get 2/3 way through the day and dang it I sprain my toe which is a total derailing distraction with the ice pack on my elevated foot- my race aspirations in the balance (my half marathon is on May 16th!) This puts a nice wrench in my focus over the next few days which results not only in poor completion %'s of the exercises but also in being totally now buggered with the splint and SO sick of wearing the dang thing.

Today is May 11th and I am trying to figure out how to get back on track with my program. Updating this blog today has been a great document of the progress I have made and a motivating reminder that the program IS working. Here are my current issues:
  1. The splint is making me nuts and I just can't wear it right now.
  2. The contractions are so tedious they are boring me to tears. I can do them no problem in my car while driving, but of course then there is no double splinting. On the days I am not driving much I am really struggling to make the time to get them done. This is resulting in my headlift sets also not getting done!
Today I am deciding to throw a big ol' wrench in this ab rehab experiment and just go with what I am more interested in doing- the headlifts. This exercise excites me because it is difficult to perform properly. I feel like I am targeting more all 3 areas of my separation: the pelvic tilt helps close the bottom, the engaged transverse targets the middle, and the headlift shortens the gap at the upper location. Today I completed 1 set of 20 headlifts 3x, splinting at each location once. For this week I am going to focus on refining my execution of the exercise and building my strength to increase the reps and sets. I will perform sets of contractions as I am able to. Hopefully I can slowly get back on track with those sets, but for now, headlifts are my focus.

According to the revamped schedule I will call this a modified Week 6, and I am 9 weeks into my ab rehab. I will update in a week. 
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