Progress Charts - Sept 6th 2017 to August 29th 2018
                                                    ( First 52 weeks / 1 Year )

This is the first year of progress of my training routine.

There was traveling, injuries and a learning curve, all of which helped me to gain further understanding of Conditioning and it's relationship to strength gain for Tricking. 

Training once per week remains the ideal choice, training as hard as I possibly can that day. 

I require adequate rest and recovery, and so I generally rest for 4 days of the week. Still tricking 3 times a week, too. I've found the right balance.

By the end of the year, my tricking power / intensity has stabilized. Harder tricks became stable and consistent to me. It feels easier to get more height and move faster. Even when I feel weak, my lower end of capability still impresses me. 

I started off quite weak and so I gained a pretty good spike in all my exercises in the first few months. After that, I was able to hold on to the higher end of my maximum, and every so often I would challenge and set new personal records. I would then aim to hold weight around my personal records, making that consistent / easier, and repeating. 

Keep in mind, on wednesdays I would only workout up until week 23. After week 23, I would trick for 1.5 hours or so beforehand, then immediately go to goodlife and work out.

By tricking for an hour and a half or so before, I would show up to conditioning sessions slightly fatigued compared to fresh, so this was an additional layer of challenge that made hitting the same weight slightly more difficult. I really did and still do need that extra wednesday session of tricks, though !

his puts me at on average of 5.5 hours of tricking per week, and 45 minutes of conditioning. You can say 6h minimum of training per week. 

Conclusion

Strength training will make anything that you are mentally comfortable and confident in throwing feel so much easier. At minimum, you'll turn up to session capable of throwing harder tricks. However, anything that you are mentally or emotionally not cool with, all strength training does is will give you a higher chance of success. Warming up to harder skills will make you feel much more confident about throwing them, because basics become VERY easy feeling as your base strength increases. The stronger you get, the lighter you feel, and you feel encouragement to train harder skills, as you start to really float out of things.

Below is a graph which measures all the progress I've made in each exercise. The number of weight in pounds (lbs) are what was hit that week. Weeks are measured at the bottom, and weight on the left. 

Bicep Curl - 208% Increase from Week 1 to 52
Average I can safely do 115, 120 no worries at the end of year 1. Always gunning for more though.  

Note: Shoulder Injury from week 48-52

Chest Press - 196% Increase
Wavy strength levels, averaging 175 reliably by the end of the year.

Note: Injured Shoulder from weeks 47 to 52

Ab Crunch - 220% Increase
Average I can reliably do 175-ish.

Note: Injured from weeks 43-49. Went easy / not at all.

Leg Extension - 200% Increase

I started hitting 200 consistently. 200 Became far easier ! Easy to build onto.

No Injuries affected my leg extension training from 27 to 52.

Leg Press - 148% Increase

Was pretty consistent with these.  Going to try to hit 400 and make it consistent as often as possible in year 2. Try to get a 500lb Squat at some point later in life. Prepping my body with these !
 

Goals

Leg Press and Abdominal Crunch machines I've maxed out on. I wish to be able to max out leg extensions ( at 305lbs ) and I haven't looked at Curl or Chest press machines to find out their maximum weights, but I intend to be able to move those too. 

Once I've maxed out on all machines, I will go towards Squats and Deadlifts. 500 seems like a really cool number to hit ! :) Would be great to hit that someday !

Anyways, happy training to ya !

- David