StrongerGeek’s BodyBlog

Over the last couple of days I feel like I’ve blasted through a plateau.  For the preceding couple of weeks I haven’t felt on top of things.  My diet had been slipping, my back has been feeling lousy, I haven’t been sleeping well.  But for the last several days I’ve felt great.  My diet is good, I’ve been sleeping better, in the gym I’ve set several PRs (another couple today), and most importantly my body (especially my back) just feels so much better.
Today was leg day and I set a another squat PR today (just barely).  Feel free to skip over the details.  Just because I like to record them doesn’t mean you have to read them:

• 45 lbs x 15
• 95 lbs x 15
• 135 lbs x 15
• 210 lbs x 10
• 185 lbs x 10
• 135 lbs x 10

I’m still trying to decide if the sets after my maximum weight have any value or not…  Any thoughts?  I also PRed on the leg extension machine where I did 120 lbs x 13.

I walked to the gym today in … snow.  Yes, it’s the first day of real winter here.    Fun fun fun.  I actually don’t mind winter all that much, really.  It lasts a little long in my neck of the woods, but I enjoy the change.  I love the cycle of the seasons.
Guess what I did today?  9 pullups!  A PR for me.  My third set was lousy however.  I think I just burned out.  I did 9, 6, and 4 reps for my three sets.  The rest of the workout was a bit of a disappointment.  I think I was just low on fuel today, since I rushed through my breakfast trying to get Things #2 and #3 to the school bus on time.  (Thing #1 is home with the flu, for the second day.  Poor kid.  He was bemoaning his miserable life yesterday because not only was he sick, but they didn’t finish Game 5 of the World Series last night either…)

Ab work today and 20 minutes on the elliptical.  I burned 266 calories on Machine A.  Yawn.  At least my diet was good today.  Tomorrow is pullup day.  I’m shooting for 9.

That’s all I’ve got…

There’s bad news and good news.  What do you want first?

Well the bad news is that this weekend was an absolute diet disaster.  Between the World Series, an Ocktoberfest celebration at church, and Thing #3’s birthday party my diet fell apart.  I am back on track today, but I’m a little frustrated with my lack of control.  I’ve been so good for so long… I think I was taking my will-power for granted.
The good news is that today was leg day and I reached my squat goal!  I wasn’t even planning on squatting today.  I was toying with following Tony’s advice and just squatting once a week.  But I just felt like squatting today (trust me, a rare occurrence…).  I did my sets a little differently (also based on Tony’s advice) and I reached my goal of squatting my body weight ten times.  Here’s what I did:

• 45 lbs x 20
• 95 lbs x 20
• 135 lbs x 17
• 205 lbs x 10
• 135 lbs x 10

The key here for me isn’t that I reached my goal (trust me I was ecstatic) but rather that I felt no pain whatsoever in my lower back while doing it.

I set three goals to be reached by the end of the year when I started all this.

1. Do ten pullups in a row.
2. Squat my bodyweight ten times.
3. Curl ten reps of 100 pounds.

So one goal down.  Two to go.  I currently can do eight pull ups and I’m curling 80 pounds now.
Now I face a dilemma.  What new goal should I set?

Today was upper body day.  It was a good, but not great workout.  I went relatively easy on back and concentrated on my chest.  I did a lot of flyes, pushups, and dumbell presses.  As I rule, I avoid the barbell bench press.  Every time I’ve pushed that hard, my right shoulder starts to hurt.  I will not screw up my rotator cuff.  Period.  I’d rather have a wimpy chest.

By far the easiest body part for me is the bicep.  I curled 80 lbs x 11 today which ties my record.  I want to push the rep count to 13 then I’ll go for 85.

