National team camp ended yesterday and now I’m back home in California.  Overall the camp went well.  Again, it was a great atmosphere because it was a joint national team camp which included both the senior team and some of the junior guys.  It was great to see all the younger guys getting strong as it definitely showed the depth of the US National Team.

As posted a few days ago, Friday was an intra-squad day and we went through all six events.  For me, most of my routines went well except for some mistakes on a couple of events.  The intra-squad served as a good opportunity to see where I’m at and it definitely told me the places I need to work on as I get ready for the Japan Cup and the Visa Championships.

For the last day of camp, we met with a Sports Psychologist to talk about some of the mental aspect of our sport.  It was an interesting talk and we learned how to use visualization effectively in order to prepare ourselves mentally for practice as well as competitions.  And finally, to finish up the camp, we went to go the yoga studio again.  Since there were more people than last time, the place seemed a lot hotter (we did the hot yoga a.k.a Bikram yoga).  I definitely thought that I was going to pass out this time.  I guess it wasn’t a good idea that I ate a whole slab of steak right before going there.

Anyway, now I’m back in California and ready to get back to training at my own gym.  Camp was a great motivator and it should keep me going for the next couple of weeks until I leave for Japan!