ArmdandFabulous’s BodyBlog

Rear Delt Cable lat raise 3×12

Incline DB Reverse Fly 3×10

Standing low pulley delt raise 3×6

Lying db external rotation 3×12…these bad boys burned!

DB Shoulder Press 3×8

First wkout without Superpump in a loong time, tried to drink coffee instead, but didn’t really help..this wkout was all me!…

lat pulldowns 2x wmup, #140×3, #130×3, #110×4 (total = 10 rep)

assisted chinups 1×10

wide grip assisted pullups 1×10

one arm rows #55 x2, #45×8…right wrist is still tweaked so I had a hard time with this one

bb rows 65# 1×8…rested a sec..did 2 more  (I think this one is a PB!)

seated medium grip rows 80# 1×10

SLDL #65 x 20 reps

alternate bicep curls #15 1×10 making sure to squeeze bicep at the top and go full range of motion..hurts the wrist to do these tooo! sheesh how long does it take a wrist to heal?

I did some basic back exercises and applied the HST method of limited # of sets/reps …let’s see if it does anything for me!

I wrote about this in a previous blog, but wanted to share my experience with it as the problem has come up again since that post…

I’m a big fan of SP250 by Gaspari, and I have been using it for about 6-7 months now…so I tell friends about it and suggest they try it too and see how it works for them…one of the guys at my gym did just that, and after he bought it and used it, he told me that it did "nothing" for him, he shrugged his shoulders and said, "I could go to sleep after I took it"…well I was shocked at that because for me, it is so good it almost turns night into day with the energy and focus I get from it…even NOW after using it all this time..

Since my friend didn’t think it worked at all for him, he offered to give it to me…a full container of it pretty much, he had only used a couple scoops of it…I thought SCORE, cuz it was even my favorite flavor, LemonBurst!!!…I felt like I won the lottery, because we all know, supplements are expen$ive!!

SO the next day I tried some from his container, wondering if it was just how it affected him, or if it really was a dud…and noticed right away that it smelled a little "off"…I put in the 1.5 scoops I normally do, and shook it up…I took a drink of it and it just didn’t taste right…kinda funky, not sweet and candy like the way the other containers of LemonBurst I had used always did…and it did NOTHING for me either!!!…I may as well have been drinking a glass of any old juice, that was about the effect it had on me…AND it tasted gross…

I still had some left in my own container of LemonBurst, so the next morning I used that–oh my it was really obvious then that something was wrong with my friend’s container of it…I got the energy, focus, not to mention it tasted great, like it should…

I told him about how I thought he got a "bad batch" or something and how it did nothing for me and tasted gross too, and suggested he take it back to the store he bought it from…he didn’t want to, didn’t have the receipt, so just told me to toss it out..so I did…what a WASTE!..it was a practically FULL container too!!

That was about 3 months ago, and the quality issue has now come up again…I just took some back to GNC yesterday where I have been buying it…LemonBUrst…the only difference is it tasted good, but made me feel like going to sleep after taking it…no energy, no pump, nothing…I gave it a couple days wondering if maybe my body had just gotten used to it so it was losing it’s effect on me or something, but no, I still had some Blue Raspberry flavor that I knew for sure did work, so I took that the next day for comparison, and it gave me the energy and everything like it always does…

I took my container and receipt back to GNC, explained the situation and they gave me a new container -same flavor-LemonBurst–and checked it to make sure it that came from a different "batch" than the one I brought in…

This morning I opened the sealed container, took a wiff of it—aaarrrrrrgh! It smells "off" like the one my friend gave me, AND I had my usual 1.5 scoops of it, and it does NOTHING for me!!  WTH is up with this stuff?…Now I gotta go back to GNC, and exchange it AGAIN…it is too expensive to just throw out..now I am afraid to buy LemonBurst  :(

…the other flavors of it I have had all have been fine except that one…so on a sidenote when I hear people on this site say they tried SP250 and didn’t think much of it, it makes me wonder if they didn’t get the full experience, possibly they got a "bad batch" of it???