My lower back is still a little sore.  Last night it was bad.  Today a bit better.  Damn it.  I thought I had moved beyond this.  I’m sure it was playing baseball that did it.  Jumping and reaching for fly balls.  (Jeesh.  Thing #2 can really hit a ball for an 8-year old!)  These are motions my body is not accustomed to.  You know, I should be accustomed to these things.  I think maybe I need to branch out into some other forms of exercise to strengthen these areas.  I want to be able to play with my kids and future grandkids like this until I’m like 100…

Today was another day where I pulled myself to the gym against my own will.  Leg day.  At the beginning of my workout, squats were actually going well until in the middle of the last set I felt a slight twinge in the spot where my back has been hurting.  I stopped the set on that rep.  I may have been fine continuing, but I had no desire to be proven wrong.  So squats were a little lame:

• 45 lbs x 20
• 95 lbs x 20
• 135 lbs x 18
• 185 lbs x 9
• 205 lbs x 4

So I squatted my body-weight.  But only 4 times.  The goal is 10.  Even thought I am so close, I may back off the squats a little bit, at least for a while.  Maybe only do them once a week.  I’m not sure.  I want to get this lower back thing figured out.  I used to have issues with it before lifting, but recently it has been great.  I do not want to go back to the days where it hurts to sit.
I really don’t have an effective exercise for my lower back.  I do some light weight straight-legged deadlifts.  But regular deadlifts seem to hurt me.  The hyperextension setup at the gym is too small for me.  I need to get off my tail and research this more, I think.
My calf raises were lame as well, far below my best.  I did set a PR on the leg extension (115 lbs x 13 reps).  I’ve really come a long way on that lift.  At the beginning, I was never limited by the muscles per se, it was more that my knees hurt from doing them.  So I’ve never really pushed it hard.  I think all my ligaments and joints have gotten a lot stronger, and I can now handle higher weights.

Today I did not want to go to the gym.  My lower back on the right side is pretty sore (I think from a jumping dive I made playing baseball with my kids - Doh) and I just overall am pretty tired.  But I dragged myself there and the workout wasn’t half bad.  My back even feels a little better now after it.  I think tomorrow, which is leg day, will be some trouble if my back still hurts.  I might skip squatting tomorrow, or only squat light weight so I don’t hurt it any more.

I again did 8 pullups, matching my record, but my secondary sets both had one extra rep, which excited me.  I do three sets of pullups, and today I did 8, 6, and 6.  I’m getting there slowly.

Saturday was an upper body workout.  I set (barely) my record on the BB curl : 80 lbs x 11 reps.

Sunday was a lower body workout.  I squatted 205 (above my body-weight) but dang it I lost count of the reps.  There was somebody watching me a little too intently and I got distracted.  I think I did 6 reps.  But it could of been 7 or 5.  Doh.

I was pretty sore in my lower back last night (and not in a good way).  Fortunately I have a day off today and tomorrow is just abs and cardio.  I took a nice walk at lunch today and my back feels much better.  I think I’m going to lay off the barbell rows : Everytime I do them, my back hates me for a couple of days.  I’ll stick with the dumbbell rows, I guess.  They seems to be working in any case.

My lower back is the weak link in my chain, I think.  A lot of that, I bet, comes from sitting at a desk job all day.  I really need to work on finding a way to strengthen it that works without hurting me.  I also think my height it causing some trouble here.  Regular deadlifts feel awkward and frankly a little dangerous.  I do staight legged deads sometimes, but without any serious weight.  The hyperextension setup my gym has is too small for me.  I just don’t fit in it.  So I do what I think people call "Supermans" and they help, but there must be some other things I can do for my lower back.  Time to do some research.

So I burned 280 calories in 20 minutes on what I will call Machine C (my third choice of machines).  I did my ab work too.  Yawn.

In a marriage and sexuality book I was reading recently, the author was talking about how people need to accept their bodies and not worry too much about how they look or how their spouse looks.  You know I agree with that to a point.  But then he went on to describe how he was basically a whale of a man and then something to the effect of… "Have you ever seen those buff guys who spend a ton of time in the gym.  That’s just incredibly selfish on their part."  I don’t even know what to think about that.

Selfish?  Yes in some ways I guess it is.  But is it less selfish to slowly get heart disease or diabetes and leave your family stuggling to take care of you?  Is it less selfish to not be able to play with your grandchildren (like some grandparents I know) because you can’t manage it?  It is selfish to want to look good for your spouse, to want her to still desire you physically as you get older?
It’s funny, otherwise I really liked the book and the author, but this one part sort of infuriated me.

Lately I feel like the only thing I look forward to in my day is going to the gym.  How funny is that?  It used to be just the opposite…