StrongerGeek’s BodyBlog

I’m at my in-laws for Thanksgiving.

This morning, my wife, the kids, and I all went to my wife’s old high-school and played on the track there.  My wife and I walked a couple of miles around the track, while Things #1 and #2 played football in the middle.  Thing #3 played little games in the stadium and then would run along the track to meet us whenever we came around the corner.  Not an intensive workout by any means, but at least we weren’t sedentary.

It was Thanksgiving and I admit I ate too much.  Not horribly, but I ate a lot of turkey and a bunch of yummy zucchini bread.  I haven’t eaten this much food in months.  Part of me feels full and satisfied and part of me feels a bit gross.

Tomorrow we are driving to visit my sister, but staying in a hotel.  My wife tells me the hotel has a gym.  I’m hopeful to get some sort of workout in.

I took today off from work, since we are traveling for the holiday to my in-laws.  This morning before we left, I went to the gym and had a great upper body workout.

I really was happy with the chest part of it.  Today was my second time doing the barbell bench press since I gave it up 6 months ago.  Again, I didn’t do anything too hard, but I managed three sets of 135 lbs x 10-11 reps each.  I am so excited that my shoulder isn’t giving me any trouble.  That being said I will only be increasing this weight very slowly.  I followed the bench up with some super-sets of the pec-deck and push-ups.  My chest felt good and worked-out for a change.

I also set my record for my dumb-bell rows with 60 lbs x 12.  My bicep curl has still not come back from the pre-sick days, though.  I wonder why some things are still lagging from then (shoulders, biceps, triceps) while others have bounced right back (chest, back, legs).  Weird.

Diet was good today except I overdosed on caffeine really bad.  Blech.  I don’t get caffeine from coffee.  I’m a diet soda guy.  I wish I wasn’t so addicted to that crap…  All that Aspartame cannot be good for me.
I hope you all have a good Thanksgiving.  Eat healthy.

Forgive me father for I have sinned.  For the last several nights I have eaten a bowl of my wife’s semi-sugary Kashi cereal before bed.  I promise I won’t do it again and will instead eat the plate of vegetables and glass of milk that is in my diet plan.  Amen.
Huh… Bodyspace ate my last post, I guess.  It was up there for a bit and now it’s not.  Oh well.  It wasn’t that exciting anyway…

Today was the first day in a new program.  I set up my workouts around an 8-week cycle.  And when the 8-weeks run out, I start a new one.  This cycle isn’t too different from the last one, except I’ll be benching once a week and I’ve added some seated rows and reverse flyes to the mix.

So today was an upper body day, with a focus on the back.  It was okay, but I’m a little upset I still only can do 7 pullups.  I had gotten up to nine before I got sick, but I’m still dragging from that setback.  My diet had sort of disintegrated during that week, and I think I’m paying the price for that now.  I’ve now got the diet back under control.  Well, except I stuffed a bunch of my wife’s pumpkin bread down my throat last night…  When she bakes, it is like the worst temptation imaginable.  Fortunately she is on a healthy diet kick too, so it doesn’t happen too often.  The pumpkin bread was just an anomaly.  She had made one loaf for some Thanksgiving thing, but the recipe made two, and that extra loaf was just lying around begging to be eaten… by me…
I did okay with the chest part of my workout today, but my bicep curl was suffering.  I only did 85 lbs x 8 today.  I did do a lot of seated rows before the curls, which are new for me, so I may have just exhausted my biceps too much before curling.  I hope.
Thanksgiving is coming up.  Repeat after me: I will eat healthy.  I will eat healthy.  I will eat healthy.  Actually, we are going to my in-laws this year, which may help.  My problem there will be to eat anything at all.  Let’s just say my in-laws and I have a rather different notion of what constitutes food.