I finally can say, I turned my legs to jello with this one..

It is from the August issue of Oxygen mag and it basically is a workout of all lunges that you do moving your feet like the hands of a clock..12:00 is starting position, (and the stationary position for foot for all reps) then 2:00..3:00..and so on…you do 2 sets of 10-15 reps at each position (total of 10 sets per leg)..then switch legs…it took me an hour to do both legs, I was a sweaty panting, trembling mess towards the end and my legs were shaking beneath me on a few reps toward the middle and end…I may have "rested" longer than I was supposed to, but I needed to in order to do all the sets!…the entire leg workout is just that, it really hits the legs in all areas…I did start to feel it in my lower back though, not a pinching, just an ache so I am hoping I didn’t hurt it doing these..

The only thing I can’t get on board with in this workout is the mag says to do it twice weekly as the lower body workout..I thought you were supposed to give the muscle ample time to heal and not work the same muscle for at least a week after for the best results?…

When I was driving home my legs were shaking when I pushed on the gas or brakes..

And I stuck with the olympic bar instead of the Smith, it is definitely a better fit for me, no knee pain…

My wrist got tweaked the other day and I think I made it worse during my back workout on Weds…still wasn’t better today, so I was planning to skip my chest/shoulder/tri wkout and just do some cardio, give the wrist one more day to heal…I iced it, and it helped but the pain was still there…it hurts my wrist to get dressed even…but when I got to the gym, my wrist felt better…weird…it was good enough to attempt a workout! I was shocked… I thought I better just take it easy and not go too heavy…

I was able to do everything (at a lighter weight) that I wanted to do, and I switched things up since I was lifting lighter, doing 10-15 reps on each exercise…it took some concentration, if I twisted the wrist at all it gave me a pinch…as long as I kept it straight, it was ok…all in all it was a good workout, and I am glad I didn’t have to skip it…since I used lighter weights this time, I also paid more attention to form, and lifted a little slower, my shoulders got a really good burn going doing that for a change!

All these injuries from working out are starting to make me feel like a real "bodybuilder!"

Today I worked back/bi’s and had a great workout despite my wrist irritation that kept me from going as heavy as I wanted on some things…I guess I slightly sprained it or something doing rope tricep extensions last week..when I went to turn and lower the weight, I twisted my wrist and it has bothered me ever since..so I worked around it the best I could, and I think I’m gonna ice it tonight to see if that helps any…can’t be like this for Fri when I do Chest/Shoulder/Tri’s….

I was so glad to be off the "routine" of HST that I went around like a butterfly and did almost every single back exercise –free weight and machine I could think of!..(but only for about an hour)..I was loving it!…I superset some things, went heavy on some with less reps, and then switched to lower weight, and more reps…I think I really shocked my back muscles with this "all over the place" workout…it was great…I went into it knowing that at the time of day at this particular gym, it would be pretty busy so I would have to improvise unless I wanted to be standing around waiting…it went smoothly except for some guy who tried to take the high back row machine I was supersetting with the low row one…I spoke up and said I was using it still as he started trying to put more weight on it…he backed off but was visibly annoyed…guess he couldn’t see how BUSY the gym was and didn’t consider that some machines might be in use…hmmm…imagine that…a packed gym and someone is using a machine you want…lol…doesn’t anyone consider that others are using machines too..I always give it just a few seconds and look around to see if anyone is going to claim a machine I am about to use before I start changing the weights and setting up..or I even look at the closest person to that machine and ask them if they saw anyone using it…works well for me!

