StrongerGeek’s BodyBlog

Legs

Well another high volume, low weight leg day.  I did make it fairly brutal though:

• 4 sets of walking lunges carrying 25 lbs. (each set x24)
• 4 sets of standing calf raises (body weight on each foot) (x18, x16, x14, x11)
• 4 sets of leg-extensions (45 lbs x15, 90 lbs x15, 135 lbs x15, last set drop sets 180 lbs x9, 135 lbs x5, 90 lbs x5, 45 lbs x7)
• 4 sets of leg-curls (50 lbs x15, 70 lbs x15, 90 lbs x9, 90 lbs x7)
• 100 reps of squats holding 25 lbs (broken into 4 sets of 25)
• 4 sets of seated calf-raises (45 lbs each leg x20)

My diet has been sucking lately.  Breakfast = Good.  Lunch = Good.  Dinner = Good.  After the kids go to bed = BAD!  Ugh.  I’ve also been sneaking caffeine again, damn it.  Where is the willpower, my friends?

Saturday: Lower Body

Sunday: Upper Body

Today: Abs & Cardio

Pretty good workouts the last three days.  The big positive thing was I curled on Sunday. Woohoo!  Nothing super heavy, but I did do 30 lbs dumbbells for 4 sets and my elbow didn’t hurt much at all.  I find that dumbbells seem to be much easier on that elbow than the barbell.  I’ll continue to go easy and work back up to the heavier weights.  But I am very pumped about it healing.  Phew.

I’ve regressed quite a bit in some of my exercises lately: A natural result of basically two weeks off (between my trip to NY and then a week purposely taken off for my back) plus going easy because of the elbow.  My bench has dropped back to 185 lbs x 6, which is a little hard for me to accept.  The good news is I can still do 11-12 pullups.  Thank God for pullups.

I’ve gained a bit of weight in the last couple of weeks : up to 206.5.  I’m a little scared to measure my BF, but I plan on doing it tomorrow at the gym.  My diet has not been stellar, to say the least.  I feel like I’m getting back on track however…
Leg workouts have been tricky, because my PT has insisted I don’t load my back under a bar until we address my back issues.  It’s a sports medicine place, fortunately, so she and I worked out a program with lots of walking lunges, prisoner’s squats, leg-curls, leg-extensions, and the like.  It’s not terrible heavy, but there is some serious volume involved!  Saturday, my legs felt huge when I was done.

I’ve been lame on cardio lately, but today I hit it pretty hard and it felt good.

Abs, Cardio

Yawn.  At least I got to the gym and got it done.  Where the hell did my motivation go?  Jeesh.

My eating has been fine in the morning and during the day, but at night after the kiddos go to bed I’ve been eating bad foods.  Man, how the mighty have fallen.

Shape up SG…  Get with the damn program.

Tuesday: Lower Body

Wednesday: Upper Body

I worked out yesterday and the day before yesterday but never got around to posting.  The leg workout was light.  It’s going to stay that way until my back issues are straightened out (more on this later.)  Even so, it was a nice workout.  Lots of walking lunges, calf-rasies, prisonner’s squats, and leg-extensions and curls.

Yesterday’s upper body workout was mediocre.  My PT has forbidden me to do any compressive exercises, so OH presses are out.  My elbow is still sore too, so I can’t curl.  I did so some good pullups, bench presses, upright rows, seated cable rows, and sundry other execises.  I guess it wasn’t horrible.  Just nothing to get too excited about.
Today I took off because I had a lunchtime appointment with my PT.  I think she has found my back issue.  She pulled her boss into my appointment today to get an independent assessment, and he agreed with what she found.  I have a small section of my vertebrae that will not flex at all.  It is stuck in extension.  He said this is a fairly unusual problem and he wasn’t surprised I found no relief in the "standard" back pain tricks, because most of the recommended exercises assume you have the opposite issue: that you sit too much in constant flexion and need to extend your back more.  I need the opposite.  I need to force my back to flex more.  She had given me some (rather painful) exercises to do and they helped quite a bit this last week.  But now that she’s pretty confident about what the issue is, she said she is going to (and I quote) beat up on my back next week.  Apparently she is going to do some nasty things to me to make my back flex at the point it is stuck.  I can’t wait.
My elbow is a bit of a pain.  It doesn’t hurt much when I do normal things, but any sort of curl like lifting hurts quite a bit near the bottom of the lift.  I had given it sharp trauma a week or so ago, but it has hurt before this too … i just sort of ignored it before, but can’t do this anymore.  It looks like a textbook case of "Golfer’s Elbow" which I had never heard of before.  (Hell I don’t even know how to golf.)  Apparently resting and ice are good for it.  My reading said that one nice thing about it is that it is "self-limiting", which means that I can do whatever I want and not damage it further, as long as I avoid those things that make it hurt.  The only things that hurt are curls (a lot) and dips (slightly). It may take several months to heal.

Here is where I need to remember my shoulder.  I was so upset about how bad my shoulder was hurting and the end of last year… it took 5 months to heal… and then it was like it never happened.  I was so glad I didn’t get discouraged and quit.
Man getting old is great, isn’t it?

