Chuck Kasson

Welp! Another long time without updating due to life, training, work, etc. I don't feel that I get much out of logging anymore. Maybe that is just laziness disguised as thoughtfulness, but I feel like with the autoregulatory work I'm doing, and keeping track of my main lift progression in the offseason, that I just don't feel the need to look back and check things out like I used to. I may try to do some writing on some topics that I feel would be nice to get down on paper (or pixels) for posterity I suppose.

The 2016 Highland Games season has come and gone. I feel like I put together my best all around season and certainly my averages for competition throws on the year have all improved. I keep track of best throws through the season through the NASGA Database and calculate the averages of everything except the Caber, which is hard to do with the variability. I have goals for my averages, which I feel is more important than goals for actually throwing distances. You are only as good as your worst throw and as your worst throw continues to improve, you will be progressing. I definitely have distance goals that I would like to hit in the next year, but who cares if I hit all those goals in the first two months of the season and then drop off for the rest of the year. I would have made my goals, but my overall performance would be terrible.

I felt that I matched up pretty well this year to some of the top guys and am encouraged that I feel I haven't put together my best games yet with some throws being "there" on some days on gone on others. Estes was probably my best all together games ever and I ended up winning that with 3 personal bests. Overall, I ended up 3rd at the Classic and I believe 2nd overall on the NASGA board.

My offseason training between '15 and '16 really went well and I feel I put together my best offseason of training by just going back to the basics that I know how to do. This is for another post, but it bears repeating. I know my body. I've been at this whole strength sport thing for a while now and have a lot of years in the gym, and hours in the books, understanding how everything goes together. I've tried other people's programs with limited results. I can say with nearly 100% confidence that autoregulatory training, or any variant on that, is really what I progress the best with. Sub-maximal, Autoregulatory with a continual focus on the real goal is really what I believe is my best training methodology.

The 2016-17 offseason is progressing well and I really didn't lose a lot during the season, which is very encouraging. The only thing that fell off was my full clean because, surprise, I didn't do them at all during the season. Instead, I elected to move to the hang clean for all my clean work as I feel it has a better carryover to my throws.

Hopefully I can update with 1-2 posts per week on training, life, throws, or geeky PT/Biomechanics things that may help anybody who stumbles across this mess of a training log.