About the title of this blog…there was this man who was also working back/bi’s today and we kept ending up near each other throughout the workout…he was obviously a smoker by the nasty "tar" smell that was all around him like Pig Pen from Charlie Brown…ewww it reeked…but anyways, he had two young boys with him, both looked to be between 14-15 and they were all working out together…and that’s what makes this worse..I only watched him on one exercise and it was seated bicep curls…he was using a weight much heavier than he could handle, and kind of using his entire shoulder and back to "throw" the db up to get one rep as he made a grimace on his face each time…there had to be minimal to no bicep working in what he was doing…I just hope those young boys have enough smarts to learn the correct way to lift before any major injuries derail their weightlifting lives…lol

But I saw something even worse than that dude today…yep..this was potentially MUCH more damaging than that…I was mid way thru my workout and I had already done the platform T-bar row machine…so I was over in another area but as I walked by to get a drink at the water fountain, I noticed a kind of "jerking" motion going on out of the corner of my eye…I look over and this dude is on the T-bar row machine (it’s the platform one, so you stand up on it) with WAAAY too much weight stacked on it, didn’t have his back straight and tight, and kinda jerking the weighted bar back towards him with the force of motion in his entire body instead of lifting it with any kind of muscle….I looked around to see if anyone else was witnessing this and YES, almost all eyes were on this guy, it looked like an absolute TRAINWRECK in motion…they all seemd just as disturbed as I was watching him…but due to obvious ego issues, no one was gonna say anything to him…I just laughed to myself thinking, he’ll learn when he can’t get out of bed that maybe he was doing something wrong…before I finished my workout I had to walk by the T-Bar again and the guy of course didn’t take his weights off of it…no wonder it was impossible for him to lift…he had stacked 200 lbs on it when he should have been lifting around 90 lbs realistically!!

…some days the gym is so amusing!

SInce starting HST, I messed my knees up again due to working my legs 3x a week with it…so for the past 3 weeks I have just skipped the leg part of the workout…yesterday I decided enough was enough and stretched out my legs and warmed up before going to the gym…

I found an article in last month’s Oxygen magazine that had a 4 week leg workout routine in it, the first week was squats, and you start it with feet shoulder width apart for 2 sets, then move the feet out 2 inches for 1 set, and so on…all together it is 7 sets, but with different foot placement it really works the legs completely, and hips, glutes, and lower back some too!

Normally I use the SMith machine for squats, but decided to do them using just the bar and weights, so I could see if that helped my form at all..I think it did, I didn’t have any knee issues at all so I think I will stick with it..must be something about the Smith’s standard positioning/angle of the bar that doesn’t work well for me?

After squats I did deadlifts, calf raises, lying leg curls…and I think that’s it…my legs felt really whipped and not quite jello-like, but pretty close, and I am definitely feelin’ it today, so I think I can add leg workouts back in–but only 1 time a week!.. I will have to cut back on cardio, that is a big part of the knee problem…I have been doing a lot of it, and 2x a day sessions too!…so how do marathoners run so much and not have knee problems??..that has been perplexing me since my own knee troubles started up…hmmm…I also started taking Glucosamine Chondroitin and it is helping…

I’ve decided to end the HST training because I’m not making the progress I had hoped on it…after the first 3, maybe 4 weeks I stopped seeing any gains from it, and then I think I got to the point of overtraining even…it’s supposed to be an 8 week program with a 1 week break from lifting after, then you go back to square one with it and start all over, or just use it to change things up and then go back to however you normally train once in a while…I did it for 6 weeks total…

I felt like I was not training all muscle groups as thoroughly as I normally do, because with HST you just do a routine including the basic core exercises like bench press, squats, db lat raises, military press, etc…but in my normal method of training I like to give each muscle group more specific attention than HST training does…

They say that it is scientifically proven to be a great workout for building muscle whether you are trying to gain mass, or even lean out…and I did see some significant gains from my first few weeks that made me excited and hopeful..but since you do pretty much the same exercises each week, and it’s a full body workout (Mon, Wed, Fri) just change out the number of reps/add weight or a little tweak here and there from week to week,  my gains halted, and I wasn’t seeing the results I was looking for…

Experimenting like this did cost me some muscle gains AND even muscle loss from what I already had when I started it, but I did it knowing that it would be a good learning experience for me to figure out what works best for my body…I took a risk, and gained valuable information about my specific limitations with weightlifting…I never had a knee problem in my life but whenever I try to do any kind of leg day (even alternating between quads/hams, etc on different days in the same week) more than one time a week, I start having knee issues, no matter how I try to get the squat or any other leg exercise form right…maybe if I quit cardio altogether I could do legs 2x a week?…lol

