ArmdandFabulous’s BodyBlog

If you are experiencing this, you need a foam roller!  

A while back I mentioned that I thought maybe squats were hurting my knees…after leg days, my knees would feel tight and creaky, which I had never experienced before so I figured it must be from the combo of lifting weights and doing cardio more often…I tried to stretch a little better before any lifting or cardio, but still it got pretty bad and I ended up almost pulling a hamstring…It started to get worse when I got a pain behind my knee while running one day…never had knee problems before, didn’t know what this was, and I thought it would be ok if I just finished the run because it was just annoying, not really painful…by the end of it, I got this twinge of pain behind the knee, that also pulled on the front of my knee…I thought I pulled my hamstring, and the knee was actually swollen when I went home and looked at it…it ended up being a pulled ilitibial band which is very common for any kind of athlete to experience at some point during training… 

CRAP!…after that happened I had to ice the knee, rest it,  and definitely couldn’t do any cardio…I took about 3wks or more off of cardio because I couldn’t put any pressure on the knee other than walking–and I had to stop doing squats, lunges, any leg weightlifting for a while …but eventually my knee got well enough for me to do cardio again, running was still a little challenging…I used to run at level 6.0, before the injury, but had to start back at 5.3…after about 10 mins of running I would get "warning" pains in the back of the knee and had to stop and stretch before attempting to run anymore..this went on for looong time…I worked up to being able to run 4 miles again, without too much pain, but couldn’t really increase speed…and the day after a run or heavy leg day, the creakiness was back…it was so annoying and I wondered if my knees would ever be back to normal..one day I mentioned the issue to a trainer at the gym and he educated me on foam rollers…he showed me how to use one and it has changed my training life…the next day after using it I felt NO knee pain at all while doing cardio, and that was a first ever since the initial injury…about 4-5 months ago!!!!

The trainer explained that the muscle was knotting up in my leg and pulling on the knee, which brought on the pain..and he said you can’t get to most of the knots with regular stretching…so with the foam roller I cold "roll" out the knots like rolling pie dough with a rolling pin basically…apparently having knotted up muscle in the legs is almost unavoidable at times so if you do any kind of athletic training, you NEED a foam roller…I bought one (only $15.00 at Wal-Mart) and I can feel the knots in the legs after I do squats or lunges, or after an intense cardio session…I just roll them out and the pain is gone!…I’ve had my foam roller for only 3 weeks and I have increased my running speed and distance, and the knots are getting fewer and fewer…(I use it before and after I workout–only takes a few minutes)

Hope this helps you if you are having knee issues–I just wish I had found out about it sooner!

Here are a couple links about what it is and how to use it:

http://www.fitlink.com/what-is-a-foam-roller

http://www.sport-fitness-advisor.com/self-myofascial-release.html

P.S.  You’re welcome!!

I haven’t had full range of motion in my wrist due to tweaking it somehow awhile back…it has been about 3 months since I could do barbell curls…and if I turned the wrist to much in one direction-it hurt all over again…went to the dr. about it and was told that it would take time to heal but should be fine and I could still lift weights..so I have been able to pretty much do most exercises, and over time it has s  l  o  w  l  y gotten better…

These past couple months I have still been able to do db bicep curls, but not with the same amount of weight as I used to..the wrist would act up if I tried to go too heavy…and I would "test" the wrist weekly as I attempted barbell curls but every week would come to the same conclusion: NOPE, not happenin!..the wrist would hurt like I was injuring it all over again…so I’d put the barbell back in frustration wondering when and if I would ever be able to do my barbell curls again :(…

Because of the limited range of motion my bicep workouts have pretty much just been doing db drop sets to failure on the day I work my back at the end of the workout…I felt like my biceps were getting a good workout doing the back exercises so I didn’t worry about them too much…but then I started to notice that my bicep vein I was so proud of had stopped popping out…and that was something I was so glad to see developing back when I started out..it was a real sign of progress to me…so I’ve just been waiting for my wrist to heal so I could get that vein popping again!!

