Week 64
Back into the regular workout and eating routine now that the holidays and vacation and all that are behind me. BF% pinch for the week was the same as last week, and the weight has been up a pound or two. With the BF% pinch lower overall and weight up a bit I translate that as a little muscle gain, but I am not getting too excited … yet.
Noticed something last week that has been bugging me this week… my traps seem to be unequal. When I try to flex them, the right one pops right up and looks awesome, the left side just lays there. No matter what contortions I go through, I can’t get it to pop up like the right side. I can’t figure out how I might have trained them unequally since I do everything in a balanced fashion whether it’s working the actual traps or doing lateral shoulder raises or whatever. I can’t seem to move the left shoulder like my right one. The right shoulder I partially dislocated/popped 20 years ago when I was playing hockey, I ended up down on the ice heading into the corner chasing after the puck and went shoulder first into the boards. It was a minor dislocation as it popped right back in, though it hurt like hell, and I continued playing not only that game but the rest of the season. As a result that shoulder has a bit more range of motion than the left, so I don’t know if this is affecting the traps thing. Since noticing this I have tried to work the left trap a bit more, throwing in an extra set or so on a day that I wouldn’t normally work shoulders and traps. Weird, and maddening, esp. if it is because I have been doing something wrong to cause this. I’d appreciate any ideas someone may have about this. It could be I just need to practice flexing it more, which I have been doing.
Another kind of awesome thing that I have recently been able to do that I could never even think about doing before is this leg lift. I don’t know the correct name for it, but you sit on the floor with your legs straight out, put your hands on the floor on either side of you and lift your legs and butt off the floor in an "L" or pike position and only your hands are touching the floor. There’s no way I could do this before lifting and working out. I have been able to do this for a month or two now and try to do it for a few moments most evenings… trying to increase the time off the floor, but I am not sure I am improving on that yet. On the good nights I can open and close my legs a few times with my butt off the floor. When I was in middle school I had the ill-conceived notion that I wanted to be in gymnastics. The PE teacher at the school had a gymnastics club of sorts and I participated as best a clumsy, tubby kid could. This was the era of Nadia Komaneche and the ‘76 Olympics so the girls in particular were really interested in gymnastics. There were even a number of boys in our group that took part, though except for myself they were all rather athletic; my one friend was really good. My major accomplishment back then was that I could turn a decent cart wheel. Big deal. I watched with envy my friends getting better and better and some even doing back flips. As it turns out, a gymnastics career would have been short-lived with me… you don’t see too many 6-ft tall gymnasts! Anyway, I found it rather awesome that I could finally do this leg lift thing… if only 30-some years late! Oh, and my friend from middle school who was a great gymnast at the time? I saw him a year or two ago when his mom passed away and he now looks like a beach ball! Somehow I don’t think he’s doing too many back flips these days.
Maybe there’s some other moves/positions I can work toward, and I don’t want to look like a beach ball, so I’ll keep liftin’.