Well I’m still not back to normal, but I am working out.  My symptoms are all gone, except I’m just really tired.  I’ve been going to bed at 10 each night, which for me is crazy.  Normally, I’m a serious night-owl.
Today was a reasonably good leg day.  I have backed off heavy squats for a while.  I think I’m going to concentrate on form for a while before hammering hard on them again.  Today I only did 135 lbs x 12, but I went super-slow and made sure to do them perfectly.  I also did some reasonably heavy leg-presses (heavy for me anyway).
Yesterday I did the barbell bench press for the first time in months and months.  I’m going to try benching once a week and see how the shoulder does.  I didn’t go super heavy.  I just did three sets of 135 lbs x 8, but I wasn’t pushing close to as hard as I could.  I wanted to go easy and see how the shoulder handled it.  So far so good.  It feels fine today.

That’s all I have.  Sorry for boring you…

Today was my first day back in a week…

God, I weighed myself for the first time in a week.  I lost 5-6 pounds!  Crap!  I’m hoping a lot of this is water weight, but I’m not so sure.  There were several days in there that I basically ate nothing because I was feeling so crappy.  5 pounds!  Ugh.  I’ve been working for months to gain that weight.  But I had a good breakfast this morning, and I’ll get back on track.
I was tired in the gym.  I managed 7 pullups (my record is 9) and everything else sort of followed that pattern.  I was at like 80% across the board.  But I did it, and I’m glad I went.  I have a feeling it will take me a couple of weeks to get back into the groove.  I was pretty sick.  Hell, I even forgot my water bottle today.  I never forget my water bottle.

OK.  Enough of me bitching…  Go lift or something, people.

Yuck.  A whole stinking week off.  Not by choice.  It started with getting really sick.  Like can’t get out of bed sick.  Then came the business trip and the obligatory non-healthy meals, working all hours, not exercising (and yes a little bit of drinking).  Yuck.  Yuck.  Yuck.

Tomorrow I am going to the gym and it feels like I’m going to be starting over from scratch…

Sigh.

So my wife has been on my case to try out a Yoga class at the gym.  She thinks it might help out with my intermittent back and sacral-illiac issues.  So after a little nagging this morning, I decided there would be more peace in the house if I went to the 8 am class.  Plus, I was curious was it was all about.

So what did I think…?

I thought the saying "Ohm" and "Namasté" was pretty weird and a little cultish, and I didn’t join in with that part.  But I must admit I found the whole thing pretty relaxing.  And certainly my hip felt a lot better for up to several hours after the class.  Will I go back?  Maybe.  There’s also a Tai-Chi class once a week there.  My wife wants me to try that too.  We’ll see.

Today was a double gym day.  At lunch I did abs and cardio.  Nothing too exciting.

But I decided to go back and do tomorrow’s upper body workout tonight instead, since I might not be able to get to the gym tomorrow.  I hammered by chest pretty hard.  I did pec deck supersetting with pushups and then some dumbbell presses.  I moved my chest exercises to the begging on the workout instead of my normal routine which puts back first.  I want to concentrate on my chest, at least on one of my two upper body days.  I also set two PRs.  I did BB Curls 85 lbs x 10 and DB Rows 60 lbs x 12.  Overall not a bad workout.  I was happy.

Today was my first squatless leg day in a long time.  I’ve decided to cut back to squatting only once a week.  I actually may not squat next week at all, since I’m going away on business just after the next squat day, and I have no desire to test if my back issues will return in full force when I squat again.  My back has been healing.  Today is much better than yesterday.  Still a little sore, especially after sitting for a long time, but I’m getting there.
I did lunges today (lots of sets and reps and no weight at all) and it felt good on the knees and ankles.  My injured foot was a little unhappy, but nothing terrible.  I was fairly surprised just how sore I was after doing them.  I also copied Tony (yet again) and did drop sets on leg extensions.  Gadzooks, that adds a whole new dimension of pain to them, doesn’t it?  I did 125 lbs x 13, 90 lbs x 5, 45 lbs x 5 and doing that last 5 reps was hard!  Maybe I’ll try drop-setting the leg curl machine too.