So this week I didn’t do any extra bicep work after my back workout, and even gave them a few days to recover before working them on their own yesterday hoping to get them progressing again…well, not totally on their own, I also did legs yesterday…and as usual, I attempted a bb curl with a 25lb and…what?…no pain?…not even a little twinge of wrist pain?…get out!…no way, I must be dreaming this…yep, the wrist was ok to do bb curls again!!!  FINALLY!! yay..that made me so happy

It made me so happy that I overdid it…I alternated between leg/bicep sets and everything was going good…I did bb curls, standing cable curls, and bicep isolation db curls…by the time I got to the db isolation curls, I had already done enough and I should have stopped…as I was finishing up and doing drop sets to failure, I noticed that instead of feeling the burn, I wasn’t feeling much at all..by the time I got down to 6lb db’s I felt like there was no muscle in my bicep, the exercise didn’t burn as it usually did and I didn’t feel any pump in it at all…when I got home I checked out my biceps, no usual pump from the workout and they looked smaller…

*Sigh* Oh well, another lesson in my fitness journey : the importance of knowing when to stop!

Decided to change my cardio a little and did it HIIT style yesterday…20 mins on the stairstepper…the smaller one that no one seems to ever use at the gym, including me..(but really does a great job of targeting the glutes-yeah, that one)..and then another 20 mins on the eliptical..I just kept doing a rate of 30 seconds level 3 or 4, then 1 min at level 7, then back down to level 3..then up to level 9 for 30 seconds…just totally random so it kept my body guessing…then at night I did two 10 min runs…this seemed to shock my system pretty well, and the scale finally moved DOWN a little today..yaya!~~…..(Even though I totally ate a big Hershey bar yesterday-oops..my bad!)

So the moral of the story is:  DO your HIIT!!

Lately I’ve been eating more junk than I normally allow in my diet…not sure if it is the weather/change of season..or body just tired of me trying to control the calories and rebelling at this point..I haven’t really been THAT strict on myself so not sure if the rebelling really is the reason….my usual habit is to eat clean for a few days then reward myself with something I’ve been craving..like some ice cream/piece of cake.etc…never a huge buffet type meal or anything…and I’ve always been able to manage it and not really gain weight…well, I take that back..I do gain a couple pounds here and there, but I can and do usually just do more cardio to burn off the excess calories right away, no problem…the same day I consume the extra calories, I normally am in the gym doing enough cardio to burn them off…I also do pretty well with drinking a gallon of h2o a day…but this past week I have hit a wall I guess…while I have indulged in some not so "clean" diet choices, (nothing out of the norm) I have also kicked my a** in the gym with extra cardio and have kept up with my workouts which normally keeps me out of trouble with weight gain…yet this week I have managed to go up continuously on the scale despite my efforts to redeem myself from the diet stumbles…I know that the scale doesn’t tell the whole truth of what’s going on in our body and we shouldn’t only go by what it says…but, while still writing down what I eat and monitoring calories, this week I have just creeped up..and up…hmmm…this is not the norm for me…so I took my waist measurement the last couple days, waist is the same…so I’m hoping the extra calories have been put to good use, in the form of muscle building …hey, a girl can dream, right?

warmed up with 3 sets pushups..all sets were in the 12-15 rep range…

CHest 

Incline smith 3x

Hammer Chest machine  3x

Cable Crossover 2x

DB flyes 2x

Machine Flye 2x

Flat db press 2x

Rested 1-1.5 mins between sets

Back

Pullups 3x

Pulldown machine 3x

DB rows 2x

Seated cable row 2x SUperset with close grip lat pulldown 2x

Bent over row 2x

I can really feel this one!…Haven’t ever worked back and chest together in the same day and it exhausted me…no way could I consider cardio after this.  A change is what I need..feel like I am plateauing, not really gaining much muscle now and I know it’s because I need to up my efforts/workout intensity if I want progress to continue.

DIet has been no bueno lately …today I had a little chat with myself and decided it’s time to RE-FOCUS and get my head back in the game…

I gave my shoulders a full 7 day rest this time, so I thought I would hit them hard today 

it’s just 4 exercises…

Side lat raises 4 sets 15, 12, 8, 6 to pre-fatigue the shoulders, then

4 supersets of DB presses and upright rows

4 sets lying side laterals with elbow bent…but by the time I finished my shoulders were burning…definitely shocked them!

**A guy in the gym was kinda staring at me as I worked out and finally came over to ask "Are you a bodybuilder?"..I said, "No", and he said, "Oh, I was just wondering because you look kinda cut up"….