Sunday: Fullbody

Monday: Abs, Cardio

I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things.  Sunday was a good, if light, workout.  I still can’t go really heavy, but it was a good workout anyway.  My back is noticeably better than last week so I’m hopefull that I’m finally getting somewhere with this problem.  If that is the case, all this backing off of the gym was not a waste!  (My elbow is healing fine.  I really hurt it though.  The only thing I seem not to be able to handle on it is curls.  It really hurts when I do them, so I may need to back off those for a couple of weeks… sigh…)

Anyway, I am pretty optimistic about things…

On the other hand my diet has been totally crappy.  Wow.  I’m not normally like that.  I’m back on track today, but jeesh!

Good news and bad news.
The bad:  Yesterday I whacked the hell out of my right elbow being a moron.  I hope to hell I didn’t doing anything serious to it.  I don’t think I did.  I’ve been icing it and not doing anything with it today, and it finally seems a little bit better as I sit here now.  But there’s no way I could use it at the gym today.  It may take several days to heal.  ****.  Guess I’ll be concentrating on legs and cardio for a few days.
The good: I think the PT has found something.  I’ve been doing all these back flexion exercises (and taking all these anti-inflammatory drugs) and I think it’s made a big difference.  I got out of the bed this morning without major trouble.  I was a little sore, but nothing like a normal StrongerGeek morning.  This is a major victory because normally it takes me 1-2 hours after I get out of bed to have my back loosen up.

Fullbody

Well I took a week off.  It was really hard to do.  The first couple of days I ate like crap and wallowed in self-pity.  Then I got my act together with the diet and tried to be philosophical about the whole thing.  I decided if I could improve my body this way, I’d choose another.  I decided to give up caffeine finally.  Today is day #4.  So don’t come near me or I might kill you in cold blood.
The jury is still out if the gym hiatus helped my back issues or not.  I think it may have helped some of the secondary effects, but not the primary cause.  The good news is I think the PT has found the primary cause.  I have one little vertebrae which loves to be in extension but is completely unwilling to flex.  All my muscular complaints, according to her, stem from that.  I’m not going to say shes 100% right but she makes a compelling case.

This week she’s given me a ton of lumbar flexion exercises and asked me to dose up heavily on Advil for three days.  I’m not a drug person.  In fact, I almost universally refuse to take drugs for headaches, I resist antibiotics unless my snot is turning green, etc.  However, her rational made a lot of sense to me in this case.  She wants me doing the flexion exercises without all the inflammation that my back has in that area.  So I’m giving it a whack.  I have to say, even before I took the drugs, I went and did the exercises and noticed some real improvement.
I am now allowed to workout… with some restrictions.  For now, I can’t do anything that places a load on my back beyong body-weight.  Thus, no squats, except with my own body-weight.  No overhead presses.  She did say I could do pullups to my hearts content, and bench, etc.

So I winged it today.  I decided on a light fullbody workout to get me back into the swing of things.
I did three sets of walking lunges (no weight) supersetted with calf-raises.

Then three sets of pullups supersetted with upright rows (very light weight on these latter ones)

Then three sets of light bench press supersetted with body-weight squats.

Finally, three sets of light curls supersetted with dips.

I’ve been seeing a PT for the past several weeks about the pain in my back.  She finally said what I was dreading she would say, "I think you should take a week off from the gym and see where that gets us."  She wants to see if that improves things.

Frankly, I agree with this, but this will be the hardest thing she has asked me to do.  I’ve done all the exercises.  I’ve done all the stretched she’s asked me to do.  But this… this will be hard to do.

I have a certain abdominal workout she gave me to do, and I’m allowed to walk and stretch.  But no weights for a week.  No elliptical for a week.

Run away screaming… fade to black…

Back, Biceps
Well… I’m 40 now.  And after a 4 day hiatus I had my first post 40 workout.  I did bodyweight pullups x12, x7, x6 today.  I was happy to do 12 again, which ties my record.  I decided against weighted pullups today because I want to go a bit light.  What else?  Three sets each of upright rows, seated cable rows, one-armed rows, and light bicep curls.  Instead of deadlifting today I did 4 sets of back hyperextensions.

Nothing fancy.

The birthday break was fun: hit a museum, two broadway shows, and a couple of decent restaurants.  My diet was good the first two days, and then was a little weak the last two.  I’m pretty good about my diet usually so I’m cutting myself a little slack.

Cardio, Abs

Pretty mild workout today.  20 minutes of steady-state cardio, then some ab work, and lots of stretching.  I’m leaving tomorrow for NYC and three days of (likely) no gym.  Should be fun.  I’m going to work hard at keeping the diet as healthy as I can.

I had my second visit to the PT today for my back.  I don’t have a huge amount of time to write everything she said (I’m busy trying to get ready to leave for the trip) but let’s just say she’s given me a lot of food for thought.  Last time I saw her she identified some key muscles that were in bad shape (primarily the quadratus lumborum muscles in the lower back.)  The bad news: my back is stiff as hell.  The good news: I grilled her about exercise and the specifics of the exercises I do and she encouraged me to by all means continue what I was doing.  (A relief, I was really worried about that.)  The only advice she had about my whole routine was concerning the overhead barbell press where she emphasized that I need to really make sure my abs are contracted so as to take the serious pressure off the lumbar region.  She told me to keep deadlifting lightly until we figure out what was going on with the back.  I’m hopeful about the future of this.