The 300 Phase
At times I get stuck on what to write about; yesterday being one of those days. Thankfully, I was on my teenage son’s good side (joking) when he heard me mumbling something under my breath and offered a topic. “Mom, why don’t you write about weightlifting?” As broad as the topic may be, it’s one I love to talk about! And thank you Hayden for suggesting it!
Weightlifting got me to thinking about my absolute favorite movie motivator of all times; 300. Do you all remember this movie and what beasts all these actors were? Around the time this movie was released, I was competing in figure competitions. After finally getting sick of subjecting myself to that politically run, and biased ‘sport’, I decided to switch over to competing in the category of fitness, where at least I felt I had more control over how I placed. This is where the movie 300 came in. My goal was NOT to look like a dude, but I knew I needed to step up my game and change the way I trained if I wanted to achieve a different look and outcome on stage.
You all know of the lead character in 300, Gerard Butler. He wasn’t always a huge man like he was in that movie. In fact, at 6’2”, this Scottish guy’s typical weight is only around 86kg on a good day. With his body type, and likely fast metabolism, he had to train and eat like a beast for several hours a day and for many months prior to shooting on the set to look like he did. Check out this short clip where Gerard talks about his training for the movie, 300; impressive as hell and motiving to boot, right?
That’s exactly what inspired me to switch gears. Just weightlifting alone became mundane, and at the time, I felt like I had reached a plateau. So, I came up with adding another daily workout, on top of my existing weightlifting regime, by incorporating a second workout with 300 continuous movements of one exercise daily. The goal was to add something that would also get my heart rate up and give me a more refined look. Examples of what I would do for my 300 workouts are box jumps, jumping air squats, lunges, 3 count flutter kicks, push press, KB’s, you get the idea. One day I was even crazy enough to choose burpees. Now, if you’ve ever done burpees, you’d probably agree that doing 300 of them at one time could be considered INSANITY!!! And it was!
As I’m reflecting on what I call my ‘300 phase’ in life, hands down I looked the absolute best and was the most conditioned I had ever been at any point in my life thanks to that extra inspiration I got from that movie. Maybe, watching the clip above will give you a little extra inspiration leading into the holidays to help you keep your focus, or to push you to that next level. I know it certainly has me motivated to step up my game and do the ‘300 phase’ again!
Let me leave you with what is known as The 300 Workout. Try it out; switch up your game. Imagine how you’ll look 6 months from now if you stick with something like this daily! Oh, and don’t forget to refresh your memory with how to Feed the Machine correctly if you decide to give this a whirl. You’re going to need those clean and positive extra calories!
~Sarah