Oh my what a compliment!! It made my day

Ok peeps, it’s time for me to change something about my diet/training to get the progress going in the right direction again.   Up to this point, I have monitored protein intake and total calorie intake, but haven’t too closely counted my daily carb intake.  Sometimes I have ventured into the whole carb cycling thing by not eating them after 12:00 or 5:00, but haven’t been consistent with it because when I mess up the diet it is usually clearly due to excess calories, so haven’t gotten to the detail of noticing how many carbs a day does what for me yet…I recently had a friend in town and for me that is bad news diet wise…I even tried to guard against falling into bad eating decisions by bringing packets of protein and even packets of superpum250 to keep me from craving the junk that is always all around at the strip…as soon as I had one margarita (I made it healthier by ordering it with NO salt!! lol), the hungries start and I want junk…I had 3 mcd’s hamburgers, 4 apple pies (they’re on the Dollar menu, I had to do it, that’s practically giving them away!)..french fries…(since I never usually eat at McD’s, the low prices were a surprise to me and too good to pass up..lol..I make great excuses huh?)…can’t remember what else I ate..but the point is, it was Baaaaad…the good news is, after a couple days of drinking a gallon of water and keeping up with my workout schedule, I redeemed my previous weight and the scale didn’t go up…amazing isn’t it???

But now I feel like I’m ready to get a little more structured and want to get these last 10 or 12  oh who am I kidding probably 15 lbs gone so I can move into Phase II–possibly a little “bulk” phase…which is exciting to me because for this past year I have been trying to build muscle while I cut fat, which is frustrating, when I start losing weight I get freaked out when I look in the mirror and it seems I am losing muscle too, and then I stop trying so hard to lose weight…but I am not where I want to be bodyfat or definition wise…so now I feel like I just need to go for it, and as long as I keep the diet numbers (protein, carbs, etc) right, then I will be ok and whatever muscle I lose I can put back on…what has me excited about a bulk phase is that whenever I have cut back on the cardio, I have noticed much faster muscle gains…it’s really unbelievable how fast they can grow…but I have had to burn them away with all the cardio trying to make up for my bad diet decisions to keep from gaining fat back!!!

So anyways, I still have a lot to learn, I know I can’t learn everything in a year (still can’t believe it’s already been a year that I’ve been lifting weights!) ..but I was wondering what the best carb cycling plans out there are..I’ve heard of doing 3 days low carb then one high, then 3 medium…or one day you have carbs with breakfast, lunch and dinner, then the next day only breakfast, then the next day with breakfast and lunch only, etc…I saw in the current Oxygen mag that a low carb day should be half your bodyweight, a medium day would be = to your bodyweight and high day would be 2x your bodyweight -3…but to me these amounts seem a little high…anyways, that’s where you come in..what carb cycling plan works best for you?…are there other plans that work better than the ones I’ve mentioned?  I would love to hear any input or suggestions on this!

I skipped my leg workout last week and felt guilty about it until today…wow have I gone up in strength!

Went up in weight on squats and leg presses and was able to do more reps…really surprised myself and now I’m considering only doing legs every other week!! 

I’m naming this one "the stinger"…by then end of it my shoulders were on fire!

*went up in weight each set

seated military press (behind head) 12, 10,8,6

arnold presses 12, 10, 8, 6

standing side lats 15, 12, 10, 8

upright row 12, 10, 8, 6

to finish, a superset with:

seated bent over lats 4x 10 & standing front raises 10, 8, 6, 4

incline db press  5 sets…15, 12, 2×10, 8

dips (assisted)-3 sets 10-15

incline chest flyes 3 x15  superset w/ bodyweight dips using bench to failure

flat bench w db 3×15 

lying db tri extension 3×15 

flat chest flyes 3×15

triple set w/ rope pushdowns, decline pushups (to failure–not many reps…arms were pooped at this point), cable chest flyes

Decided to skip the bench pressing today, I have been consistently doing it for some time now..

ALso I have changed my rep range…last week actually is when I started doing it, instead of doing 6-8, I have started doing 12-15 reps…I already felt the effect of the "shock to the system" in my back after one workout–I was sore like when I first started a year ago!!!