After reading articles about what overtraining feels like, I figured out that’s what I ended up doing with this…there were a couple days where I just felt weirdly anxious all day and had no idea why, it isn’t something that I normally experience…and I was having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep as well…was only getting 5-6 hours average and my normal is 8hrs a night…didnt’ know why, no reason really for it…and then there’s the obvious one, lack of progress and even the dreaded reduction of muscle mass!…the thing is, my muscles weren’t sore by the time the next workout day rolled around every 48 hours (m, w, f)…and my strength was good for each workout…I was able to go up in weight week to week (but not in all exercises–biceps especially)…so now I know that overtraining can sneak up on you and wreak havoc even if your muscles aren’t screaming at you to stop…the signs and symptoms are subtle and you have to pay attention to what your body is trying to tell you!

Even though this experience sounds kinda nightmare-ish, I am glad I did it and I will try HST at a later point in time, just for a shorter duration when I want to "shock" my muscles into new growth…everyone is different and what didn’t work for me might still work for you, so don’t discount it based on how my body responded to it…I do still think it is a good training method for some…

I have heard of this happening to other people and thought it sounded funny, until it happened to me…I went too far, maxed out my strength with the weight I had on the incline bench bar and couldn’t get it back in the holders…I was struggling and trying to use every ounce of muscle I had left to push it back up, but had gone to failure already so it just wasn’t gonna make it up there… I just kinda lowered it down my body, rolled it to my lap and then stood up with it and put it on the ground…I had to take the weights off of it to pick it up and put it back up in the holder…and while I was awkwardly doing that, I hit the mirror behind me with the bar! It made a loud smack but didn’t crack luckily lol…so embarrassing..but I just laughed to myself, happy that I obviously pushed as far as I could on that exercise which= growth baybeeee!…the gym wasn’t too busy so not many people around to stare in amusement either, (love that!)  :)

This is week 6 of my HST training, and I can’t wait to get back to my regular routine, so after this one I might take a week off then switch back…it’s supposed to be an 8 week program, but I’m not so sure the workout I am doing is still effective or not…today’s workout may change that though, I figured out by what I could do today by pushing myself a little more, that I have not been lifting as heavy as I could have been…and that may be why my progress with HST has stalled a little…I tested my strength and was able to do a few dips on the assist machine with no assist–and I did them at the same point in my workout that I have been doing them, so they weren’t any more rested or anything, it was true progress!!…and even though I haven’t been doing one arm db rows for a few weeks, I was still able to use 50 lb db’s for them and they felt much lighter, so next week I may go up to the 55’s!…yahooooooo

How much is the right amount for building muscle…so many different articles/opinions/guidelines on this!…It’s hard to tell…OR does it just depend on you and your genetics the amount YOU need to grow…

When I started lifting weights, the only protein I "monitored" was having a protein shake before and after my workouts…that was it for me, then if I had 50 or 100 gms more the rest of the day, I never kept track of…then I started learning and researching more and figured that you need to have at least 1 gm per lb of bodyweight to gain muscle…so I upped my protein and started actually monitoring it daily to be sure I was getting enough…I did see improvement and muscle gains, but I don’t know how much of that is attributed to the upped protein amount, or the length of time invested and gradual "build up" of muscle tissue from just having consistent workouts…

Then I read a blog by BBer Pauline Nordin where she said that she cut back on her protein and didn’t lose any muscle mass…

Well I’m having a tough time gaining muscle in my legs and now starting to think I need to up the protein to 1.5 gms per bodylb..but it is tough enough for me to get the amount in that I do now…sheesh…is it really necessary to get THAT much protein or does it just go to waste?…

Anyways, I would like to hear any feedback/opinions on this subject from anyone who knows where I am coming from..it’s greatly appreciated!