Hello! I'm hanging in there, too. STS is super tough tho. Today I finish my second week of the week #2 disks (4, 5 & 6)--so next week I move on to week 5 for me and disks 7, 8 and 9. I'm a little nervous! I am glad I did the 1RM but I won't lie--I am lifting heavier than ever for me and it's only meso 1! I did drop to 40 pound dumbbells this week for legs. If the workout cards are going to keep jacking my weights up, I have to have somewhere to go! And my dumbbells only go to 50 pounds. And then there is the shoulder issue.
It was better using 40 pound dumbbells as opposed to 45 pound dumbbells. The squats themselves felt just as hard, but it wasn't so hard on my shoulders--but I won't lie, it was still pulling my arms down pretty hard!
BTW--I really like doing the 5.5 month rotation and repeating each workout. I feel like I can not only tweak it the second time I do it, but I am actually seeing immediate improvements. For example, last week when I did Disk #4 Chest, Shoulders and Biceps, I started out strong with push ups. I did all on my toes until I got to that last set of 21s. My chest/arms/shoulders were so burned out I did the last set on my knees (actually, I dropped to my knees halfway through the second to last set of push ups--so even b4 the 21s). This week? I did them all on my toes including the final set of 21s. I'm not going to lie, I was grunting and pushing them out--but I was on my toes for all 21.
I do the disks out of order, too. I do Chest, Shoulders and Biceps on Monday, Legs on Wed. and Back and Triceps on Thursday. I do this for 2 reasons. I feel like the upper body workouts are hitting the ancillary muscles pretty hard so I like to have more than one day between the upper body workouts. I also want to hit each muscle group more than once a week so I do a total body workout on Saturdays--so I'm trying to get a minimum of 48 hours rest between muscle groups.
I'm actually having a lot of fun with the extra workouts. I love Xtrain, don't get me wrong, but I like a lot of variety and I am getting it with STS. Not only is STS itself always changing, but I can do any cardio workout I want and any total body workout I want on Saturdays. So I am really mixing it up and not repeating anything in a month (except the STS workouts of course).
I agree with the others--if you're having a hard time with cardio, do a little at a time. I actually love them both, and have this weird need for my perception of "balance." When I am doing split series workouts, I don't like to do just strength, even though I love strength workouts. (this doesn't bother me at all when I do total body strength workouts). So on my strength days when I get home from work I do one of Cathe's many cardio premixes to get a short cardio session in. On my cardio days I do the full cardio workouts, but for some odd reason it always bothers me to do split series strength workouts w/out any cardio the same day.
