If you don’t get your pump-up from motivational speeches blaring over the speakers at the gym or your favorite flavor of pre-workout, then you’ve got to find some other way to get through test week while simultaneously hitting PR after PR. But how? Your nerves are at their peak (some of us don’t even know why and it just makes no sense because all we want to do is lift mad weight but our body says no way José, not today) because you’ve convinced yourself you have to bump up in weight and the entire class will be watching you struggle, right? You hit this and that last time so you must be able to hit this other number you have in your head for yourself and anything less will be proof you are not, in fact, getting stronger. NO. WRONG. STOP RIGHT THERE. Yes, test week is meant to test your strength for what it is at that given time on that given day based off of the work you’ve put in over the past few months. But put that in perspective; we all know life happens. You can’t possibly be in the gym every single day giving it 110% of your effort. In the span of a couple months, you’ll have your good days, your great days, your bad days, your shit days, your sick days, your just-pushing-through days, your how-the-hell-did-I-drag-myself-here days, and your I’m-going-to-lift-all-the-weights-plus-some days. All of those amount to a perfectly imperfect life where being able to lift 5lbs more than your old PR is something you’re going to celebrate the heck out of. Some test weeks you’ll seriously surprise yourself and you’ll feel like you’re on top of the world, and others you’ll feel like you’re struggling to get your old PR for more than one rep. So, long story long, here are some keys to getting through whatever test week brings you:

-The fact that you showed up to test your personal strength, whether it’s 6 in the morning or 7:30 at night, when you could have been at home, eating a donut, and binge watching season 1 of This Is Us is an accomplishment in itself. So be pumped for getting your sweat in for the day.

-Test week is all about you and doing your personal best. Don’t worry about the person next to you who hit a new 20lb PR because that could be you next test week.

-Don’t freak yourself out! Those nerves will show in your numbers. The more you get your heart racing over some silly weight, the heavier that shit is going to feel. So don’t do that because you can absolutely lift all the weights.

-Give mad ups to those folks who do hit a new personal best. You know how good that feels and having other people notice what a beast you are really makes for a kick-ass day.

-Have a heck of a lot of fun! It’s just another day spent in the gym, sweating it out with some of your favorite peeps. It doesn’t get much better than that does it!?

Good luck to everyone participating in test week starting Monday, August 21. You LionChasers are all going to kill it and we can’t weight to see those numbers you all can put up because we know how hard you have been working day in and day out. You all are the fittest group of people in Ann Arbor and we have no doubt about that!!