…are the bane of gym life. At least they are mine.

A cautionary tale.

Take for instance Sumo Deadlift Day, today. Having done some good lifts last weekend, now I am thinking I am an expert sumo lifter. Me and my coach Chris had even discussed my improvement in form – big mistake for me. Because now I have Expectations.

I can’t say that this is a universal truth because I feel I am particularly bad at handling predictions of my future performance so I wonder how other people handle the pressure of their own expectations? It’s like I can only perform when I have none. And it’s tricky to not expect or hope to do well….

Other people report being able to use positive visualisation when they prepare for performance (gym or otherwise) but for me it becomes like a hilarious joke which comes back to bite me.

I arranged to meet up with my super strong friend Steph for what I was now calling in my head ‘Super Sumo Saturday’. It was going to be Epic with a lot of fist bumping with me and my badass friend (in my imagination only – Steph was just turning up for a normal workout in her head). She would be lifting conventional and I would be sumo-ing alongside. In my mind sort of like the badass version of Snow White and Rose Red.

I had visualised how beautiful the lifts would be having done them quite well (3*out of 5) last week and as I drove to visit my mum and back I listened to my current favourite music and entertained myself with what would be the most appropriate soundtrack for the filming of my upcoming amazing lifts.

Well done if you can spot some of the problems here, smarter than me, clearly.

In reality, add in a couple of hours of driving home from Oxford after seeing my mum and now we’re getting late-ish on a Saturday afternoon, at the end of what was objectively a ‘busy’ week, and I am rapidly running out of badass steam energy as I snail-pace it along the M32, but still, I have to execute my amazing lifts.

The bar needed to fly up as though gravity itself has been defeated. And those legs which have been stiffening up nicely on the journey, well they need to Drive with a capital fucking D.

So wise reader, how did it go?

Did I actually let the fact that I kicked over Steph’s coffee just before the final set, and the fact that the gym floor wasn’t flat so the weights were rolling around, and the fact that people kept walking into my eyeline, and that the general feng shui of where I was stood was ‘off’, and the fact that my boobs were desperately trying to escape out of the front of my new bra, and that meant I had to keep my t-shirt on which I hate to do etc. etc…. affect me, and cause me to rush my lifts and do them really badly and with no leg drive at all, a rounded back and with my bum coming up straight away?

Yes, I bloody well did.

I did do the prescribed weights (115kg x3 x2) but they looked and felt horrible and this is the lesson….

3 fucking stars Helen….just stay there, don’t beat yourself up for imperfection, but next time definitely don’t plan the reel music in advance.

My epic tunes will have to wait until I do something worth filming.

THE END