Sorry, It Took 5 1/2 Years to Answer This Question
On the 1st of February 2014 I found the following question, “How does Sam McIntosh Train?” on Answers.com. To my surprise, it had been answered, not by me, with “Sam McIntosh doesn’t train, Sam McIntosh doesn’t need to train.” Amused at the time, I posted it on my Instagram account. But now, over five and a half years later, I thought the poor soul that had originally inquired deserved a proper answer; so, let me walk you through one of my days.
A rude but familiar chime awoke me this morning as my phone slowly vibrated its way to the edge of my bedside table. Reaching up to hit the safety of the snooze button I hooked my hand in the charging cable flinging the phone off the table and onto the floor where it continued to chime in its digital laughter as if to say it had won this round. It had.
After stumbling my way out of bed and finishing my toilet routine, I was rudely awakened by the cold water blasting out of the shower head onto my skin. I was finally awake enough to grumpily consider being ready to start my day.
I have to be quite cognisant of my breakfast choices, as I’d really hate to upchuck it during my morning gym routine. Clean up sounds like such a hassle. Today I went with a light meal of porridge and coffee to get me going.
Time for a bright and early gym session! First up, in the gym was warming with pre-rehabilitation movements and light mobilisation exercises for my shoulders. While I was in Canberra, I had a couple instances of pinching in them, so I’m being especially careful. Even though I’ve had a couple of worrisome instances, my shoulders have been really strong lately and considering I’ll need them to get me around for the rest of my life, it’s always a good idea to look after them.
I then started my main gym program. Currently, I’m in an explosive block of training speeding up my arms as I head towards competition. For those of you non gym-junkies out there, explosive training is performing movements with maximal force as explosive as possible over a short amount of reps, think movements like box jumps and clapping push-ups. It's been really interesting seeing the physiological changes in my body as I change up my training styles throughout the year, going from a muscle building hypertrophy block into strength blocks to build off the muscle growth and then explosive training to speed them up utilizing the strength.
Having to adapt different exercises to my hand function has been a learning curve. For those not familiar with my condition, I don’t have full hand function and therefore, I do not have a strong grip. As you can probably guess, grip is pretty darn important when lifting weights. So, over the years I’ve made a whole range of adaptations, whether it’s using hooks on my hands for pull-ups and rowing exercises or simply just strapping my hands to free weights to avoid the concussion and broken toes from dropping weights. So far I’ve been lucky not to have these happen, fingers crossed...well, figuratively.
Lunch time! Actually, I drank my protein shake too fast and felt like I was going to be sick so I had to wait half an hour before eating...Rookie Mistake! I continued with a breakfast-themed meal, having eggs and smashed avocado on grain toast. Don’t worry I made sure I charged myself $20 for the decadence! Using food as a recovery strategy is really important for me, not only is it helping my body recover from the session I just completed, but it’s fueling my body for the next session. Plus being a rather skinny human, I have real trouble keeping muscle mass on so nutrition has become a big player in keeping all my hard earned work from being lost.
Look, I Didn’t Drop Them!
Decadence at it’s finest.
Next up is my track session. My arms were pretty sore and heavy after the gym session this morning and on the drive in I wasn't overly excited at the idea of getting into the race chair and doing a sprint session. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do and I’m so blessed to be able to live my dream, but occasionally my exhaustion gets the better of me. Today, motivation came from somewhere I didn't expect. Before my session started I had the absolute pleasure of helping out an aspiring junior athlete, Judd. Judd has been coming to Parallel Sports’ junior wheelchair basketball program that I help run (read all about it in my zoomy zoom blog post) for the last year and has made massive improvements in his fitness and chair skills. He has a school athletics event coming up and, naturally, being the sporty guy that he is, he wants to be able to not just participate but completely kick butt! Seeing someone new to the sport get into the chair and have a blast pushing themselves as fast as they could really struck me in the heart. It's the exact reason I fell in love with this sport. There’s something so special and enticing about being able to push yourself as fast as you can, just you and the chair. Helping give Judd some pointers reignited my fire and gave me a huge burst of motivation to train hard. I was pleased with my quick times and finished the session feeling happy with what I had accomplished. Thanks for the motivation, Judd!
Me and Judd Training Hard
Training was done for the day, so I took a quick drive over to the hospital to visit both my Nana and my Mum in the hospital. Before you get too worried, they’re both okay! Mum had some light surgery on her feet and is in for a few nights recovering and Nana had a bit of a health scare a few days ago that was luckily a false alarm. Strangely enough, they are on the same floor, only 5 rooms apart from each other. It makes you wonder if we should be getting a family discount..
I got home as the sun was setting, I made sure to stretch to avoid seizing up like a tired gargoyle and to distract me from falling asleep before dinner. A classic meal of meat and veggies did the job taming my rumbling tummy, getting some much needed protein and carbohydrates into me. Which brings me to now...writing this in the moment now and not reminiscing about the day... Hi. This is sort of meta!
Anyway, back to the original question… Original inquirer, I hope this pleases you. I’m sorry I’m half a decade late. And to whoever answered for me, I like your answer. However, I’ve never tested your theory. So, maybe it’s true or maybe it’s not...I’m just a Schrödinger’s Sam, I guess. Meow.